What is a Degree Audit
A degree audit is an individualized report that reflects a student’s academic progress toward a specified degree. It compares the student’s course work (both from ISU and transfer work from other institutions) with the academic degree program, and then prepares a report (the degree audit) detailing the student’s progress toward meeting the requirements of a specified degree.
Students and advisors can access the ISU degree audit system (uAchieve) through AccessPlus.
Degree audits are intended to help students track their academic progress at ISU. Every effort is made to ensure accuracy, but students bear the final responsibility for meeting graduation requirements. Students are encouraged to check with their advisors on a regular basis as they progress towards their degree.
In CALS, the degree audit will pull in options, minors, and secondary majors (I AG, SEEDS, and ENV S), and will display these on the primary audit. If a student has two majors or two degrees, however, then these programs will be displayed on two separate audits.
How to Run a Degree Audit
In AccessPlus, go to the Faculty / Advisor tab, and then click on Advising Services1. Use name browse (or some other method) to get to the student you want to run an audit for, then click Degree Audit on the left. Click Connect to ISU Degree Audit.
At this point, if you want to run an audit for the student's current major, click Run Declared Programs. If instead the student wants to explore a different major or is thinking of adding a minor, you can run a "what-if" audt: click Select a Different Program, and then use the drop-down arrows to select the major / minor combination you'd like to run. This allows the student to see requirements for other majors and how courses they have already completed would apply towards those requirements.
How to Read a Degree Audit
Requirements that are tracked in uAchieve include GPA, total credits, international perspectives and U.S. diversity, communications proficiency, communication and library, humanities and social sciences, ethics, life and biological sciences, math and physical sciences, major requirements, option requirements, minor requirements, electives, the CALS residency requirement, and the last 32 credit requirement. Any notations on the audit can be found at the very bottom.
An overview of the requirements on the degree audit, including a breakdown of the requirements into university, college, and departmental requirements, can be found at: https://www.cals.iastate.edu/files/an-overview-of-the-various-requirements-on-the-degree-audit.pdf.
In 2007, the CALS Curriculum Committee voted to allow dual-listing courses between select areas on the degree audit. What this means is that students can use one course to satisfy two different requirements on the audit (three if a minor is involved). The rules for dual-listing courses can be found at: https://www.cals.iastate.edu/content/multiple-counting-courses-cals. Please note that some departments have more restrictive rules for dual-listing.
The degree audit is broken down into various areas: Communication / Library, Ethics, Life Sciences, and so on.
Next to each area is a two-letter indicator that shows the area’s status: NO for not met, IP for met with in-progress courses, and OK for met. If an area is not met, there is a line just below the area’s title that indicates what is still needed: it might say “needs 4.00 credits,” or it might say “needs 3 sub-groups.”
Within each area is a list of the various sub-groups or sub-requirements needed to complete that area. Next to each sub-group there is again an indicator, this time either a “-“ (meaning that it is not met) or a “+” (meaning that it is met with in-progress or completed courses).
Finally, courses being used to meet requirements on the audit are listed one per line. From left to right, these listings appear as follows: the term the course was taken, the course designator and number, the number of credits associated with the course, and the grade the student received (or CUR for “current” / REG for “registered”).
Transfer courses include the type of transfer credits (TT for technical credits / T2 for 2-year credits / T4 for 4-year credits), the code for the transfer institution, and finally the course designator and number at that transfer institution.
Sometimes a “>” followed by a letter or symbol will appear after the grade—these codes and what they mean can be found in the legend near the bottom of the audit.
If you have any questions about degree audits and how to read them, please contact either Dave Ross at 4-2879 or Tim Carey at 4-2766.