A profile is a catalog-specific record that tracks degree objectives for a student based on the student's declared major. Profiles are assigned using degree plan codes. The profile stores the degree information and the audit uses the information to evaluate a student’s record against his or her degree objectives.
Profile Types
| Trait | Default (X) | Tentative (T) | Official (O) |
| Purpose | To give enrolled students a profile based on the default degree plan assigned to the student’s school-major code. Intended to ease the creation of T profiles. Not for use with a catalog that is not production-ready. | To track a student's program and catalog, run appropriate degree audits, and evaluate progress toward the degree.
| To help dean's office staff certify students for graduation. Required to award a degree and to print a diploma. |
| Program | Chosen from the degree plan file based on the assigned default program. Does not need to be a valid degree program, but must have a sequence record that can have audits run against it. Cannot include minors. | Requires school, FOS, and degree type. Major, concentration, honors, and minor/certificate are optional. | All parts of a degree program must be specified, including school, FOS, degree type, and (if needed) major, concentration, honors, and minor/certificate. |
| Creation | For each school-major code, specify one degree program to be used for X profiles. This is true even if several programs share the same school-major code. A weekly job creates an X profile for a student if
If a student has two school-major codes, then a second X profile can be created under these assumptions. Default profiles are created programmatically; they are not created manually. Please see the note below this table for information on the catalog assignment for X profiles. | Manual; add a new T profile or update an X profile to T in the web profile interface. Requires Tentative or Official Profile Maintainer authorization. | Manual; add a new O profile or update X/T profile to O in the web profile interface. O profiles are also created when proposed degree information is added via the VO screen in NRRECS. Requires Official Profile Maintainer authorization. |
| Deletion | Deleted in the following cases:
| Remains in the system when student is not enrolled. Deleted manually by dean's office staff when no longer applicable. Advisers are strongly encouraged to delete unused T profiles. Requires Tentative or Official Profile Maintainer authorization. | Remains in the system when student is not enrolled. Deleted automatically when the degree specified in the profile is conferred. Deleted manually by dean's office staff when no longer applicable. When deleting an O profile, check the VO screen in NRRECS to see if there is an associated date degree expected that should also be deleted. Requires Official Profile Maintainer authorization. |
| Max allowed per student | One per school-major code (two maximum). | Ten T profiles; less than ten if student has at least one O profile. Cannot have more than one T or O profile for the same degree program (regardless of catalog). | Two O profiles; less than two if student has more than eight T profiles. Each O profile must represent a different degree. An O profile cannot contain the same program as an existing T profile. |
| Logs | Changes to X profiles do not appear in our logs. | Changes to T profiles appear on the SL screen in NRRECS. | Changes to O profiles appear on the SL screen in NRRECS. |
For default profiles, catalog assignment is based on continuous enrollment status. For students who are continuously enrolled at UT, their default profile will use the catalog that was current at the time the student first enrolled at UT. For students with any break in their enrollment during a long semester (due to withdrawal, oblit, or non-registration), their default profile will use the current catalog, even if their first semester enrolled predates the current catalog.
Note: School-major codes may be tied to any new, current, or retired FOS. Default profiles will be created using the new FOS. If a student has an official or tentative profile for a current or retired FOS, a redundant default profile may be created using the new FOS. (Example: B L was replaced by LEB. LEB retained B L’s school-major code. A student with an O/T profile in B L will still have an X profile created for LEB.)
Viewing Profiles
Student profiles can be viewed in several ways:
IDA Profiles: From the navigation menu under the "Profiles" link, advisors can view the profile(s) on record for one student. If you have Official/Tentative Profile Maintainer authorization in IDA, this page will also allow you to make updates to student profiles within your department/school.
IDA Profiles by Degree Plan: From the navigation menu under the "Profiles by Degree Plan" link, advisors can run profile reports for sets of students based on user input.
IDA Audit Request: A complete list of profiles for a given student appears on the individual audit request page, underneath the drop-down menus. Preference is given to official profiles over tentative profiles, and tentative profiles over default profiles.
