The segments below give a general overview of the five petition types available through the workflow.
Add Course(s) to an Area
The Add Courses petition type is intended to be used to add courses from a student’s record to a requirement. This petition type is good for situations in which a course is being used to fulfill a requirement, but is not intended to replace any particular UCSB course that is already approved to count towards the requirement. This may be the only option for petitioning elective requirements where a student is allowed to choose one or more courses from a large set of options.
What this petition type does
The courses specified from the student record in the ‘Select Courses’ field are added to the list of courses which may apply to the requirement selected in the ‘Requirement’ field.
What this petition doesn’t do
It cannot change the number of courses applied.
E.g. if you want to use 2 courses from the student record to satisfy 3 required courses, this petition cannot make that kind of adjustment. (See ‘Substitute a Course’)
It cannot alter the unit value of the course being added (Use Other type).
E.g. if a transfer course was granted 6 units and you only want 4 units to apply to the requirement, this petition cannot handle the request
It cannot apply a course to multiple areas/split a course between sub-requirements. (Use Other type)
It cannot override a unit or course limitation.
E.g. A limitation that only 4 units of 199 coursework apply to the major requirements or a limitation that only 8 units from a particular supercourse apply to the major requirements.
It cannot override the rejection of a course by a requirement.
E.g. the Spanish major requirements specifically exclude SPAN 195 and 196 from applying to area E of the upper division. This course rejection is coded into DARS and can only be overridden by an Other petition.
Additional notes
This petition type is never viewed by anyone in the Office of the Registrar and is fed into uAchieve exactly as entered.
This petition does not ‘force’ the course selected to apply to the requirement specified. It simply informs uAchieve that it may use the course(s) towards the requirement area. If the course may also be used to satisfy a different requirement area, uAchieve will apply the course to the first requirement it encounters that needs it.
Substitute a Course within an Area
The Substitute Courses petition type is intended for situations in which you would like to apply courses from the student record as substitutes for specific courses in the degree requirements.
This petition type is able to adjust for differences between the number of courses being applied from the student’s record and the number of courses to be satisfied in the degree requirements. It also ensures that a particular course not be counted twice if a petition is filed and the student subsequently completes the substituted UCSB course.
What this petition type does
The courses specified from the student record and the courses from the degree requirement are noted in uAchieve. If the number of courses applied from the student record is not equal to the number of courses being substituted in the requirement, the exception adjusts the number of courses required by the requirement to compensate for the difference.
What this petition type does not do
It cannot split courses between different sub-requirements.
It cannot apply partial units from a course toward the requirement.
Additional Notes
This petition type is never viewed by anyone in the Office of the Registrar and is fed into uAchieve exactly as entered.
This petition does not ‘force’ the course(s) selected to apply to the requirement specified. It simply informs uAchieve that it may use the course(s) towards the requirement area. If the course may also be used for a different requirement area, uAchieve will apply the course to the first requirement it encounters that needs it. If an adjustment to the number of required courses is included on the exception in uAchieve, it is applied even if one or more courses on the exception were applied to a different requirement.
Universal Equivalency
This is the only petition type related to the courses offered by the department, not to major requirements. The Universal Equivalency petition allows a department to identify transfer courses as being direct equivalents to one of their department’s courses. This can only be done for a 1-to-1 equivalence where one transfer course is equivalent to one UCSB course. This exception is student specific and does not affect any other students that may have taken the same course.
These petitions are also used during pre-requisite checking when students are registering for courses. This means that a ‘Y Screen’ entry does not need to be made in STAR for courses that have a Universal Equivalency petition.
What this petition does
This exception forces the uAchieve system to treat the course on the student’s record as if it were the specified UCSB course. This course is then automatically applied to any requirement that would accept the UCSB course, regardless of major or college.
What this petition type does not do
It cannot accept any combinations of courses other than a 1-to-1 equivalent. The uAchieve articulation process run by Admissions can articulate courses in other combinations, but this petition cannot.
It will not override any requirements that are specifically encoded to exclude transferred equivalents of UCSB courses (e.g. the Special Subject Area Writing requirement).
Additional Notes
This petition type is only reviewed by Academic Services unit when the ‘Credit Adjustment Needed’ box is checked.
A credit adjustment may be needed if the course equivalent would create a situation where duplication or partial duplication of course credit would exist on the student’s record.
An example would be if the Psychology department were verifying that a pre-matriculation transfer course was equivalent to PSY 5, but the student had subsequently taken PSTAT 5A at UCSB. If the petition were put through and nothing was done about the PSTAT 5A credit, it would result in a situation where SREG/STAR would retain units for both courses (it doesn’t know about these petitions), but any major progress checks would remove credit for the PSTAT 5A course.
One drawback is that uAchieve ceases to recognize the course by its original name and any other petitions (e.g. GE exceptions entered by Admissions) entered for this course may need to be adjusted.
Advisor Approval
This petition type is usually used in situations where satisfaction of a requirement is not related to a specific course on the student’s record. This is primarily used by the colleges for requirements like Academic Residency or waiver of the American History & Institutions requirement. Some academic departments might use this petition if their major progress checks include a requirement that could be satisfied based on verification from the advisor (e.g. department approval of major electives, language requirements, etc.).
What this petition does
This petition either adds information to the student’s record to help the audit determine which version of a requirement to enforce or it adds a ‘course’ which satisfies the requirement.
Other
This petition type is intended for anything that is not covered by the previous types and would require that an exception be manually added to uAchieve by the Academic Services unit in the Office of the Registrar.
When to use this petition
If a course needs to be split to apply to more than one sub-requirement.
If only a portion of the units awarded for a course may be applied to the requirement.
If the request is to override a limitation on the number of units of a particular course or super-course that may be applied to the major.
If a course that had been rejected (excluded) from a particular requirement, but needs to be applied in this one case.
A request to change a major catalog year for a current major.
Any other request that is particular to a student’s requirements but isn’t covered by one of the other petition types.
