Academic Recovery

Under the leadership of the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching & Learning (OVPTL), the campus is piloting a new approach to supporting students in their academic journey at UCI. In a reframing of the traditional “academic probation” and “disqualification” processes, the primary goal of “academic recovery” is to move toward consistency and transparency in processes across campus while balancing any unique needs of the academic units. This multi-year effort combines the expertise of academic advising, OVPTL, and faculty to craft a holistic, student-centric approach to achieving academic success at UCI.

Guiding Principles

  1. The purpose of Academic Probation is to support students in regaining their good academic standing and should not focus on punitive measures.
  2. Determining the status of whether a student is on Academic Probation should be consistent and ideally determined centrally at the university.
  3. Where academic probation and disqualification is currently used as an enrollment management tool (either by design or de facto due to its implementation), alternate enrollment management methods need to be identified.

What are the components of academic recovery?

Early Alert: indicates a student is approaching the minimum standards for academic progress and performance.  This status can be applied in cases where a student: earns a single quarter GPA below 2.0 and is otherwise above a 2.0 cumulative GPA; drops near the minimum requirements for Normal Progress; or reaches the time limit for completion of Lower Division Writing. To provide Early Alerts to advisors and students, the Enrollment Management Analytics (EMA) and Teaching & Learning Analytics (TLA) teams have developed tools that can be used to put a hold and/or send messaging to students who are in danger of being on probation through any of these criteria. 

Academic Success Plans:  formerly referred to as ‘contracts’, an Academic Success Plan helps a student with an Early Alert status to identify resources that can help steady their academic progress and strengthen their strategies for success.  Developed with an academic advisor, an Academic Success Plan is intended to help a student get back on track while still in good academic standing.

Probation/Recovery: the probation status will only be applied in the case of a cumulative GPA below 2.0. Normal Progress and Lower Division Writing “probation” may result in advising intervention, but are flagged under Progress Monitoring rather than Academic Probation. Students with a probation status must improve towards Academic Recovery, otherwise they will be in jeopardy of Academic Disqualification.

Academic Recovery Plans: formerly referred to as ‘contracts’, an Academic Recovery Plan is focused on providing a clear path off of probation. Working with an academic advisor, students with a probation status are asked to identify barriers to their academic success and agree to use resources and services that are best suited to their needs.  Students in Academic Recovery who have not cleared probation after a specified time frame are in jeopardy of disqualification.

Progress Monitoring: indicates a student may not be making progress at the expected pace for a timely graduation.  This situation can be applied in cases where a student: has not completed Lower Division Writing within the required time limit; is not meeting the Normal Progress standard for total units completed; is not taking/completing courses required for their major; or has a major GPA below 2.0.  Students who are not making sufficient progress towards their overall major requirements may be required to seek a change of major. 

Disqualification: Additional discussion is needed regarding disqualification processes as well as the difference between dismissal from a major or school and disqualification from the university. Disqualification procedures are currently handled by the individual schools and departments.

What are the phases of the academic recovery process?

Academic recovery separates advising interventions between probation statuses that can lead to academic disqualification and general degree progress monitoring. This diagram provides more details:

How is the academic recovery process managed?

Each academic advising unit has access to the EMA App, which has dedicated features to support Academic Recovery processes. This provides access to two features:

  1. Academic Recovery: Lists students who are eligible for Academic Recovery as outlined in the “Probation” section above
  2. Early Alerts: Lists students who are eligible for the early intervention processes based on categories listed above

Authorized users can access the EMA App at https://app.powerbi.com/.

I’m a student; who can I talk to about academic recovery?

Please reach out to your school advising office with any questions about academic recovery.