Checklist for Launching and Implementing New Programs

Once your new master's degree program has been approved by the UNF Board of Trustees—or once your new doctoral program has been approved by the State of Florida Board of Governors—you will want to address all of the steps listed below to launch your new program. Some of these steps should be addressed concurrently; please do not take this to be a sequential list.

(1) Have you established a timetable for launching/implementing your new degree? Check with both your college dean and the graduate dean.

(2) Does your program require either notification of or approval from SACS? Check with UNF's SACS Liaison, Shawn Brayton.

(3) We need program codes to allow the applications of those who apply for your program to be processed appropriately. Check with Shawn Brayton and Grad School Assistant Director Keith Martin.

(4) Do we have clear admission criteria and application deadlines? Check with Keith Martin.

(5) Do we know who the Graduate Program Director (or Coordinator) will be? The Grad School will need this information as early as possible. Your GPD will need to be briefed on her/his duties and included in all listings and email address lists of GPDs. If this is your department's only graduate program, your GPD (or in very rare cases another member of the department) will need to become a member of the Graduate Council.

(6) Are all those in your department—and elsewhere in the university—who will teach the graduate level courses in your new program graduate faculty? If not, check with the gradute dean. Note: graduate faculty must have earned terminal degrees in the field (or a closely related field) in which they will offer graduate instruction or serve on thesis/dissertation committees.

(7) Have you created the APC forms necessary to construct the program—APC1 forms for new courses; APC3 form for actually creating the program?

(8) Do you know the APC deadlines? Faculty Governance Process: Your APC forms will need to go to your department's curriculum committee, your college's curriculum committee, (don't forget that you will need the signatures of all those deans affected, including the graduate dean), the APC (Academic Programs Committee), and finally the Faculty Association. APC deadlines are strict, so you need to plan to meet them.

(9) Have you spoken with your college's associate dean and with the graduate dean about student financial support -- scholarship funds, assistantship funds, and tuition waiver authority?

(10) We need publicity. UNF's Public Relations office will help; check with Sharon Ashton. The Grad School will include the new program in all of its electronic and print media, will create a new Fact Sheet for the program, and may create a new brochure for the program. Check with Keith Martin on these items.

(11) Have you planned for publicizing the program yourself? Your New Degree Program Proposal speaks to your potential population of students. You will need to figure out how to contact them and invite them to apply. You may want to create a departmental brochure and flyers for your new program; you may want to construct a mailing campaign, and/or an e-mailing campaign, to get the word out. You will certainly want to make you're your new degree is featured prominently in your department's—and perhaps your college's—website. Your first and second year success will be tied in part to how dynamic your department is in publicizing your new program.