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Catalog Process Guide

This page provides information regarding the Undergraduate Catalog update process to faculty and staff who are responsible for reviewing catalog content for accuracy. Each year's Undergraduate Academic Catalog is published directly before Bobcat Student Orientation. This timeline ensures incoming students are aware of program requirements for the upcoming academic year, while taking into consideration the University Curriculum Council (UCC) approval timeline. 

Once published, the Academic Catalog should not be edited; this ensures students, staff, and faculty can confidently make decisions based on academic requirements as stated at a point in time for a full academic year. Students should be able to refer to the Catalog from their first academic year as a degree-seeking student (known as "catalog year") throughout their time at Ohio University to see the requirements of their academic program. With rare exception, the only edits made to a live Academic Catalog should be for updating incorrect contacts/contact information, to correct broken/incorrect website links, or to resolve minor typos. This is why it is extremely important for assigned faculty and staff to thoroughly review academic program pages, college/departmental pages, and informational pages for accuracy during the yearly editing cycle which runs from approximately early January to mid-April each year. 

Editing Process

At the beginning of the update cycle, the Catalog Editor will reach out to the main point-of-contact as designated by each college. A primary responsibility of these main points-of-contact is assigning of editors and/or reviewers from within their college. New editors are required to attend individual training via Teams with the Catalog Editor. Each college should have no more than three editors. This helps ensure consistency across program pages and other academic content. Additionally, fewer people in editing roles limits the chances for formatting errors occurring. Such errors include using copy/paste without using the special catalog interface, using the wrong heading size (or adding unneeded headings) for content, and utilizing incorrect spacing. The Academic Catalog feeds information to the www.ohio.edu/majors page. However, the /majors page will not function properly if the aforementioned issues are present in a catalog page. A college can have any number of individuals in the "reviewer" role that it wishes. These reviewers will look over program pages/content and send any needed edits to either one of the college editors, the main college point-of-contact, or the Catalog Editor for implementation in the draft catalog. 

Program Pages

Editors and reviewers should make sure to look over each academic program page within their area each cycle. The update cycle is the time to ensure both contacts and contact information (phone numbers, websites, emails, etc.) are accurate. Of equal importance, editors and reviewers should be checking the text within the "Program Overview", "Admissions", and "Opportunities Upon Graduation" sections for any needed updates. The "Program Overview" and "Opportunities Upon Graduation" sections should be at least a paragraph (four sentences minimum) each and should try to refrain from being more than three paragraphs in either section. A good example of content for each of these sections is the Project Management page. 

Content under the "Requirements" section of the page is updated based on approved curricular changes. As such, it should be checked for accuracy, but should not be edited by college personnel. Any needed changes to the program requirements should be forwarded to the Catalog Editor. The Catalog Editor is responsible for updating program requirements based on approved curricular changes. If something was overlooked, the person in this role needs to be informed to a) research and make the change based on approvals and b) to ensure there are no other impacted pages which also need corrected. If a program change has not been approved by UCC, it will not be made in the Academic Catalog. 

Program pages with UCC-approved changes will be forwarded to both the OCEAN program contact and the college's main points-of-contact for review after edits have been by the Catalog Editor. This ensures that the approved changes are formatted in a manner consistent with the wishes of the program contacts while making the points-of-contact aware of the changes. Requested edits that are either inconsistent with catalog formatting practice or contrary to the UCC-approved documentation will not be made.

College and Department Hierarchy Pages

Due to access limitations within Acalog (the Academic Catalog software employed by Ohio University), editors cannot be given direct access to these pages. It is the responsibility of the Catalog Editor for forward these pages out for review to the main catalog points-of-contact within the colleges at the beginning of the editing cycle. These points-of-contact can then forward these pages to whomever is considered responsible for ensuring accuracy of the page content. Any needed edits should be returned within the stated timelines to the Catalog Editor for implementation. The Catalog Editor will send a final draft with implemented edits before the catalog goes live to ensure changes have made as desired. An example of a Hierarchy page is the College of Business page.

Informational Pages

Informational Pages (also known as Custom Pages within Acalog) suffer the same limitation as Hierarchy pages - access cannot be given to editors within the colleges/units. Because of this, these pages will be forwarded to points-of-contact for review at the beginning of the editing cycle in January. Any needed edits should be returned to the Catalog Editor within the stated timelines. It is the responsibility of the Catalog Editor to return a final draft of these pages before the catalog goes live to make sure everything meets the expectations of the point-of-contact. An example of an Informational Page would be the Services for Students page. With this particular page, multiple units across campus are responsible for the content. The Catalog Editor will make sure (when possible) to send only the sections of a page a unit is responsible for to each point-of-contact to limit confusion.

Undergraduate Catalog Production Timeline

The information below is tentative, but provides a relatively good idea of when events will occur as part of the upcoming catalog cycle.

  • December 15, 2023 - Catalog Editor reaches out to main points-of-contact within colleges to determine needed editor/reviewer access.
  • January 3, 2024 - Academic content (program pages) will be made available to colleges and departments/schools for editing (note: course information might not be up-to-date based on approvals at this time).
  • January 26, 2024 - Courses will be imported to Acalog from OCEAN with all changes through the December UCC meeting (the catalog will be locked for edits during this process); Hierarchy pages will also be made available by this date.
  • January 31, 2024 - Informational Page content will be sent to units for review including a link to the relevant page within the current catalog.
  • March 6, 2024 - Courses will be imported to Acalog from OCEAN with all changes through the February UCC meeting (the catalog will be locked for edits during this process).
  • March 25, 2024 - Deadline for needed edits to Hierarchy and Program Pages to either be implemented or submitted to the Catalog Editor (any college editing access will be removed at this point)
  • April 1, 2024 - Deadline for needed edits to Informational Pages
  • April 10, 2024 - Catalog Editor will have Informational Page edits complete. The edited pages will start being forwarded back out for final review on this date. Additionally, any updates to information on the Faculty page need to be in to the Office of the Provost contact by this date.
  • April 16, 2024 - Last UCC Meeting
  • April 17, 2024 - All requested edits to Program Pages from the March 25 deadline (with the exception of those changes approved by UCC in April) will be finalized by the Catalog Editor by this date, if not before.
  • May 6, 2024 - Final deadline for any edits to Informational Pages based on final review copies sent out by the Catalog Editor on or before April 10
  • May 10, 2024 - Final course import to Acalog from OCEAN including those from the April 16 UCC Meeting
  • May 17, 2024 - All approved program changes will be implemented by this date by the Catalog Editor. Timelines for draft page review will be tight from the April meetings, so the Catalog Editor will advise when final edits are needed by based upon reasonable expectation. Changes to program content will not be made after May 17.
  • May 21, 2024 - Catalog Editor will publish the 2024-25 Undergraduate Catalog prior to Bobcat Student Orientation training.
  • May 28, 2024 - Bobcat Student Orientation begins.

Contact Information

If you have any questions about the information above, please reach out to Mario Cinquepalmi (cinquepm@ohio.edu). 

Please note that the Graduate Catalog is the responsibility of Graduate College. The above timelines and information pertain only to the Undergraduate Catalog. For questions about the Graduate Catalog, please reach out to grad-catalog@ohio.edu. Likewise, the Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine Catalog is handled by Taylor Noel (tnoel@ohio.edu).