NRRECS: The VO command in NRRECS allows you to view official profile information. For each official profile on the VO screen, the expected graduation date, catalog, program code, program description, minor, UT degree code and CB major code are listed. Degree honors and special honors may be listed. (Note: the expected graduation date cannot be added without the CB major code.)
Slotting Audits
Slotting audits are submitted programmatically based on a student’s profile. If a student does not have a tentative or official profile, a default profile will be used based on the student’s school-major code. If there is no default program assigned to the student’s school-major code, then a Liberal Arts undeclared profile (LA) will be created and used for slotting purposes. UGS students will default to using the current catalog for the LA degree plan.
Prior to slotting, colleges will receive reports for the following:
- Profiles for all students currently enrolled, and for students who are currently enrolled with no profile. This report is provided after the 12th class day; it provides information on degree-seeking students with real major codes on their record to help the college determine if their profiles need to be updated.
- Program codes. Colleges will need to review the list and inform the Office of the Registrar if any updates need to be made to the school-major codes or the key file default switch. There can only be one key file default profile per school-major code.
One slotting audit will run for each profile on the student’s record. For students with multiple profiles, the audit with the highest progress toward the degree will be used to determine registration time.
Notes: The program which assigns default profiles for currently enrolled students bypasses students who have already earned a degree. Non-degree seeking students will not receive a default profile; they will receive the last registration slot. Old slotting audits will be deleted before new audits are run.
Profile Freeze
During the slotting audits used for registration, which run starting on the 20th-class day, it is important that student profiles do not change. This job rechecks the matching of student profiles to get minor or certificate information. If that is missing because of a profile change, the student may not receive the registration slot that most accurately reflects their progress towards degree completion.
To this end, profile updates will be prevented during this time period which should last less than 10 business days. Within IDA, on the profile page, users will see a banner to remind them that the freeze is in effect. They will also receive an error message indicating the same, should they attempt to update a profile during the freeze.
Orientation Audits
Profiles are not used for orientation audits. Special profile structures are created for orientation audits based on the student’s school-major code. These special structures are not stored on the student’s record.
Certified Audits
Certified audits are run based on official profiles. Students must be currently enrolled and coded for graduation on the VO screen in NRRECS.
Minors and Certificates
See about adding and updating profiles.
The college of the department offering the minor/certificate will code the requirements in IDA 2.0, and the coding process will be the same as coding major degree requirements.
For minor/certificate documentation beyond IDA, please click here.
Sequence records
The minor requirements will be housed on their own sequence record based on the major degree plan code. Every major degree plan will have one “Minor/Certificate” scoped requirement that will serve as a trigger to pull these minor sequence records. By default, the trigger requirements will carry 15 estimated hours. Colleges will be able to adjust the estimated hours to zero if a minor is not required for that major degree plan.
The trigger requirement has the second-lowest priority when sequencing your requirements, ahead of electives. If your major degree plan carries one or more elective requirements, those electives should be sequenced last, while the minor trigger should be sequenced second-to-last. In all other cases, the minor trigger should be sequenced last.
All previous minor requirements will change to elective requirements with the 2016-18 catalog roll-over, and existing degree plans will need to be reviewed.
Coding minor requirements
Below are the steps to code the minor/certificates:
- Add degree plan code and catalog. The minor and certificate degree plan codes will have the same format, and will include the college, FOS, and auto-generated sequence number (ex: L HIS01). They will also carry their credential type (MN for minors, or CT for certificates). These degree plan codes are maintained by the Office of the Registrar after they have been approved and added to the new minors system.
- Code requirements.The requirement types are the same as for a major degree plan. The metadata under each requirement type is used to form the basis and parameters of the requirement.
- Course work requirements to seek specific courses. (Note: You should not mark the “Minor” checkbox within your course list filters.)
- Totals requirements to seek total hours from applicable courses. Every totals requirement must exclude unused coursework.
- GPA requirements to seek minimum GPA from applicable courses. (Note: This may not be needed, depending on how the minor/certificate is legislated.) Every GPA requirement must exclude unused coursework.
