IMPORTANT: Degree plans are intended to guide you in the selection of courses, but given the complexity of this process, the college does not guarantee plans will always be 100% accurate. If you have completed AP, IB, CLEP, DANTE, DLPT exams and/or college coursework from another institution, you may have already met certain requirements and may not need to take additional courses. You must talk with an advisor to have your plan reviewed and approved.
Your Initial Degree Timeline
Upon opening your plan from Your Plans page, you will be brought to your timeline, also called the Courses tab, in Degree Planner. This represents the official outline of the remaining courses needed to complete your degree in a quarter-by-quarter view.
Required Courses
Required courses will be automatically selected and slotted into the plan in order of priority according to the official degree map.
If course days, times, and location are known, Degree Planner will populate them under the course number.
If the required course's modality is not in-person, it will be listed as "Online". Some courses that are online may also have scheduled meeting times listed as well.
If course modality is unknown, only the course number will be shown.
As course information gets updated and section data becomes available, you will be prompted to select a specific section and modality the next time you come to this plan in Degree Planner. Similarly, if a selected course section gets cancelled, you will again be prompted to change your section, if available, once that updated section information is in Degree Planner.
Course Information
You can click on any specific course in your plan to see more information about it.
Course Information Breakdown: Please click the bars below to see more information.
Course Number & Title
In the upper left corner you can find the Course Number, full Course Title, the standard number of credits this course represents as well as how many total sections are listed for this course in the future.
Terms Available
You will see the current term this course is planned in with the term dropdown menu.
You can use the menu to find all the terms that have predicted future sections of this course.
You can also select a different future term from the list and move the course to that new term by clicking the Save button.
Section Information
You can find information about the current section selected, if available, and details about modality, day(s), time(s), location(s) and the dates that section is scheduled to meet.
You can edit and change your section using the Edit Section button. This will list all other section options for this course in this quarter.
Clicking the Save button will change and update the section chosen for this course on your plan.
Course Description
You can find the description of what the course is about under the section information.
Prerequisites
All the course(s) and/or grade(s) needed to register for the course will be listed with the prerequisites, as well as the course(s) that require this course as a prerequisite.
Electives
Electives, or degree requirements that allow you a choice of courses to satisfy, are indicated in Degree Planner with dotted-line boxes and are named with what kind of elective it represents.
Clicking into an elective placeholder will generate a list of courses that can be used to satisfy the elective requirement. Here is the list that represents courses that could satisfy the Multicultural Understanding elective for the Fall of 2026:
The courses are listed alphabetically by course number, although any courses that are recommended by the program will always populate to the top of the list, if available.
If the list of applicable electives is too long, however, instead of a list of courses, you will get a search bar. Below is what appears if Humanities for Winter 2027 elective placeholder is clicked instead:
In the search bar, you can search for courses by name or course number and all applicable and available courses that satisfy a Humanities course for that quarter will be listed.
You also have the option to browse by academic department by clicking the browse button.
Checking any number of departments of interest from the list will help you to narrow down the courses applicable and available for the chosen quarter.
Click View Courses to see the narrowed list, alphabetically and with recommended courses listed first.
You can also narrow down this list further by un-checking the box next to a department name and the list will automatically update with the new selections.
Clicking any course from a list will give you the same information and options as listed above in the Course Information section. Clicking the Add button will update your plan and bring you back to your timeline view.
Moving Courses in your plan
Degree Planner allows you to drag and drop any course or elective placeholder into any other quarter in your plan to help you craft a custom plan. You can also do the same using the term dropdown menu in the Course Information section.
There are a couple of exceptions to be aware of when moving courses in your plan:
Moving a course to a quarter it is not offered in
Degree Planner will only allow you to move a course into a quarter it is predicted to be available. Any attempt to move a course into a quarter it is not available in will result in a warning and the course bouncing back to its original quarter.
Moving a courses that has planned prerequisites to earlier quarters in your plan
Degree Planner will allow you to change the order of courses that have prerequisites, but it will flag the course if that change causes the course to violate its prerequisites. Placing the courses back in correct order will resolve the flagged error.
Alternate View options
Degree Planner will default the view of your plan to the academic year quarter-by-quarter timeline. However, you can change this view to a quarter-by-quarter list of courses needed by flipping the Year/Term switch.
This view comes with some advantages, like seeing a credit breakdown of selected courses to completion:
And the complete course numbers and names instead of simply course numbers:
And can expand each course to see full details by clicking the expand button in the upper corner of the course:
Note: The Terms view disables the drag and drop functionality. You must adjust courses using the term dropdown menu in the course details to change quarters.
Manually Adding Courses to your Plan
If you know the course number or name of a class you want to add to your plan or would like to explore all courses in our catalog, you can do that in Degree Planner using the + Add Course link in the top left corner of your plan timeline.
Adding a course allows you to search for a course by name or course number. Unlike electives, however, you cannot browse departments for options; searching is the only way.
This search option now contains every course available in the course catalog, some of which may not be consistently offered.
Selecting a course without scheduled or predicted availability will allow you to see a description of the course, but you will be unable to put that course into your plan.
There is an easy way to tell if a course is offered from the search list by looking at the number of offerings listed. If 0, you will not be able to place it into your plan.
Any course chosen from a searched list in this way will automatically be used by Degree Planner to meet a requirement, if possible. For example, Selecting ENGL&111: Introduction to Literature will automatically apply it to your plan as a Humanities elective, if one is still available.
Note: Any course can be added to any plan. If Degree Planner can, it will use credits planned to satisfy outstanding requirements by automatically removing matching elective placeholders. However, it will also not stop you from planning courses that cannot be used towards completion of your degree. If a chosen course you have planned can be applied to your degree, it will be listed in the Requirements tab of Degree Planner. If it is not listed and you still have the same elective placeholders as before the course was added, it likely cannot be applied to the degree. Confer with your advisor for more help planning courses needed for your specific degree.