Course Designators

A course designator is a series of letters, e.g., HIST, used to identify courses in a particular area of study.  (In PeopleSoft terminology the designator is the “subject.”) Designators are set up in data tables, which are mapped to an academic department, within a college structure, within a campus structure (e.g., MATH, mapped to the Math Department, within the College of Science and Engineering, within the Twin Cities campus).

Course designators are used to:

  • Indicate who has administrative oversight of the course (e.g., academic department within a college)
  • Identify groups of courses in the same area of study

Key Facts about Designators:

  • Designators are campus-specific. ENGL, for example, exists on more than one U of M campus. Even if the designators are identical, the courses are unique to each campus. A student’s U of M transcript clearly indicates the campus of enrollment for every course. When a student transfers from one U of M campus to another, e.g., from Crookston to Duluth, the courses from Crookston will be evaluated by the Duluth campus for their applicability to fulfilling requirements for the Duluth campus academic program to which the student has transferred.
  • Designators have very long lives. Because the University is required to keep records of all students’ enrollments since the University was founded, even if a designator is not currently being used to offer courses (e.g., ZOO for Zoology), that designator is not available for new courses now.
  • A descriptive course title conveys more meaning than the designator, which may not mean the same thing at different institutions. Course titles are more useful to employers than course designators.

Creating, altering, or discontinuing a designator

There are many processes impacted by changing a designator, and in most cases, a new designator is not needed. The following are examples where a designator change is unnecessary:

  • To distinguish graduate-level courses from undergraduate-level courses (course numbering system of 1xxx, 3xxx, 5xxx, etc. does that)
  • To indicate what courses do or do not apply to a particular major, minor, or certificate (create a list of the courses that do apply, and use the PCAS system)
  • For ephemeral or experimental courses (use an existing designator and topics title)
  • Solely because a department changed its name; if the existing designator is still appropriate to the field of study, there is no need to change the designator
  • To indicate a subfield of study within an existing field (course title can do that)
  • To move tuition around (departments and colleges can do this via the financial system)
  • At the beginning stages of an emerging discipline (e.g., nanotechnology) for a limited number of courses; a topics titles using an existing designator would be more appropriate initially
  • To use as a pass-through for specific courses we contract with another institution to provide (e.g., U of M doesn’t offer Persian, so we would not set up a Persian designator; our students can enroll through CIC course-share), if we already have a general pass- through designator (e.g., FOST) to manage such courses
  • To indicate the location (e.g., Toledo) of a study abroad program (course title could do that)
  • To help students find courses in a particular topic (Google and course-search and other on-line tools, as well as departmental web sites can help students to find courses about the Holocaust or Korean film or women’s nutrition in South America)
  • For a very small number of courses (instead, use an existing designator with a descriptive title)

A new designator may be appropriate in the following scenarios:

  • An emerging field has grown into a robust discipline of its own (e.g., Sustainability Studies)
  • A new campus-wide (cross-collegiate) or college-wide program has emerged, and needs a campus-wide or college-wide designator, and no such designator exists (e.g., GCC).
  • Cross-departmental courses within a college (e.g. a college-wide designator for centrally coordinated courses serving students across a college.)
  • Grouping courses to manage U of M student enrollment in particular programs offered elsewhere where the U of M contracts with other entities, but students register through the U of M and credit is transcripted as U of M credit (e.g., the CIC course-share, HECUA programs, FOST)

Changing department ownership of a designator:

  • If a department wishes to move a designator from one department to another (change the department ID), please submit a change request.
     

Departmental Use of Designators

Departments may use designators to differentiate between unrelated fields that fall under the same department. An example being, French and Italian, where two different designators make sense for one department. Another example is Geography, which has GEOG and GIS.


Shared Designators

A designator may be shared among departments, although typically the relationship of designator to department is one to one, and all courses in one designator generally map to one department (DeptID in Peoplesoft). However, individual courses within a designator may be mapped to a different department, although this process is only used in special circumstances.

A designator generally denotes the unit/department where a course was developed, and signifies that this unit assumes authority over the administration and delivery of the course, as well as the responsibility for responding to student concerns about the course.


Designator Request Process

Requests for a new or changed course designator can be made via Course Designators Form

Course designator changes for the term must be approved and submitted to ASR at least two weeks before the first date to enroll.


Impact

When a new designator is created, changed, or discontinued the following systems and processes are impacted:

  • Class lists
  • Degree program requirements (PCAS)
  • Student Rating of Teaching data
  • Student transcripts
  • Grad Planner
  • APAS
  • GPAS
  • Class scheduling system
  • Student registration
  • Tuition attribution
  • Catalogs