Graduate Materials

Not only do program directors assist in making decisions about graduate study for their programs, but they also must see that those decisions are reflected in all communications to prospective applicants and current students. Often a group or committee can be assigned to review and update communications materials. Generally, a regular review schedule will help keep your department communications current and prevent confusion resulting from conflicting information reaching applicants and students.

It is best to update all materials at once (e.g., the program websites, the Graduate Student Handbook, the Graduate Catalog). Do not save forms and policies to your desktop — things change and you will end up with incorrect or outdated information.

Update Contact and Listserv Information

Please notify the college and the College of Graduate Studies anytime the program hires new staff support or makes a change in the program director or staff. This is important to maintain contact with students and the College of Graduate Studies. The College of Graduate Studies maintains a contact list for your program and this needs to be kept current.

Customer Relations Module Letters to Students

The College of Graduate Studies maintains a Customer Relations Module for you to communicate directly with those who inquire about your programs. Two of the initial communications that go out to inquirers is set aside exclusively for program content. Each year you should examine your two communication letters and revise them so that they are up to date. Good communications to inquiries would include one letter about the program goals and faculty expertise and research. The other letter should concern itself with how students who enter your program can afford to attend graduate school, and resources and contacts for them to get further information. Please review these letters at the same time as you review your website, your handbook and Graduate Catalog copy for the following year, to ensure your communications are the best that they can be.

Graduate Catalog

The Graduate Catalog is the university's official record of graduate policies, admission requirements, and program requirements. Each year the UCF College of Graduate Studies reviews and updates the Graduate Catalog and requests changes from the university community.

Review copy is sent to the colleges in November and changes are requested by early January. The UCF College of Graduate Studies provides proof of the changes for review usually in February. Changes not received by March 1 will not appear in the Graduate Catalog for that year.

The list of courses in the back of the Graduate Catalog is created from the course database. The UCF College of Graduate Studies receives a downloaded file from that database and formats it to fit the design of the Graduate Catalog. It is important for program directors to submit Course Action Request forms in late spring of the previous year or very early in fall for courses that require approval so that the changes can be reflected in the Graduate Catalog. Refer to "Course Development" for more detailed information on this process.

The Graduate Catalog is available online at www.graduatecatalog.ucf.edu. Programs are encouraged to link their department websites to the Graduate Catalog and are asked not to duplicate catalog copy on their websites. Also, you are asked to link your program website to the Graduate Application.

Websites

The network of UCF websites should be thought of as a single publication, with each individual site supporting all the others. Each website at UCF has the responsibility to do its best to support the whole network. In other words, programs should provide the information for which they are the expert and link to other sites for expert information in other areas.

Websites require frequent review and updating to ensure that they work properly and have current information. Visitors to your website expect to see current information and will be disappointed and may not return if your site is out of date, isolated from the rest of the UCF network (lacking in paths to the UCF main page, www.graduate.ucf.edu, the Graduate Application, Graduate Catalog, and other sites important to your graduate students), or lacking in information considered essential by graduate students. Program websites should include information about faculty and faculty strengths and research interests, financial support opportunities, facilities, research opportunities, and policies or procedures specific to the program.

Departments should be familiar with the university’s web policies and follow them in the development department, program, and faculty websites. Course Development and Web Services can provide guidance in developing websites. UCF Marketing can assist in defining audiences and content to achieve a successful recruiting site. In addition, UCF Marketing can provide approved UCF logos and guidance on how to use them.

Review the department website and make note of the information provided there. Consider whether it includes information for graduate students and identify essential information that is missing. Find out who is responsible for designing and updating the department website and meet with that person to discuss required changes and ask how to request changes to the website. Also decide on a reasonable schedule for how long it will take the webmaster to make changes and to notify the department of their completion. Remember to proofread the changes once they are made.

Continue to review the department website at least once a month. Sometimes changes in procedures or policies will require immediate changes to the website. Please notify the College of Graduate Studies if you are having resource issues in maintaining your website.

After the Graduate Catalog and application are revised each year, changes are made to the College of Graduate Studies website www.graduate.ucf.edu. The goal is to have the online catalog and all other graduate materials, including program and the College of Graduate Studies materials ready for publication at the start of the summer semester each year.

