Creating a Degree Plan
Key Takeaway
If you’re planning an individualized degree, you need two credits of Educational Planning which result in a degree plan and a rationale essay explaining that plan in the context of the Knowledge Foundations for your degree.
You will discuss degree design with your mentor/advisor as part of your Educational Planning course.
Two Main Considerations for a Degree Plan
There are two main considerations for a degree plan:
- credit amount and credit-related requirements
- conceptual structure and design of a degree
Credit Requirements for SUNY Empire Degrees
Look at SUNY Empire’s page on Undergraduate Degree Requirements. There you’ll see a useful chart that lets you know the credits and types of credits you need for your type of degree:
All Degrees
Total credits – 64 for an associate degree, 124 for a bachelor’s degree
Maximum Advanced Standing – the maximum number of credits you can transfer in from a combination of previous college courses (grades C or above) and credit for prior learning
Minimum Liberal Studies – course credit that deals with theory; determines your type of degree (A.A., A.S., B.A., B.S., B.P.S.)
Minimum SUNY General Education credits – 30 for all degrees, with certain required areas of general education and some choice for other areas
Bachelor Degrees
Minimum Advanced-Level in Concentration – how many junior-senior level credits you need in your concentration if you are pursuing a bachelor’s degree (minimum 24 for most degrees)
Minimum Advanced-Level in Program – how many junior-senior level credits you need overall in your degree – a minimum of 45 (so at least 24 in your concentration and the other 21 anywhere in the degree)
Keep these credit requirements in mind as you progress with your coursework and plan your degree, as they are non-negotiable. You have to fulfill these credit requirements in order to get your degree.
However…
A degree is more than just the required number of credits.
A degree has to have some over-arching plan.
Even though each degree has different pieces, all of those pieces have to make sense together.
Pieces of a degree include such things as general education courses, courses that fulfill knowledge foundations, elective courses, courses that support skill development, etc.
Read the information below about the structure and design of a university degree, which should have coherence and connection.
Structure & Design of a University Degree
Structure and design are key concepts in planning a degree. Just as in a kaleidoscope or a puzzle, the pieces of an academic degree need to work together to show a pattern of learning, because a degree is more than just a collection of individual courses.
A university degree means that you know certain information and have certain skills but, more importantly, that you have consciously considered relationships among skills and information and have experienced some learning that “makes sense” as a whole.
The Association of American Colleges publication on The Challenge of Connecting Learning talks about degree structure and design. Both ESU and the Association of American Colleges stress coherence and connection as key aspects of college degrees, ways that help degrees “make sense” as a whole.
Degree Design – Ways of Creating Coherence & Connection
Work Consistently with Knowledge Foundations
The knowledge foundations listed for your degree provide a structure for developing coherence in a degree.
You can see the knowledge foundations required for your degree by choosing your degree on ESU’s Individualized Degree Design page and opening the Program Details tab.
And you can see an example of how to choose courses to create an individualized degree using knowledge foundations in the example of the history degree on the previous page, Investigating Required Academic Knowledge Foundations.
Key Takeaway – Knowledge Foundations
Knowledge foundations are key when planning a degree. You need to consult them repeatedly to make sure that you are fulfilling each required foundation, either through the pre-approved courses listed under the foundation, or with a choice of your own that directly addresses the requirement.
You can fulfill knowledge foundations with transfer credit from other colleges and/or credit for prior learning as well, as long as those sources directly address the knowledge foundation requirement.
Work with your Mentor/Advisor
You and your mentor/advisor also work at developing coherence in an individualized degree through your course choices, creating linkages as you investigate relationships among your courses and your goals, skills, and professional needs.
Consider Courses that provide Breadth within the focus of your Degree
Courses that provide breadth can give you different perspectives on the focus of your degree; they also contribute to degree design. For example, if you’re developing a degree plan in Cultural Studies with a concentration in Communication, it may be useful to include a Technical Writing course even though your main focus is digital communication. Technical Writing addresses from a different perspective the knowledge, investigative methods, and supportive studies that academics and professionals in the digital communication field need to know. Realize that courses that provide breadth for your degree focus contribute to the overall conceptual structure or pattern of your degree.
Consider Connections between Concentration and General Education Courses
Pursue logical connections among some of the courses in your concentration with general education and/or elective courses in your degree.
For example, degrees with concentrations in human services often include courses in psychology and sociology so a human services professional can better understand societal influences on people.
Degrees with concentrations in literature often include studies in history to provide context for understanding the literature of a certain time period.
Degrees with concentrations in business often include courses in sociology and communications to provide better understanding of how to communicate with individuals and groups.
