Another Guide publication for the books

June marked the official publication of the 2023-2024 edition of Guide. This edition is the culmination of the work that departmental and school/college representatives, academic planners, faculty, and governance bodies have been working toward all year. Over 800 Lumen Programs and Structures updates were processed and implemented in this catalog cycle. It is important to recognize our Guide Coordinators and  Lumenaries on campus. This publication truly takes a team effort and the Office of the Registrar wholeheartedly appreciates their meticulous review of proposals and their efforts at moving proposals through the Lumen system. Highlighted changes 
  • For the first time, the Law School, School of Medicine and Public Health, School of Pharmacy, and Veterinary Medicine professional programs are included in Guide. 
  • Herculean efforts have been made to improve the accessibility of our content. The Office of the Registrar and Office of Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research collaborated with the Center for User Experience and project manager, Alison Caffrey from DoIT Academic Technology, to improve accessibility, layout, and to standardize content to make Guide a more user-friendly site for all.
  • Following the UW–Madison font transition, Guide is now using the updated official brand font.
Integration with other processes Our DARS team – Sara Arnsdorf, Matt Evans, and Sharon Sumner – processed 619 encoding changes over five months, making the process look easy, even while down one encoder due to Dave Abelman’s retirement. During this editing cycle, our Course Specialist – Jess Baran – processed 171 course proposals effective Summer 2023, 253 course proposals effective fall 2023, and 86 course proposals effective spring 2024 and beyond. And finally, Ellen Clark and Jen Brown touched all 1600+ Guide pages, with Ellen doing the copy-editing and Jen making sure that all integration points were set up correctly. To quote the estimable Elaine Klein, “And shouts of joy rang throughout the land!  HUZZAH!!!! Congratulations!”