Phase I of the Curriculum Management Project, implemented in January 2019, addressed the following:

• Systems and processes used to propose, modify and approve courses and program statements
• Catalog production systems and processes
• The published web-based catalog itself

The prior system for course and program statement approvals was a home-grown system built on a general-purpose web-development system. The catalog was produced and published on a general-purpose web content management system. The two systems did not talk to each other; information was manually transferred between systems. Similarly, the system for approvals did not talk to our AIS student information system. All approved courses had to be manually entered into AIS.

Early on in the project we made a decision to license one of several commercially available platforms dedicated to the higher-education market that integrate course and program approvals with catalog production and publication.

Work on an RFP began in early 2017 and the RFP was issued to vendors in April, 2017. After a round of questions and answers and on-campus demos, a vendor was selected in early October, 2017.

Implementation of the new systems began in January, 2018 and took approximately 12 months. The CAT system was rolled out to users in January, 2019, and the first catalog using the new system was published in spring 2019.

Ongoing Work

We have now used the system through two complete academic years and published two catalogs with the new system. Program and course changes for the next academic year are in progress.

While phase I has been a success, we continue to work to improve the product. Through new feature releases, and form and process improvements, we have seen year-over-year gains in efficiency, accuracy, and ease-of-use. We expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future.