Consider a Beginning, Middle, and End
A degree needs to include components that introduce you to the various aspects and history of a field, as well as courses designed to teach the ways of asking and answering questions – the ways of thinking critically – that the field employs.
A bachelor’s degree with a concentration may have courses that show:
- a beginning – introductory courses in which you learn the vocabulary and main concepts of a field
- a middle – courses in which you learn the methodologies and applications used by practitioners in the field
- an end – chances to blend and apply knowledge and reflect on overall learning in the field
Summary – Degree Design
Ask yourself the following questions to help you make conscious choices about how the pieces of your degree fit together:
- How do certain courses in the degree link with, support, and/or enhance one another (e.g., do some pieces of your general learning relate to and enhance studies in your concentration?)
- Is there an overall structure or design to your degree, a certain focus, concentration, or line of inquiry?
- How have you addressed progression, or movement from introductory- to advanced-level coursework, especially if you are designing a concentration for a bachelor’s degree?
Analyze your Choices
As you plan your whole degree, there’s another step to the process beyond choosing courses. You need to analyze your course choices in terms of credits and degree design, so you can adjust them as needed.
Example – Analyzing Credits & Degree Design
You are planning a degree in Community & Human Services with a concentration in disability services, with a goal of becoming a caseworker and an advocate. Even though you’ve been working as a health care aide for the past five years, you are new to higher education and have mostly taken courses to fulfill general education requirements up to this point. You know that you need to fulfill the knowledge foundations for your degree through course work.
You and your mentor work have worked together to choose courses related to disability services to fulfill knowledge foundations. You chose the following:
As you analyze your choices and see where you are in terms of credits, you see that you do not yet have 24 advanced-level credits in your concentration (courses numbered 3000 and above). So you know you’ll need to add more advanced courses.
As you look at what you might add to get to the required 24 credit minimum of advanced-level courses, you consider degree design, especially courses that can widen the focus of your degree and course linkages between your concentration and general education.
You decide to add:
- DISB 3025 Psychosocial Impact of Illness and Disability in order to get a wider perspective on how disability affects the family and for additional advanced-level credit
- DISB 4010 Assessment & Evaluation of Disabilities in order to delve deeper into identifying disabilities in order to make appropriate decisions for clients and for additional advanced-level credit.
- BIOL 1006 Geonomics and You to bring in a natural science general education course that will provide another perspective on disabilities by investigating genetic and hereditary disorders.
- DIGA 3040 Digital Storytelling to bring in a communications general education course that may be useful in the future, since it deals with creating a digital narrative dealing with a social issue or cause.
Even though this example does not cover every degree requirement, it shows the type of thinking and analysis you do when you’re putting all of the pieces together in a degree plan, in order to comply with credit requirements and to a create coherent and useful degree design.
Degree Planning Tools
There are two tools that you can use to keep a running list of credit amounts, how you have fulfilled SUNY Empire Knowledge Foundations for your degree, and SUNY General Education requirements.
Consult with your mentor/advisor about which one to use.
You can get to both of these tools through your student home page:
- Degree Works – click on the Degree Works tile
- DPPlanner – click on the Degree Planning (Undergraduate) tile > DPPlanner
These tools work in slightly different ways.
Degree Works
Degree Works uses a list and categories format to create a status report and populates that list by drawing from course registration data.
For example, Degree Works lists general education areas and will check off those you have fulfilled. It does the same thing with categories such as educational planning, advanced-level courses for a bachelor’s degree, liberal credit, and more.
For individualized degrees, Degree Works maintains one running list based on the courses you have completed. It does not list pending courses until you have an approved degree plan.
DPPlanner
DPPlanner requires that courses be input; it does not draw from registration data. As you input course names, information about course level, liberal credit, and general education also gets added automatically, from the course description attributes.
DPPlanner allows you to separate your courses into two columns, concentration and general learning. It allows you to put pending courses into the tool. It adds totals for course credits, advanced and liberal credits, and general education.
DPPLanner also allows for multiple scenarios – you can create two or three or more versions of a pending degree in DPPlanner, if you want to compare them.
Consult with your mentor/advisor about which tool/s to use as you evolve and create a degree plan in your educational planning course.
To create a degree plan, you need to work with:
- your mentor/advisor
- the knowledge foundations for your degree in order to make sure you are fulfilling them
- SUNY General Education requirements
The important concept is that even though you have knowledge foundations and tools that count credits and list general education requirements, your work with your mentor/advisor will help you develop insights and make informed choices. You work together to create a coherent degree.
