Degree Explorer
Open Explore > Degree Explorer. Choose one degree, your math starting course, and your English starting course. A semester board immediately shows courses and course groups. The latest 2026–2027 catalog examples use one interface:
- Computer Science B.S. and Biology B.S.
- History B.A. (U.S. survey example) and Philosophy B.A. (general major).
- Business Administration B.B.A. (common core and General Management electives).
- Anthropology B.A. (general major with Archaeology and Sociocultural/Linguistic cores).
- Physics B.S. (General Physics concentration).
These are selected routes, not every concentration or alternative in each program.
Read the semester board
Each column is a semester. Tile color shows how much prerequisite planning a course needs: green means zero shown prerequisite courses, yellow one or two, and red three or more, counting earlier courses throughout the chain. Gray course choices still need their specific prerequisites checked. Category labels identify major, supporting, English and preparation courses. A paired lecture and lab share a tile. Light tiles reserve workload for Gen Ed, a minor where required, or other requirements.
Early Gen Ed / lower-level elective allowances occupy course-sized slots at the top of the board, above the aligned math, writing and program sequences. Click one to browse typical fall or spring offerings, with course titles, Gen Ed areas, credits, seats and first-day enrollments. Choose First semester to set a fall or spring start; semester labels and suggestions follow that choice. Filter the table by area, course or campus. Each row shows the latest matching season at its campus, college and session, plus its seasonal offering frequency.
Small remainders say Credits left to allocate. They are part of the budget, not complete courses. A choice marked Needs more credits requires moving credits from another slot; the planner still caps semesters at 16 credits. Suggestions are historical examples from CEDAR’s Gen Ed list, not an audit of what you still need or advice tailored to your major. Courses already represented by entry routes, requirements and enumerated choices are excluded. Check current Gen Ed approval, prerequisites and college/major restrictions before choosing.
Related courses line up horizontally: follow English composition, the math sequence, or a program’s course groups across semesters. Gaps keep these rows aligned, and concurrent courses use separate rows. Sharing a row means the courses are related; arrows show their actual prerequisite connections.
Named course sets show Choose 1 of 3 courses, for example, followed by PHIL 333, PHIL 334, PHIL 336. Longer lists end with an ellipsis when they exceed the tile’s three-line preview. Open the popup for every option’s full title, credits and current catalog link. The Philosophy example shows all five choice categories; it keeps PHIL 2210 as the individually required course. Logic’s alternatives differ in credits and course level, so that tile says Level varies and its popup explains the three-credit planning allowance.
Computer Science’s science cards share a 14-credit minimum, including two lectures with their labs. The example reserves four slots: 4 + 4 + 3 + 3. The first two cards preview eleven lecture/lab or combined-course options; their popups list all nineteen individual courses and labs, keeping each pair together. The other slots list the eleven lecture/combined choices. Choose different courses for the four slots. Advanced-science alternatives and higher-credit selections still need review; a lab-free fifth course does not replace required labs.
The general planning pattern puts Gen Ed and lower-level foundations in years 1–2 and upper-level courses in semester 5 or later. Upper-level course groups follow the same rule. Early allowances say Gen Ed / lower-level electives; later ones say Upper-level / minor / electives. These are planning spaces, not verified Gen Ed or upper-division credit totals. Prerequisites and the 16-credit ceiling still apply, so a sequence can extend the plan.
Every tile shows its prerequisite count and how many later courses it leads to. Entry courses identify the chain they start. These numbers describe the selected route after placement, not difficulty or eligibility to register.
A purple diamond marks a different kind of condition. HIST 491 says 2+ upper-level History courses and Department permission, rather than claiming two particular electives are prerequisites. Selecting it outlines all qualifying options; any two completed upper-level History courses can meet the coursework condition. Within a course set, prerequisites are attached to the individual option: PHIL 358’s one-prior-course rule does not apply to every ethics option.
Suggested Gen Ed tiles have a lighter surface and dashed border. The specific course is one option for a general requirement. Named program requirements stay solid: MATH 1350 is a suggestion for History and a required Phase I course in Business. The label, as well as the styling, makes the difference visible.
Hover over a course to see its prerequisite/corequisite chain and the courses that depend on it. Blue lines lead into it; purple lines lead out. Keyboard focus gives the same preview, and Escape dismisses it. Moving away restores the last clicked chain. Coursework conditions and unresolved choices keep their distinct labels instead of acquiring misleading prerequisite arrows.
Click a course (or press Enter/Space) to open enrollment history and first-day seats first. Touch users can tap directly. Catalog links stay at the top, with full course and requirement details below the table in the same popup. It states why the course is present, locates the requirement in the degree program or a prerequisite section, and quotes a short catalog excerpt. Separate links open Degree requirements and the Course description. The source record identifies the catalog year, retrieval date and review status. Solid connections mean earlier completion; dashed connections allow earlier or concurrent study. Some course groups represent choices that still need their own prerequisites checked. Placement beside another course alone is not a prerequisite or corequisite claim.
The popup also shows Offering history & first-day seats in one standard CEDAR table: seats offered, filled at first class day, first-day fill percentage, pressure/coverage, and seasonal frequency. Filter Course or Campus to follow one component over time. Lecture/lab, teaching campuses, colleges and parts of term stay separate. Not offered means the campus has source data for that term but no active offering of the course; Source unavailable is a missing term.
