Catalog Search in Student Planning

Owned by Allison Urbanczyk
Last updated: Oct 15, 2024 by Allison Urbanczyk
4 min read

The Course Catalog is a resource for students to browse and select their academic courses. Accessible via Self-Service, it offers Subject Search and Advanced Search options. Subject Search lists courses by subject, while Advanced Search provides more detailed filters like term, course number, time of day, location, and etc. This page can help students to find and enroll in the courses that best fit their academic needs and schedules.

How to use the Catalog Search for Courses and Course Sections in Self-Service Student Planning

Using the Catalog Menu

  • The Course Catalog menu can be accessed from the main menu boxes in Self-Service, or from the left-hand menu under the Academics heading with the graduation cap icon.

  • There are two ways to search within the Course Catalog, either with Subject Search or Advanced Search. Subject Search will present a full listing of all courses within a subject that can then be further filtered. Advanced Search presents more selection criteria for an initial search, with further options to filter after initial selections.

Subject Search

  • From the Subject Search tab you can search for a specific course subject, or simply scroll down the list of subjects. The Search for courses search box is also available in the upper right-hand corner.

  • After selecting a subject, every offering in that subject will be presented. You can use additional filters to further refine the list.



Searching for IT or Information Technology

Due to vendor programming glitches, using just the term 'IT' in the Search for Courses box will not return any results. Use 'Information Technology' instead.
Similarly, in the Advanced Search tab, if you select Information Technology in the subject category, no courses will be returned. You can instead use the Subject Search tab to select Information Technology and then add additional filters.



Advanced Search

The Advanced Search tab allows you to make multiple selections for an initial search. You can complete as many or as few of the limiting selections as you wish. The selections available include:

  1. Term:

    1. Can be selected from the drop-down list of terms with active schedules of classes

    2. Meeting Start Date or Meeting End Date can be used to find all courses, including 7-week offerings

      1. All undergraduate and most graduate course sections use the full-semester term in fall and spring (Examples: 2024FA and 2025SP). This allows students to see all full-semester and short course details on one schedule, rather than separating the schedule onto multiple screens. This helps students avoid missing a class they didn’t see on a separate schedule.
        Example: How to find only Fall II courses - Enter October 1st as the Meeting Start Date and December 31st as the Meeting End Date to see all courses that meet only from October through December.

  2. Courses and Sections:

    1. Subject(s) can be selected from the drop-down menu

    2. Course number(s) can be used to select a specific course or all within a level using the * wildcard. Enter 3** for example, to select all 300-level courses in a subject. Entering “CC” as the Subject and “300*” as the Course number will display CC 300, CC 300CD, CC 300HL, and CC 300T3, which are all variations that allow for specific General Education requirement fulfillment.

  3. Days of Week:

    1. Select preferred days of the week for course sections

  4. Location

    1.  Location is generally only used to find study-abroad or study-away offerings. The default location is main campus.

  5. Academic Level

    1. Select Undergraduate or Graduate

  6. Time of Day

    1. Select a block of time during the day (Morning, Afternoon, etc.)

    2. Select to start or end by a particular time (Select Time Ends by 3:00 pm if needed to accommodate practices or rehearsals)

  7. Course Type

    1. General Education offering categories are each a course type, e.g., Quantitative Analysis, Natural Science, etc.

Related articles

For additional assistance, contact the IT Help Desk.