The College of Graduate Studies requests that you also occasionally review the UCF Graduate Students website to be certain that the information about your program is current and has no errors. Send changes to Debra Winter in the UCF College of Graduate Studies.

Gradschools.com

Periodically review www.gradschools.com to review and update appropriate information.

Useful Websites

The College of Graduate Studies hosts websites for students and faculty to use as a resource for answers to frequently asked questions.

College of Graduate Studies: www.graduate.ucf.edu
The College of Graduate Studies website is the portal site that leads you into the areas that most students and faculty/staff need the most access to, from the prospective and current students section, information regarding UCF, the graduate catalog, the application process, registration, financials, academic progress and thesis and disseration.

Graduate Students: www.students.graduate.ucf.edu
The Graduate Students website assists prospective and current students by providing information regarding UCF, the graduate programs, the application process, registration, academic progress and graduate services offered.

Graduate Catalog: www.graduatecatalog.ucf.edu
The Graduate Catalog provides students and faculty with detailed information on UCF, graduate research, graduate programs, application information, financial information, policies, faculty and courses offered.

Faculty and Staff: www.admin.graduate.ucf.edu
The Faculty and Staff website is a resource for UCF faculty and staff for best practices, graduate awards and forms used by the College.

GradInfo: www.gradinfo.ucf.edu
GradInfo is a secured internal portal for information regarding graduate students. The site provides valuable reports for prospects, applicants, fellowship awards, academic progress and many other resources for graduate faculty and staff.

International Services Center: www.intl.ucf.edu
The International Services Center website provides prospective and current students, as well as, faculty with a resource on immigration issues and processes that effect our international population. The site also includes information on international employment and taxation of students, faculty and researchers.

DocView: www.eis.ucf.edu
The electronic file of each graduate student is stored in DocView. Faculty can see in DocView applications and supporting documents, status change forms, appeals and other documents kept as part of a student’s permanent file.

GWIS
GWIS is an interactive tool used by faculty and staff to review the qualifications of applicants to their program by term. Admission decisions are also entered in GWIS.

PeopleSoft Graduate Summary Page

The Graduate Summary page is located in PeopleSoft. Here faculty can look up individual student information and see an overview of a student’s application status, residency status, gpa, GRE and financial information.

Navigation: Grad Custom > UCF Graduate Summary

Enroll Application Tab

Test and Education Tab

Financials Summary Tab

Chat University

EMT Chat University

Access

For access to the above tools, training is required. The training will provide details on the resources and services available including PeopleSoft, Gradinfo, GWIS and Docview. Please note that Docview access must be specifically requested by your department as annual usage fees are involved. To request a new Docview account please visit www.eis.ucf.edu.

This information will be offered in four distinct sessions including:

Course Name	Course Number
Admissions and Recruiting Services	GRA001
Records Services	GRD001
Financial Services	GFI001
International Services	ISC001

All of our courses are offered monthly and we welcome you to come at any time. Employees are encouraged to enroll in all of our courses as soon as possible in order to receive access to these important resources. The International Services and the PeopleSoft Basics (PSC001) courses are prerequisites for the other courses, so you must take these first.

Registration is available through myUCF, Employee Self Service.

1. Log on to the myUCF portal (https://my.ucf.edu) using your PID and password.
2. Select Employee Self Service on the myUCF menu.
3. Select Learning Development.
4. Select Request Training Enrollment.
5. Search via one of the four methods and enroll!

For a quick glance at the course schedule please visit the calendar of events on the website.

Navigation: Self Service > Learning and Development > Request Training Enrollment

Events for Faculty and Students

The Events Calendar on the College of Graduate informs faculty and students of important events.

You’ll find the Events Calendar on these websites:

College of Graduate Studies – www.graduate.ucf.edu
Graduate Students – www.students.graduate.ucf.edu
Facutly and Staff – www.admin.graduate.ucf.edu
International Services Center – www.intl.ucf.edu
GradInfo – www.gradinfo.ucf.edu

The available information varies from one website to another, depending on the site’s primary audience. For example, on the Graduate Students site you’ll find events and important dates for students. On the College site, you’ll find that information plus graduate administration schedules and events. You are also able to select to view a date range or specific category of events.