Certificate requirements
- Minimum of 18 hours, but not more than 24 hours. To be set by the college offering the certificate based on legislation.
- At least half of the coursework must be completed in-residence.
- At least one course must be outside the requirements for the major. Courses may fulfill other degree requirements.
Minor requirements
- Minimum of 15 hours, but not more than 18 hours. To be set by the college offering the minor based on legislation.
- None of the specified coursework can include unnumbered topics courses.
- Minimum of six hours of upper-division coursework. EXCEPTION: In these instances, the minor must include at least nine semester hours of coursework beyond first-year competence in a foreign language, including at least three hours of upper-division coursework.
- At least half of the coursework must be completed in-residence.
- At least 9 hours must include course work not used to satisfy the requirements of the major. Courses may fulfill other degree requirements.
- Add requirement restrictions if needed. All minor/certificate restrictions will be handled as dependent (option or requirement) restrictions.
Minors/Certificates on Student Profiles
Once a student has been approved to seek a minor/certificate, the minor/certificate may be added to the student’s profile in IDA 2.0.
If the student has been approved (through the Registrar Documents Submission application) to seek a minor/certificate, the approved credential will display on the pull-down menu in IDA 2.0 when adding or updating a 2016-18 profile. The credential type (MN or CT) will precede the degree code.
Minors and certificates may still be coded manually on the VO screen in NRRECS and the XP screen in NRDAPF at this time. Only approved minors/certificates may be added to a 2016-18 profile. The degree code will include MN (minor) or CT (certificate).
Running Minors/Certificates in IDA 2.0
Audit requests for the 2016-18 catalog will operate similarly to requests for previous catalogs. For individual audit requests, drop-down menus will be provided and will include all approved degree plan codes. For multiple EID audit requests, the form will include text boxes for manual entry of the codes.
Certificates may be run in conjunction with a major, or they may be run independently. When you run a certificate independently, the certificate is the main credential and needs to be entered in the Degree Plan field. Minors must be run in conjunction with a major.
Students and advisers may request audits using major and minor/certificate plan codes outside of their school and major.
When population audits run, the minors are pulled from the students’ profiles.
Moreable minors (Business Administration, Biological Sciences, etc.) will no longer exist starting with the 2016-18 catalog.
Minors/Certificates and Progress Toward Degree
PTD hours for a degree audit in the 2016-18 catalog will include the hours for the minor/certificate being pursued. PTD will be calculated based on the estimated hours for the sequence of the minor/certificate. If no minor/certificate is specified, then the estimated hours for the trigger requirement will be used instead.
| PTD Operational Table | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Degree plan total hrs req'd | MN/CT hrs req'd for degree plan | Hrs req'd for MN/CT on student's profile | PTD hrs for the degree |
| 120 | 0 | 15 | 120-135* |
| 120 | 0 | 18 | 120-138* |
| 120 | 0 | 0 (no MN/CT on profile) | 120 |
| 120 | 15 | 15 | 120 |
| 120 | 15 | 18 | 123 |
| 120 | 15 | 0 (no MN/CT on profile) | 120† |
| *Range depends on how many hours of MN/CT coursework can be reused for major elective requirements. If 0 MN/CT hours are reused for electives, the maximum amount in range will be applied. | |||
| †Trigger requirement will show hours lacking and will not be satisfied. | |||
Other considerations
If a minor/certificate is not specified and the trigger requirement has zero estimated hours (indicating that a minor/certificate is not required for the degree plan), then the trigger requirement will show as complete on the audit.
It is important that you review any requirements that were previously scoped as “Minor” but are now scoped as “Elective” in the 2016-18 catalog. Generally, when a course cannot be used to “double-dip” into both MN/CT hours and elective hours, those unfulfilled elective hours are added to the total number of hours needed for the degree.
Audits for standalone certificates will not carry a PTD, and none of the independent restrictions, including the duplicate restriction, will apply. Advisers are encouraged to run audits in conjunction with the major.
Need More Information?
See how to override the minor trigger requirement.