Academic Requirements Completion System (ARCS)

The Academic Requirements Completion System (ARCS) is designed to streamline the process of tracking and fulfilling graduate degree program academic requirements (or “Milestones”). The ARCS dashboard, with a user-friendly design, will enhance student success and increase transparency in progress-to-degree.

How to Use ARCS

Students, faculty and staff will access ARCS through the Howdy Portal. 

Student interface

• Students with an approved degree plan will access ARCS by logging into Howdy. ARCS access is granted within 24 hours after the Graduate and Professional School has approved the degree plan.
• From the ARCS dashboard, students can click on milestones to create "requests."
• Students can then monitor request approval status.
• Students will have the option to submit the following in ARCS:
  • Preliminary Exam Request
  • Proposal Approval Form
  • Final Exam (Defense) Request
  • Final Exam Exemption Request
  • Copyright & Availability Form
  • Thesis/Dissertation/Record of Study Approval Form

Faculty interface

• Faculty and staff are notified of pending requests via email with a link taking them directly to their ARCS Request Dashboard.
• Any requests waiting on approval will be listed as “Pending My Review.”
• Faculty and staff can
  • Review the approval status of pending requests
  • Select milestones to review non-course requirement statuses
  • View comments submitted
  • Review documentation uploaded to the system
  • Generate reports of all submitted requests to identify students with missing approvals

  • Filter and sort the dashboard by adding, removing, and/or reordering columns.

Trouble accessing ARCS?

For faculty having trouble accessing Howdy, please review the Howdy Issues Guide.

For faculty still unable to access Howdy, the following trainings in TrainTraq may be required:

For committee members not employed at TAMU that are having difficulty accessing ARCS, please contact GradCom@tamu.edu.

Benefits of ARCS for the Graduate and Professional Community

ARCS implementation will:

• Significantly reduce manual effort. Students, faculty, and staff will benefit from the removal of manual processes, which will help eliminate most redundancies  

• Improve the user experience. Students, faculty, and staff will have specific user access based on role. All student requests will be specific and electronic. Users will be able to track request history and student communication.

• Improve workflow. Automated student eligibility checks reduce the need to verify eligibility manually, allowing approvers to focus on the specifics of the student request.

• Reduce errors. The system will provide immediate response when the student submits a request and will notify the student of a submission success or failure based on certain process prerequisites. Messages will provide the student with the reason for a submission failure, providing guidance for resolution.

• Enhance process tracking abilities. Real time workflow status allows the student, faculty, and staff to see where a request is in the process workflow.

Questions about ARCS?

See ARCS FAQs page for answers to frequently asked questions.