Near full means at least 90% first-day fill. First-day enrollment uses dated class-list statuses and each section’s start date. Missing dates remain unavailable; census and ever-registered counts are not substituted. Banner retains only the current status date, so late additions later dropped can overstate the reconstruction. It is not a frozen first-day roster. Missing source matches, implausible capacity and counts below 10 are unscored; small counts are suppressed. The popup’s methodology explains the limits. Frequency uses only source-covered terms in the last three seasonal cycles through settled enrollment. History does not guarantee future offerings or seats. New course identifiers are not equated with older numbers. Enumerated alternatives appear as separate course histories; their seats are not combined. Other course groups need a specific selection. Press Escape or Back to roadmap to close the popup.
For Computer Science, Biology and Physics, starting with Intermediate Algebra adds MATH 1215 → MATH 1220 → MATH 1250 → MATH 1512. Starting further along removes the preparation already satisfied by placement. The example uses the combined trigonometry/precalculus route; MATH 1230 plus MATH 1240 is another calculus entry route. Biology’s example uses MATH 1512; its MATH 1430 option is not yet interactive.
History, Philosophy and Anthropology show MATH 1350 as an illustrative Gen Ed math choice, rather than a named major requirement. Business explicitly requires MATH 1350 in Phase I. These statistics routes add only MATH 1215 when starting with Intermediate Algebra; they do not add calculus. Switching programs preserves the selected math and English starting points and updates the course route. BCIS 1110 in Business lists completed math coursework as a prerequisite; test placement alone is not confirmed to satisfy it. The popup keeps that condition visible.
English can begin with Composition I, the two-semester stretch sequence, or Composition II. Students who have completed both composition requirements can remove those tiles and subtract the six completed credits from the remaining workload. Placement alone does not award prior credit. These selections describe a scenario; they do not determine placement from a transcript or test score.
Dependent courses move after their prerequisites. Unrelated coursework remains available. The planner aims for the usual 15-credit load and never proposes more than 16 credits, including other degree work. This example adds preparation to its degree-credit planning target; reviewed overlap or transfer credit may reduce the estimate. Other degree allowances fill toward 15 first, then use 16 when needed. The plan adds semesters when the workload or sequence requires them. These allowances are not a completed degree audit. On smaller screens, scroll within the board to see later semesters.
This is an illustrative plan, not a graduation guarantee. Semester positions are authored planning suggestions; prerequisites come from selected catalog routes. Admission restrictions remain in course details, and eligibility is not computed. Specific electives, science alternatives, course offerings, transfer credit, waivers and all university/college requirements need review. Biology’s catalog totals and breadth wording still need reconciliation. Current CSCI identifiers are not automatically equated with historical CS courses.
Business’s common-core and elective totals conflict within its page, and its concentration flag conflicts with the stated General Management option. Anthropology also explicitly permits a general major despite its concentration flag. Its selected course combination totals 37 major credits against the 36-credit minimum. Physics’s structured General Physics concentration has 21 credits, while introductory text says 18. These conflicts and selections remain in the workload/source notes.
Observed course paths
Open Pathways > Course paths. Define the student population with the shared Pathways controls, choose delivery campuses and enrolled-term count, and click Show course paths. This is a separate descriptive view of what students actually take. Changing the population clears its old result.
Term one is first observed undergraduate enrollment, anchored before campus filtering. Summer is included; gaps do not advance this enrolled-term clock. The report stops at settled enrollment and respects the population’s leaving window. Earlier coursework can appear before major declaration. The scope note reports left-boundary history, unmapped coursework and suppressed cells.
Each cell shows the share of students participating at that campus and enrolled term who take a kind of coursework. Registered students and late drops count; early drops and waitlists do not. Multiple courses in one group count the student once. Groups can occur together, so shares need not sum to 100%. Positive cells require 10 students and campus/term denominators require 20. Course details use the same guards. Student identifiers do not enter the browser payload.
These groups describe coursework, not Gen Ed eligibility or completion. This view does not infer individual transition paths or impose today’s degree rules on historical students. Neither prototype changes enrollment forecasts.
See the rules behind the picture
Choose Rules behind this plan above the roadmap, or open Admin > Data & Usage > Catalog Review > Visualization rules. Generated from the same course lists and graph as the picture, this list shows readable requirements, catalog wording and links, and how course placement and credit loads are determined. CEDAR planning preferences are labeled separately. No individual approvals are needed to read this explanation.
Health examples include Population Health, Medical Laboratory Sciences, Nursing (Freshman Direct Entry) and Radiologic Sciences (Nuclear Medicine). These are specific route examples; clinical admission, placements and cohort calendars need program advising. Unknown courses and conflicting totals remain visible.
Gen Ed and elective space
A box named Gen Ed · [area] earmarks an area still missing from the illustrative course selection. Also Gen Ed on a course shows overlapping coverage without adding its credits twice. Open course choices may also count; choosing an approved option can free matching Gen Ed space for electives. Flexible-area coverage is provisional pending catalog wording clarification.
Other boxes say Elective / minor — Any level · Gen Ed not required. An upper-level course can use this space when its prerequisites and restrictions allow. The popup includes course level, seasonal offerings and first-day seat counts; it does not verify eligibility. The plan summary shows the standard college upper-level minimum and remaining credits where configured. These credits overlap the degree total. Grades, transfer, approvals and the final degree audit still require advising.