You may access the "Configure school settings" page by going to Admin Console -> Configure school settings.

If you have the "Schools" module enabled, FlightPath is able to manage school-specific settings on this screen.

The settings on this screen tell FlightPath how to interpret, manage, and display information about your institution.  Let's go over the settings you will see below. Note that depending on your set up, some of the settings may not appear, or, there may be other settings.

Configure school settings

• School initials
  • Sometimes FlightPath will refer to your institution by its initials or short-name, so they need to be input here. Ex: ULM, LTU, Lee, etc.
• School name
  • This is the full name of your university, which will sometimes be displayed to users.
  • Ex:  University of Louisiana, Archer Community College, etc.
• Earliest catalog year
  • This is the earliest catalog year which FlightPath would have any data for.  In general, it would be the first catalog year where you have all of your degree plans entered.
  • Students who have an even earlier catalog year will be shown a degree in this catalog year, with a message displayed warning them that it may be inaccurate.
• Graduate level course num
  • Enter the course number which signifies that any course above it is considered a "graduate" course. Usually this is either 500 or 5000.
• Hiding grades message
  • When hiding grades (for example, if the student has not completed some outside task, like a course evaluation), then instead of a grade, the student will see a "?" link.  This message will be displayed at the top of the page, explaining.
  • Ex:  "Some grades are not visible until you complete your course evaluations."
  • If you are not using this feature, feel free to ignore this setting.
• Show group titles on View and What If screens?
  • For a tighter, cleaner Degree tab, set this to "No".  For a more friendly experience, set this to "Yes".
• Maximum number of allowed selections in What If
  • The What If screen allows students and advisors to combine multiple degree plans at a time, simulating double majors, minors, concentrations, etc.
  • This setting limits to a maximum number, as it becomes very slow and processor-intensive the more degree plans you permit.
• Show both undergraduate and graduate degrees for every student in What If?
  • Most institutions do not want their undergrad students to see and be able to select graduate degrees on the What If screen, and likewise for graduate students and graduate degrees.  If this is your preference, set this to 'No'.
• Show level-3 degree options on What If selection screen?
  • If set to Yes, then Level-3 degree plans (like tracks, concentrations, etc) will appear as options on the What If tab.
• Course repeat policy
  • Most institutions handle repeated normal courses the same way: only use the most recent attempt, and exclude any previous ones.  However, FlightPath does allow for variations on this policy.  See this page for more information.
• What If mode default catalog year
  • This tries to follow your school's policy for when a student changes majors. If they are automatically placed into the current catalog year, or if they are allowed to keep their current catalog year.
• Ignore courses from hour counts (CSV)
  • List any courses, separated by comma, which should not be included in FlightPath hour calculations.
  • Examples might be remedial courses or Freshman Seminar-type courses, which would not count towards the total number of hours to graduate.
• Structure of term ID's
  • FlightPath needs to know how your term ids (aka term codes) translate into plain English.  For example, if 202810 = Fall of 2028.  See this page for a full explanation of this field.
• Subjects
  • This field lets you enter the plain English title for each subject code that a course might use, as well as the college code it belongs to (which is optional).
  • Ex:  ACCT ~ BA ~ Accounting
  • This makes course selections more friendly and accessible to users.  This is most visible if you view the "Courses" (aka Course Search) screen.
  • Note: You may leave the college code empty if you wish.
• Colleges
  • This field lets you define the title of each college code in use at your institution.
  • Ex:  BA ~ College of Business Administration
  • This might one day be used in reporting, but at least initially, it is not necessary to enter anything in this field.
• Degree Colleges
  • If desired, you can use this field to specify which college each of your degree plans belongs to.
  • Ex:  BUSN ~ BA
  • This might one day be used in reporting, but at least initially, it is not necessary to enter anything in this field.
• Departments
  • If desired, you can enter the title of each department code on campus.
  • Ex: FINAID ~ Financial Aid
  • This might one day be used in reporting, but at least initially, it is not necessary to enter anything in this field.
• Substitution hours decimal places allowed
  • When performing manual substitutions, FlightPath is capable of "breaking" a course into pieces.  For example, a 3 hour courses can be broken up into a 1 hour piece, and a 2 hour piece.
  • FlightPath is also capable of breaking up a course's hours by up to 4 decimal places. For example, a 3 hour course can be broken into a 1.25 piece, and a 1.75 piece.
  • This setting establishes how many decimal places your institution allows.  If unsure, leave set to "2".
• Auto-capitalize course titles?
  • Sometimes course titles are either all-caps, or have inconsistent capitalization schemes, especially transfer credits.  If this setting is set to "Yes", FlightPath will attempt to re-capitalize titles into "title case", where each significant word in the title begins with a capital letter.
• Auto-capitalize institution names?
  • This is for outside, transfer institutions. See the previous setting.
• Restrict ghost substitutions to courses with zero hours only?
  • In FlightPath, courses are allowed to be worth zero hours. However, this would cause divide-by-zero errors in some of the mathematics, so internally, they are stored as being worth one "ghost" hour, and simply displayed as being worth zero hours.
  • This setting is asking, should a substitution involving such a zero-hour course only permit other zero-hour courses to be used.
  • If set to "No", then an advisor might substitute a zero-hour course into a 3-hour requirement, which could possibly cause issues for the student down the line.  The safest action is to set this to "Yes".
• Initial student course sort policy
  • In general, you can leave this set to Alphabetical sort. It has to do with how FlightPath internally sorts student's courses, which in turn affects the order in which they fill into the degree plan.
• Grade order (CSV)
  • This should be all possible grades which a student might earn at your institution, from highest to lowest.  This is used in determining if a course passes a minimum-grade requirement.
