Happy New Year my friends!

It has been a bit of a rough start for Boulder but I hope you are all fairing well and had some excellent/relaxing time away from work!

By now you should have received either a notification from NC-SARA indicating your renewal for the period of March 2022-March 2023 or a request for additional information due to non-compliance. In either case, make sure you follow your campus' records retention policy with filing & retaining your communications from NC-SARA. If you have questions or need any assistance with information/questions you received from NC-SARA or the State Portal Entity, please do not hesitate to contact me. 

Looking a head to the next 11mos. -

• Professional Licensure 2.0 - What else, beyond what is required, can you provide your current and prospective students regarding professional licensure programs? I know I'm going to be spending the next couple months exploring the degrees in education that Boulder offers, CO teacher licensure and reciprocity. I got the idea from a presentation offered by the State Authorization team at Boston University. They give their students, when/where applicable, information on their options for obtaining licensure in some states/fields. See the attached picture of the general BU disclosure for their MA in Art Education and applicability for CO as well as information on gettng licensed via reciprocity. Granted, this is a private university on the east coast where there's no threshold on number of in/out of state students and is in a city that is about a horse ride away from other states and major cities, but giving the students the information on what could be, or an alternative pathway to licensure is a great marketing or business move that could certainly be coordinated with Admissions.
• Coursera (or other OPMs) & SARA - The low rumbles are gettng louder when it comes to state authorization and courses/programs offered via Coursera and other OPMs. For the longest time, because many of the offerings on these platforms are of the non-credit variety, the education being offered seemed to have been ignored when it came to compliance requirements. But they really should not have been. These courses and programs fall under our banners and thus the students should receive all the required disclosures and notifications as any other student on our campus when it comes to things like student complaints, state authorization, and the like. I know that part of the coming year for me will involve talking with representatives at Coursera and figuring out how best to make sure Boulder is able to comply with regulations and SARA polices when it comes to these courses & programs (and doing it without having to create new processes or procedures).
• Providing educaAon to students located overseas - I can honestly say that this is not an area that I know a ton about, but I do know *just enough* to be dangerous. Which is why I'm excited to see that WCET-SAN is offering a webinar on the topic on February 16th. There's no international compact we can belong to like SARA, and that means that there are international tax considerations, there may be required permissions from another country's department of state or education, there are some countries we can't (due to sanctions) deliver some (online) programs in (e.g. no engineering in Iran). There are universities that will not admit students located overseas due to the amount of legal and financial work necessary. While this may go beyond what you think falls in to our jobs when you think of "state" authorization, it is something that is becoming increasingly more common. Definitely something I know I'll be keeping my eye on this year

In case you missed it -

Isakson & Roe update - Deadline for Veterans Benefits Flexibilities Extended: H.R.5545 - REMOTE Act, provides full MHA though June 1, 2022, for students who are continuing to participate in their courses solely by distance learning by reason of emergency and health related situations while utilizing GI Bill Benefits. This flexibility, to allow for full MHA rather than the reduced rate for students participating in courses solely online, was set to expire December 21, 2021. For more information on this issue you may wish to review: Update on Issues Affecting Veterans Benefits from November 11, 2021.

Erika G. Swain
Interim Assistant Director for State Authorization
Office of Academic Affairs
University of Colorado System