Hello Everyone! 

I’m making up for February’s silence with a long set of updates for March! 

I know many of you are busy gathering information about student location and determining how the education provided by your institutions aligns with state and territorial licensure exam requirements. I wanted to take some time to outline the systems we have in place and those available to assist campuses in tracking student location, state authorization, professional licensure regulations, and notifications to enrolled students. There are several systems in place, and while individual campuses will still need to research the applicability of their programs and manage their specific institutional information, there are general resources available through CU-SIS—thanks especially to Sara Layton at Boulder and Phillip Curry at UIS—to assist with this process. 

While campuses are responsible for researching each program and state and for keeping the data updated in CU-SIS, some updates and changes have been made to assist with: 

Student Location:
CU-SIS has a field to capture a student’s location. At Boulder, all students are asked at the beginning of each semester to update their location as well as their other addresses (residence and mailing). Students are also prompted to update their location again during their registration period. 

Notifications:

• For currently enrolled students, direct notifications are required within 14 days if a student indicates they have moved to a state where the education provided by your institution will not prepare them for licensure. CU-SIS can send out these notifications. 
• For prospective students, direct notifications to those for whom the institution cannot determine or confirm licensure eligibility (the “no’s” and “undetermined”) will still need to be handled individually. If you haven’t already started working with your Admissions staff, let me know, and we can discuss how to set up training for them. 

Identifying Professional Licensure Programs:
We are currently working on adding a new field to the Plan table in CU-SIS to identify licensure programs. More information is coming soon, and I’ll keep you and your Registrar’s offices updated. 

Professional Licensure Program and State Data:
We’re also working on adding a table in CU-SIS to allow campuses to catalog licensure program data for easier reporting and annual/semi-annual updates (depending on your institution's process). This data, combined with students’ location information, will automate the required direct notifications to enrolled students. 

To answer a common question—what can the system do to assist with these regulations? We can update CU-SIS to provide better mechanisms for capturing student location data, prompting students to update their information, and sending out required notifications. What do individual campuses need to do? Collect and assess the information, input the data, and maintain its accuracy. While we may have similar programs, they are not identical, and each university is responsible for its own reporting and compliance. 

For those of you involved in NC-SARA data reporting and renewals, the information above will help you gather the required data and documentation. Working closely with those who handle student location and professional licensure regulations will reveal overlaps and the need for common definitions, policies, and procedures. 

I’ll be meeting with campus Registrars soon to discuss these changes since their offices will ultimately own the student data. This information is used in various ways (not just for NC-SARA or state authorization purposes), and it's important that Registrars understand how it may impact their work and processes. 

I’d also like to schedule time for those who work closely with state authorization and professional licensure regulations to see how everything works and to discuss other ways we can support one another in moving toward compliance. Sarah Layton from Boulder will join us for the first part of the meeting to review the changes and discuss the specific data you should be collecting. If you're interested in joining, please let me know when you would be available. 

In other news, I was made aware that some state police departments outside Colorado require students to have criminal justice degrees that meet state-specific requirements to be eligible for police/peace officer training. This requirement seems inconsistent, and I haven’t found much literature on it, except for a few disclosures from institutions that have had their programs approved for police/peace officer eligibility in specific states. I wouldn’t prioritize this issue for now, but it may be worth consulting with your Criminal Justice Departments to see if they have many students pursuing careers as police/peace officers or correctional officers and whether their curriculum supports that. You might consider listing the program among your licensure programs, but I would recommend using the "unable to determine" option, noting that requirements for police/peace officers and correctional officers vary by state and jurisdiction. 

Have a wonderful weekend!
Erika 

Erika G. Swain
Interim Assistant Director for State Authorization
Office of Academic Affairs
University of Colorado System
e: swaine@cu.edu
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Assistant Director for Compliance and Authorization
Office of Data Analytics | Office of Institutional Research
University of Colorado Boulder
e: Erika.Swain@colorado.edu
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o: (303) 735-8184
c: (518) 637-9785