Lumen

Lumen is the gateway for faculty, curricular representatives, and governance bodies to update, track, and approve functions related to courses, curriculum and programs.

Lumen’s services make it possible for UW–Madison to have a single, central location for course, curricular, and academic policies across campus. With such a repository in place, we have opportunities to improve many tasks related to presenting our curriculum, in ways that weren’t possible before.

Because of Lumen, departments and programs will:
• have reliable, real-time data about their courses, curriculum and academic programs;
• save staff the time spent manually tracking and updating necessary changes to key curricular data; and
• more easily submit, track, approve, and notify key stakeholders across campus when course/program proposals and changes occur.

This suite of tools has three main components to help academic units manage their own processes efficiently:

Guide (aka academic catalogs or bulletins pre-2017).
Guide replaces the previous web-page editing system with a robust, specialized catalog builder. Courses are generated by the Student Information System (SIS) for accuracy; editing of the catalog has new workflow controls; and degree and program information from units across campus will be organized in a consistent, easy-to-use layout that will enhance the students’ navigational experience. Both the former Graduate School catalog and Undergraduate catalog are combined into the Guide. Also included in Guide for the first time, Non-degree academic offerings from the Division of Continuing Studies, and a current faculty draw based on who taught in the previous academic calendar.

The first Guide was published in June 2017.

Course, curricular and program proposals/updates, and program-review activities.
When our faculty want to offer a new course, propose a new program, or modify an existing course or program, Lumen provides consistent and standardized forms for collecting the needed information relevant to the proposed change. Lumen provides an integrated workflow and tracks all approval stages. Reports are easily produced for committee discussions and all parties in the process know the progress status of each proposal. Lumen also provides a repository of changes and actions making easier to find out when what change was approved. The Guide and SIS can both be automatically updated with most of the governance-approved changes, for maximum accuracy and efficiency.

The Lumen Course Proposal system went live in January 2018.

The Lumen Program Proposal system went live in October 2018.

The Lumen Exam Proposal (department placement exams; credit by exam) system went live in February 2021.

Lumen is based on vendor-developed CourseLeaf software. This data system is specifically tailored for UW–Madison’s course, curricular, and program approval processes. It follows the policies and procedures determined by our campus, for our campus. The Lumen tools communicate directly with SIS to ensure accurate and consistent data across campus.

The Lumen tools are accessed through the Lumen App in the MyUW portal.

More information about each of the Lumen tools and their implementation is available on the Lumen KnowledgeBase.