More than 210 programs offer undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students the opportunity to acquire knowledge, specialize, refine, practice, and perfect their intellectual and practical skills.
Academic Programs at UW-Milwaukee
- The CIM Course form is needed to request approvals for existing courses, or for new courses both at the undergraduate and at the graduate levels.
- The CIM Program form is necessary to request changes to existing degree, certificate, or minor programs at all levels.
- Courses at UWM are organized under curricular areas. These are represented by the letters that appear in course numbers. The CIM Miscellaneous form is required to create a new curricular area, delete an existing curricular area, or to change an existing curricular area.
Creation of a new degree program is a multi-step process. The following generally outlines the steps in the process. Departments and schools/colleges may have their own processes in place that should be followed appropriately. The transmittal from the Dean must certify that the necessary school/college governance approvals have been obtained. This document is written as if a single department is involved in developing the new degree program. Where multiple departments/schools/colleges are involved, necessary approvals must be obtained from each of those involved entities.
It is a good idea to contact Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres before starting the process to get clarifications on the process, which can save time and effort.
The time it takes to get a new program approved for implementation depends on the time spent in each step. UWM has had some recent new programs go through all of these steps in a period of seven months. However, it is safe to allocate one year for the entire process to be completed.
Note: the process for creating a new Associate degree is different. Contact Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres for details.
| Step 1: | A group of faculty gets together to conceptualize a degree program. |
| Step 2: | The idea is vetted with the appropriate academic department/non-departmentalized school faculty and Dean. |
| Step 3: | A Notice of Intent (NOI) (or Request for Authorization to Plan) for the degree is created by the faculty. |
| Step 4: | After obtaining approvals from the department faculty and the appropriate school/college faculty committees (as determined by the policies in the school/college), the Dean, if he/she approves the proposed degree, forwards the document to the Provost’s office. Send electronic version(s) in Word format to Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres. |
| Step 5: | The NOI should also be uploaded to CIM to facilitate review by campus entities. The Provost’s office will circulate the NOI per Academic Approval Matrix for comments and opportunities for collaboration from other academic units on campus. |
| Step 6: | After editing the document appropriately based on feedback, the NOI is circulated by the Provost’s office to all UW institutions for comments, objections, and opportunities for collaboration. |
| Step 7: | The UW System Office of Academic Programs and Faculty Advancement (APFA) communicates to the Provost’s office the decision to approve or deny the request to plan the new degree program. |
| Step 8: | If the NOI is approved, the program faculty review the Authorization Guidance and Checklist and prepare the following documents: |
| Step 9: | Upon department/school/college approvals, the Dean (with his/her approval) forwards the document to the Provost’s office. Send electronic documents in Word/Excel format to Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres. |
| Step 10: | The documents should also be uploaded to CIM to facilitate campus-level review. The Provost’s office will circulate the authorization documents per Academic Approval Matrix for comments and/or approvals. The authorization documents are presented to Faculty Senate for the final governance approval. |
| Step 11: | After governance approvals, the Provost’s office transmits the documents to UW System APFA for consideration by the Board of Regents (BOR) Education Committee. |
| Step 12: | Upon approval by the BOR, the program is authorized to be implemented. |
| Step 13: | Approval from UW System of implementation date of the new program. |
Required documentation to propose a new certificate
The proposal for a new certificate program must be sent to Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres The proposal should address the requirements listed in the guidelines and must be accompanied by a cover memo from the relevant Dean(s) certifying that the proposal has been approved by the appropriate governance committees within each involved school/college. All documents must be submitted as electronic files (proposal must be in MS Word; supporting documents may be MS Word or pdf files).
The proposals for new certificates must be circulated by the Provost’s Office for campus input before they will be considered by the Academic Programs and Curriculum Committee (APCC) for undergraduate certificates or by the Graduate Faculty Committee (GFC) for post-baccalaureate or graduate certificates.
It is a good idea to contact Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres before starting the above process.
If the partner institution is accredited by federally recognized accrediting agency, UWM enters into a consortial agreement with that institution.
If the partner institution is not accredited by federally recognized accrediting agency, UWM enters into a contractual agreement with that institution. This includes all non-US entities.
We can implement the agreement only after receiving HLC approval. It is a good idea to contact Institutional Academic Planner Cheryl Andres before starting this process.
Per Board of Regents policy, every degree program must undergo a periodic review to ensure quality and currency. At UWM, undergraduate degree programs are reviewed by the Academic Programs and Curriculum Committee (APCC) and graduate programs are reviewed by the Graduate Faculty Committee (GFC) on a ten-year cycle. New degree programs require a review in the fifth year of implementation of the program as required by Board of Regents policy. Additionally, APCC or GFC may require intermediate reviews based on the results of the regular review.