New degree planner launching

Incoming freshman will have a new way to plan their education this August with the launch of IU’s degree mapping program.

The Indiana state legislator mandated all public universities provide a map for all Indiana residents who will attend a state-assisted university.

“It’s impractical for IU to distinguish between doing this for Hoosiers and doing this for out-of-state students, so we will do it for everybody,” said Herb Terry, president of the Bloomington Faculty Council.

IU already offers degree maps for most majors, said Dennis Groth, interim vice president for undergraduate education.

“In many ways they have this information now available, but they don’t have it in exactly the form the general assembly required,” Terry said.

There will be a map for every major for all seven of IU’s campuses. And eventually, all minors and certificates will be mapped out as well, Terry said.

Groth said IU has taken an innovative approach to the legislation’s mandate.

“We saw this as an opportunity to embed our values in our solution to this,” Groth said.

IU-Bloomington already has the highest on-time completion rate in the state for public institutions, Groth said.

“We’re already doing well,” he said. “We can improve, though. We can have more students finish and finish on time. And we can have more students retained to graduation as well.”

The faculty will still define the required classes in the curriculum, and students will still be able to choose their own paths, he said.

“You can’t map every possible way to fulfill our requirements,” Terry said.

One concern of the faculty is that this new system will keep students from realizing they can take a different route to graduation, Terry said.

“And I think the other thing that some faculty is concerned about is yes, of course, we want students to graduate in a timely fashion,” he said. “But ultimately I think it’s more important that the student follows the degree that, in their career, is best for them.”

Groth said the system will be flexible to allow for the changing students’ paths, and will hopefully be able to catch a student’s setback in terms of taking, or not taking, required courses before it even happens.

“We want you to, as a student, always be the owner of your destiny,” he said. “That means that we want you to make choices. You currently make choices, but we want your choices to be informed by information, and that information will be what’s implemented in your iGPS.”

Groth said iGPS will build on tools that are already in place for students, such as the OneStart course planner and schedule builder. All are tools to help students plan their time at IU well and far in advance of graduation.

“You don’t always stumble into success,” Groth said. “It’s something that you’ve thought about, that you’re intentional about.”