Terminology

Academic groups are the highest level breakdowns of the academic institution for academic structural purposes. Often each school or college within an academic institution is defined as an academic group. Sometimes units such as extended education are defined as an academic group if classes are offered separately from the standard colleges or schools. For example, the University of Missouri - Columbia has the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Engineering, the School of Law, the College of Education, the School of Medicine, etc. Each entity is defined as an academic group in the system. Academic groups can offer academic programs in more than one academic career, and academic careers can cross academic groups.

In most cases, academic groups are defined as the next level of academic organization structure below academic institution. However, academic groups can occur at any level within the academic organization structure.

Each campus of the University of Missouri will be an academic institution. University Extension may also be as a distinct institution, depending on how the University decides to represent extension coursework on student transcripts.

An Academic Institution is the highest level breakdown within the myZou Student Administration application. A University may be comprised of one or more Institutions. Each Academic Institution has its own Course Catalog and Schedule of Classes. Academic Institutions each have their own Financial Aid funding and awarding rules.

We will have four academic Institutions in myZou: "COLUM" (UM-Columbia), "KCITY" (UM-Kansas City), "ROLLA" (UM-Rolla), and "STLOU" (UM-St. Louis).

A node on the academic organization tree structure. At the lowest level, an academic organization is usually an academic department. Every University of Missouri campus, college, school, division, and department will be an Academic Organization.

An Academic Organization is an academic or administrative entity within an Institution and/or Group. Organizations may represent different levels, such as divisions or departments. Academic Organizations in the Student Administration application will be mapped to a corresponding value in the Finance and HRMS applications.

Academic Organizations will be defined as academic and administrative departments within the Institution.

An area of study, e.g., majors and minors, within an academic program. An academic plan is the combination of degree objective and specific area of study within the corresponding academic program.

Academic Plans may be majors, minors, or certificates. Examples are Economics-BS, Economics-BA, Economics-PHD, and Communications Studies-Minor.

The program is defined in functional terms as that academic organization to which a student applies, is admitted to, and ultimately graduates from. For the University of Missouri these will, in most cases, correspond to schools and colleges.

A requirement that must be satisfied by the student in order to graduate. An academic requirement consists of course lists that must be established before the requirement is developed. Academic Programs are related areas of study within an Academic Organization or Group. Academic Programs "own" degree programs and students. An Academic Program may have one or more degree or certificate plans associated with it. An Academic Program is what the student applies to and is admitted to. Academic Programs generally will correspond to the Academic Group (school or college) at the undergraduate level and with the Academic Organization (department) at the graduate level.

An Academic Requirement Group consists of multiple academic requirements, which are satisfied by course lists. Requirement Groups can be established before requirements or course lists are developed. A requirement group points to courses and conditions. Academic Programs control rules for admission evaluation schemes, academic level, academic load, grading policies, course repeat rules, academic standing and honors, incomplete grade rules, and academic calendars.

A class scheduling/enrollment control time period within an academic term. All classes are offered within a session and a session belongs to a term for billing and other administrative purposes. The most common usage at the University will be the various sessions that are offered during the summer term.

A specific area of instruction within an academic group. These correspond to the University's curricular designations and appear in the course catalog, schedule of classes, and student schedules and transcripts. Courses are described by a combination of a subject area and a catalog number, for example, for the course French 103, "French" is the subject area and "103" is the catalog number.

An area of further specialization within an academic plan. These will be used for emphasis areas for those majors that have emphasis areas. An academic sub-plan is an emphasis area or concentration within a specific academic plan.

An administrative time period within which sessions are defined, students are billed, and statistics are accumulated for individual students and the entire school. Different careers may have totally different academic term structures.

Each term is associated with an academic year for purposes of reporting and financial aid accumulation. (However, a student may have any summer term work changed to point at either the preceding or subsequent academic year.) Accounting is done at a term level and then summarized into a fiscal year which usually parallels an academic year.

Technologies that complement the myZou systems but are not included in them.

Examples: Web browsers, data warehouses, workflow systems.

On-the-fly query or reporting. Sometimes called desktop reporting.

The Adjustment Calendar controls how a particular charge is adjusted on a student's account. The charge is adjusted based on a date, a number of days beyond the date, and a percentage of the refund. Adjustment Calendars are more commonly known as refund schedules.

Functional area that processes checklists, communication, and comments. The administrative function identifies what key data should be added to a person's checklist or communication record when a specific checklist code, communication category or comment is assigned to the student. This key data allows us to trace that checklist, communication or comment back to a specific processing event in a functional area.

For example, when assigning a checklist related to a person's application for admission, it is important to know which specific application the checklist is related to for processing, reporting, and analysis purposes. The Admissions Administrative function gives us the ability to link a checklist to a specific academic career, student career number, and application number.

Admit type helps distinguish first-year from transfer applications.

This links our NSLDS (National Student Loan Data Service) Loan Year to specified values.

Financial aid which has been awarded but not disbursed, but is expected to be disbursed during the term.

A program designed for use by an end user. In myZou this application is a database, for example the Financials application consists of a number of modules.