  • Grades which mean "enrolled" or "in progress" should be at the beginning, since we do not know what the final grade of the student would be.
  • Ex:  E,AMID,BMID,CMID,DMID,A,B,C,D,F,W,I
• Minimum passing grade
  • Enter the grade letter that denotes the student has earned credit.  Usually this is a "D" or "D-" in most institutions.
• Retake grades (CSV)
  • This is a list of grades which means the student did not earn credit for the course. Eg, they failed or withdrew.
• Withdrew grades (CSV)
  • This is a list of grades which means the student withdrew from the course.
• Enrolled grades (CSV)
  • This is a list of grades which means the course is "enrolled" or "in progress".  For example, if your institution uses midterm-grades, or in-progress grades.
  • FlightPath will display courses with these grades with a green dot, denoting they are in-progress and a final grade has not yet been posted.
• Minimum substitutable grade
  • This is usually the same as the Minimum passing grade above.
• Group requirement min grades (CSV)
  • This is the list of grades which appears when editing a degree plan, as options for the min grade requirement for an elective group.
• Calculate student cumulative hours and GPA?
  • FlightPath is capable of calculating the cumulative hours & GPA for a student automatically, but you might prefer instead to use the GPA which is imported and stored in the database.  Set this to "No" if this is the case.
• Numeric to Letter Grade
  • Some schools use numeric grades instead of letters.  However, FlightPath is based around the use of letter grades, so this setting allows you to define what range equals which letter grade in FlightPath.
  • Feel free to leave this setting blank if your institution uses letter grades.
• Quality points and grades
  • How many quality points is each grade worth?  You should make sure to enter every possible grade, one per line.  FlightPath uses this information in GPA calculations.
• Requirement types and codes
  • These are in degree data entry, to distinguish what "type" of requirement a course or group is.  They should be entered as 1 or 2-letter codes along with their description.  Please see this page for more information.
• Pie chart configuration
  • FlightPath is able to create pie charts which appear on the student's Degree tab, based on the requirement types entered above.
  • Enter the code to use, then the label for the pie chart, and optionally, the HTML hex color values for the incomplete and completed parts of the pie chart.  The hex color values should not contain a #.
• Should pie charts show GPAs?
  • Normally, the degree pie charts only show hours (eg, 55 / 120 hrs).  However, FlightPath can also calculate and display the GPAs of each requirement type's pie chart as well.  This is useful if you need to know the student's GPA of just their "Core" requirements as well as overall.
• Developmentals semester block title
  • If a student is automatically assigned remedial or "developmental" courses (eg, MATH 090 or ENGL 095, etc), a new semester block will be generated.  This setting controls what its title will be.
• Developmentals notice text
  • Underneath the Developmentals block, this text will display.  It is useful to have some sort of description, to let the student know why these courses were added to their degree plan.
• Graduate level codes (CSV)
  • Usually "GR" is all you would need to enter, but if you have multiple types of codes which denote a graduate level course, student, or degree, enter them here.
• Disallow automatic use of graduate credit?
  • If set to Yes (the default), FlightPath will not use credit from graduate courses with an undergraduate student, even if they completed a graduate-level course. This is a common policy in most institutions.
• Display graduate credits in their own semester block?
  • This is for undergraduate students who have earned graduate credit.  For example, if a student has begun to work on a graduate degree by taking preliminary courses, but is not yet officially a "GR" student in the database.
  • This setting will tell FlightPath to display those credits in their own semester block.  In general, you should set this to "Yes".
• Graduate Credits block title
  • If showing a separate block for graduate credits, this is the title of that block.
• Graduate Credits block notice text
  • Similar to the Developmentals notice text, this setting will display text underneath the Graduate Credits block, if it exists.
• Exclude major codes from "appears in" counts (CSV)
  • This is primarily for schools with degree plans that are frequently combined with other degree plans.  It allows you to list major codes of such degree plans to prevent unnecessary styling on the screen which may become visually tiresome.
  • Most schools can safely leave this blank.
• Groups should be considered "full" when min hours are met or exceeded?
  • When setting up a degree (see this page for more details), it is possible to have a group requirement on a degree with a range of hours.  For example, "Free Electives" - 3 to 12 hours.
  • If set to "yes", this setting means that FlightPath will consider the group "full" (and stop further selections) once the minimum number of hours have been automatically or manually assigned to the degree.
• Remove an advised course when a student enrolls in it (or completes it) for the same term?
  • Normally in FlightPath, the advising "checkboxes" fall away once a student enrolls or completes a course in FlightPath, and the current term on campus moves on.
  • However, for some institutions, a situation can occur where a student is advised in (for example) Fall of 2028 for a course, and then, before the real-world current term has advanced, they complete or earn credit for that course.
  • This setting applies to this situation, and unless this happens regularly at your institution, it is safe to leave this set to "No".
• Prevent a course assignment to both a degree and its track(s)?
  • In general, you would want to leave this set to "Yes".
• Display 'Repeat Information' for a course in a group's course list?
  • In general, you would want this set to 'Yes'.
  • If a course was defined in a group with "specified repeats" (see this page for more information), then a 'Yes' setting here would cause FlightPath to show a message like "This course may be repeated X times" in the groups popup on the degree plan.
• Degree requirement sort policy
  • This controls how degree requirements are eventually presented to the end user (the student or the faculty member).
  • In general, leaving this set to "Alphabetical sort" provides a clean, predictable display and is recommended.
• Group requirement sort policy
  • This is similar to the setting above, but is distinctive to the lists of courses in groups.

Note that this list may not represent the complete set of School settings, based on your version of FlightPath or modules which may be enabled.