Making Exceptions on Student Audits

Exceptions are valuable tools in advising and assisting with degree planning. Stellic allows advisors to make exceptions with just a couple of clicks. Any exception will be processed on one student only, and will not affect the audit for other students. 

You’ll need to have exceptions permissions in order to make exceptions on a student’s plan. Your program administrator will have set up permissions, but reach out to them if you need any adjustments. Note that you’ll have to provide a justification for any exception before saving.

Making an exception

To make an exception, click on the three dots next to any requirement (category or course) and then click ‘Make Exception’.

Within the course-level exception menu, you can choose from several options:

• Waive this Requirement will change the audit so that the student does not have to satisfy the requirement at all. If there are sub-categories in that category, they will also be waived.
  • Tip: If you waive the requirement, no specific course will show in the audit under this requirement. If the audit also has a unit total constraint, you may want to modify that constraint, since no units are counted under a waived requirement.
  • See note about course-level exceptions below.
• Substitution allows for a different course to satisfy the requirement. This option will basically add a course that could count for the requirement to the list of eligible courses (for this student only). The substitution will be prioritized, but the original courses could still count for the requirement. Note that if there are contradicting constraints, a course may not count even with this exception. For example, if the category also has a constraint that says, 'Only courses with grade C or better may count', then substituting a course with a D grade will not fill the requirement. 
  • You can select the course to substitute through the provided search box.
  • Making a substitution directly on a "fulfill all" category will add the substituted course to the list of required courses instead of replacing one of the listed courses. To properly substitute one course for another in a "fulfill all" requirement, make the exception directly on one of the listed courses. (See note about course-level exceptions below)
• Waive or Modify Requirement Constraint allows you to change the constraints for the category. (Not available at the course level.) You can change a primary constraint, or change or remove a secondary constraint. 
• Exclude Courses allows you to select courses that can not count for the requirement. This means that even if the courses would typically count toward the requirement's constraints, the course will no longer be allowed to fulfill the requirement.
• Move Excess Credits allows you to move a part of a course to another requirement. In other words, you can split the course into multiple pieces so that it can count for more than one requirement at a time. In order to split a course between multiple requirements you must initiate the exception on the parent requirement (in other words, the category in which the course is counting within the audit), and then choose to move excess credits of the course to another requirement. The audit will prompt you to select to which requirement you want to add credits, and how many credits you want to move. 
  • Notes about this exception: 
    • A course that is split in an audit will only be considered as multiple requirements within that audit - any other audits that the student has (universal requirements, additional programs, etc) will show the course as only one course.
    • "Move excess credits" exception should only be added to the immediate parent (in other words, the category in which the course is counting within the audit) for the course that you want to split.
    • You cannot move the entire course. You can move 0 credits, or all credits of the course to another requirement - but using the move excess credits option will leave some remnant of the course in the initial requirement, even if it's 0 credits. If you want to move the entire course out of the requirement, you must use the "substitution" exception if it's not typically allowed to count in the other requirement, or prioritize it to another section.
    • If you want to split one course into multiple requirements, initiate it all within the same split credit action. For instance: 
      • Select the course and how many credits you would like to move
      • Add another course and then select the same course and how many credits you would like to move

An important note about course-level exceptions:

Making exceptions on a course instead of a requirement can result in unintended consequences if you aren't careful about your selection. A requirement in the audit is something that the student only needs to take one time - however, a course is something that may be used multiple times in a student's audit(s) depending on the number of programs and requirements they need. Therefore, making an exception directly on a category requirement is the safest option to ensure that the exception that you're making only applies to that requirement.

However, what happens if you need to make an exception on a required course? To clarify, let's look at this example:

Here we have a Mechanical Engineering program, and the first requirement is a category that holds multiple courses. So Mathematical & Natural Sciences is the requirement that needs to be taken, and within it are multiple required courses. If you wanted to make an exception on the overall requirement, you would click on the three-dot menu next to the requirement's title. 

However, in some cases you will want to make an exception on just ONE of these courses - and within a fulfill-all requirement, each course is its own requirement since students are required to take all of them. In order to do this, you will need to click on the three-dot menu next to the course title: 

 When making an exception on a course-level requirement, you will need to choose whether you want the exception to occur on just this requirement, or on all requirements that list this course. In other words - if this student is receiving an exception for Calculus 1, should it apply to just the Mathematics & Natural Sciences requirement of Calculus 1, or should this exception apply anywhere that requires this course? 

Option 1: Apply an exception to ALL places the course appears as a requirement

By default, the box for applying the exception to ALL places that this course appears in students audit requirements is checked. In other words, if Calculus 1 is a requirement both for the student's major and one of the student's minors, this substitution we are using in the example will apply to both audits.

When leaving the box checked, the above exception appears in the major audit where we made the exception:

AND it also appears in the student's minor, where this course was also required: 

Option 2: Apply an exception to only ONE instance of the course requirement

Let's try the same exception again, but we'll uncheck the box that was checked above. So here we will make a substitution for MATH-0051 to count instead of MATH-0032 in the student's Mathematics & Natural Sciences requirement under their major:

Here's how it appears in the major: 

However, since we unchecked the box in the exception menu, meaning that the exception will only apply to the requirement where the exception was made - when we view the MATH-0032 requirement in the student's minor, it is still requiring MATH-0032.

Hopefully these examples have helped to illuminate the importance of ensuring that you are making the correct choice when making a course-level exception. 

Other types of exceptions:

At the requirement category level you also have several additional options besides ‘make an exception’:

• Manually pick courses will allow you to choose which course should fulfill the requirement, even if the course does not fit the requirement constraints. For instance, a course with a grade of C could count even if the constraint only allows B or higher. If you manually pick a course, that becomes the only course that can fill the constraint. In essence, this constraint allows you total control over the requirement, and you manually choose any and all classes that will be used to fill it. 
  • Tip: You can pick more then one course to manually satisfy a requirement, even if one course would have originally satisfied the constraints.
  • Manually pick overrides any rules for the requirement - if the constraint requires you to take 5 courses, but you manually pick only one course, the requirement will show as fulfilled. Use this exception sparingly and only when needed!
• Manually Satisfy Requirement will only appear if the ‘may only be manually satisfied by an institution’ constraint has been used. This allows advisors and admins to complete tricky or sensitive requirements manually and individually.

You can see any exceptions, prioritizations, or manually satisfied requirements in a students audit, and if you have permissions you can undo (remove) them.