College Catalog
The College Catalog is generated dynamically using content from academic program profiles and catalog blurbs.
Introduction
Academic program profiles, including program descriptions and requirements, are maintained by the Provost’s Office and contain SUNY-approved content. Blurb content is maintained by the appropriate academic department or administrative office.
When referring to the College Catalog, it’s helpful to distinguish between the College Catalog Dropdown Tool and the Annual College Catalog.
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College Catalog Dropdown Tool: This version is dynamic and program focused. It is continuously updated as changes are made to programs, faculty, and courses. The College Catalog Dropdown Tool helps to build the yearly digital catalog that was once a printed catalog, supporting the College’s sustainability goals.
- Annual College Catalog: Published each fall for the upcoming academic year, this version serves as a snapshot of the catalog at a specific moment in time. It is available in both accessible HTML and accessible PDF formats.
For the College Catalog Content Manager
The College Catalog Full TOC (table of contents) page is a useful reference for the location of content but is not part of the build.
All programs and certificates to be included in the college catalog must have an academic profile. This allows the program to appear in the College Catalog Dropdown Tool and subsequently the Annual College Catalog.
Tagging Academic Profiles for Unique Situations
If an academic profile is needed for the college catalog but not for the Academics Majors & Minors page, it gets tagged with “hidden from Academics page.” Examples: Biology Concentrations, College and Expository Writing, Early Childhood Development, and subtypes such as Dance Performance: Ballet, etcetera.
If an academic profile is not included in the College Catalog Dropdown Tool, it is tagged with “not for catalog dropdown.” Example: Instrumental Performance.
Note: The academic profile, Arts Open Access Courses is tagged with both “hidden from Academics page” and “not for catalog dropdown.”
Addressing Gaps in Content
The Academics group contains additional college catalog content that was created to address gaps in existing information or replace content that was originally written for marketing purposes. This supplemental content helps ensure that catalog information is complete, accurate, and aligned with academic requirements.
Unique Faculty Situations
When issues arise, it’s best to review a situation where a faculty member with a similar profile appears correctly on the website and on the college catalog page(s).
Contributing Faculty
Use the contributing faculty field when a faculty member contributes to another group. Don’t share the profile.
Add group name to contributing faculty field.
Note: If you share it and also have it in the contributing field, it will be duplicated in either Full Time Faculty or Part-Time Faculty, depending on how the profile was set up.
Missing Faculty in Instrumental Performance
The faculty member must have one of the following in their board of study profile field. It must be an exact match to generate the faculty on the college catalog pages.
- Instrumental Performance: Brass
- Instrumental Performance: Classical Guitar
- Instrumental Performance: Harp
- Instrumental Performance: Percussion
- Instrumental Performance: Piano
- Instrumental Performance: Strings
- Instrumental Performance: Woodwinds
Example: Faculty member does not appear under Instrumental Performance: Strings on catalog page because board of study field has Instrumental Performance: Cello rather than Instrumental Performance: Strings.
Piano and Music History, Theory, Solfège, and Keyboard Studies
- Faculty Members must be in the Conservatory of Music group.
- Faculty Members must be tagged with #theory.
For the Developer
The files used to generate academic program content are located on the server in the templates > includes > college catalog folder.
The following files contain override code to address specific circumstances where automated content does not provide the desired results. Examples include program name changes, faculty tab redirects, course tab redirects, or other situations where manual adjustments are needed to ensure accurate and useful information is displayed.
jumplinks.php
courses.php
If the College Catalog Dropdown Tool is not generating accurate results, begin by investigating the accuracy of content on the website before reviewing the server files.
If the College Catalog Dropdown Tool is delivering accurate results, then proceed to the college catalog pages in the academic’s group.
There are approximately 27 pages that gets stitched together to build the catalog. All pages must be live and you must be logged out of the CMS before copying the html.
Exclude the header, footer and navigations.
After stitching a few pages, place on beta server and check alignment. QA that same content on page in the master html file.
Once complete, update the meta information in the master html file, run the Accessibility checker on the file, and create the pdf that must be submitted to NYS by the fall deadline.
Faculty Pagination
When a program has faculty pagination, such as Dance and Theatre Design Technology, a work-around is necessary so all faculty from the program appear in the catalog.
- Comment out / remove all faculty except Contributing Faculty.
- Go back to the college catalog page where you copied the html
- View source and click on the pagination link in the html. It will result in a separate page.
- Copy the html from the resulting page and paste it into the master html file.
- You may attempt to alphabetize.