Finding UCF Data and Helpful Information

Find information about enrollment at the following sites.
www.irweb2.ucf.edu/scripts/broker.exe?_service=beta&_program=enroll.headcount.sas&_debug=0
www.iroffice.ucf.edu/information_center/index.html

Find information about degrees granted on the IR website.
www.iroffice.ucf.edu/degrees/degreesconferred.html

Find information about program profiles at the following site.
www.irweb3.ucf.edu/pr/pr_2004/undergraduate.asp

Find information regarding your program enrollment, stop out and graduation numbers by term.
COMING SOON

National Education Statistics

Stipend Survey
http://gradschool.binghamton.edu/stipendsurvey/default.asp

Council of Graduate Schools
www.cgsnet.org/

National Association of Graduate-Professional Students
www.nagps.org/

Carnegie Classifications
www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/

Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections 2004-2014
www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecopro.pdf

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/

NRC Research Doctorate Assessment
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/resdoc/index.html

National Science Foundation
www.nsf.gov/

WebCASPAR
http://webcaspar.nsf.gov/includes/checkJavascriptAbility2.jsp;
jsessionid=12D23F8BB25E098C3EC9CC04F6BF985?submitted=1

Graduate Listservs

The College of Graduate Studies has set up listservs for discussion of graduate issues in the university community. These listservs are also used to make announcements, forward e-mails about graduate issues, and distribute minutes and other documentation for graduate faculty and staff review.

Please notify the academic college and the College of Graduate Studies anytime the program hires new staff support or makes a change in the program director or staff. This is important to maintain contact with students and the College of Graduate Studies. The College of Graduate Studies maintains a contact list for your program and this should be kept current.

Before you send a message to a listserv, you must first be a member of the listserv and the e-mail for you on the listserv must be current. If you have more than one e-mail, the e-mail for you on the listserv must be the one you will use to send messages to the group. Please remember that a message sent to one of these listservs is seen by the entire group. If you want a message to go to one person, then you must send it to that person's individual e-mail.

To send a message to a listserv, type the e-mail of the listserv in the To area of the message.

To request changes to a listserv (change e-mail, delete e-mail, add new people, and so on), contact the listserv administrator as identified below.

College Associate Deans (those responsible for oversight of graduate education for their colleges)

• grdcord@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes college graduate coordinators, college deans, and the College of Graduate Studies administration
  
• Listserv administrators: Carreen Krapf (ckrapf@mail.ucf.edu)
  

Graduate Program or Departmental Directors

• progcord@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes graduate program directors, department chairs, and the College of Graduate Studies administration
  
• Listserv administrators: Carreen Krapf (ckrapf@mail.ucf.edu)
  

Graduate Council

• council@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes Graduate Council members and the College of Graduate Studies administration
  
• Listserv administrators: Rhonda Nelson (rlnelson@mail.ucf.edu)
  

Graduate Staff

• grdstff@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes graduate staff for all colleges and departments as well as the College of Graduate Studies administration
  
• Listserv administrator: Carreen Krapf (ckrapf@mail.ucf.edu)
  

Thesis/Dissertation Oral Examination Announcements

These listservs are used exclusively for distribution of oral examination announcements for thesis/dissertation students.

• Program directors or graduate staff send these e-mail announcements for the students.
• Listserv administrator: Nathalia Bauer (editor@mail.ucf.edu)
  

College of Arts and Humanities

• td_ah@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes CAH dean, all college graduate coordinators, department chairs, program directors and graduate staff, UCF Library, and the College of Graduate Studies administration.
  
• College graduate coordinator or staff sends announcement.
  

College of Engineering and Computer Science

• td_engr@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes CECS dean, all college graduate coordinators, department chairs, program directors and graduate staff, UCF Library, and the College of Graduate Studies administration.
  
• College graduate coordinator or staff sends announcement.
  

College of Health and Public Affairs

• td_hpa@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes COHPA dean, all college graduate coordinators, department chairs, graduate program directors and graduate staff, UCF Library, and the College of Graduate Studies administration.
  
• College graduate coordinator or staff sends announcement.
  

College of Sciences

• td_s@listserv.cc.ucf.edu
  
• Includes COS dean, all college graduate coordinators, department chairs, program directors and graduate staff, UCF Library, and the College of Graduate Studies administration.
  
• College graduate coordinator or staff sends announcement.