Submitted by jshanika on Sat, 03/23/2019 – 00:00

SARA Manual, Version 19.1

NC-SARA has released Version 19.1 of the SARA Manual.

Version 19.1 replaces all previous versions of the Manual and contains SARA policies as of March 21, 2019. Version 19.1 makes the following changes from the prior version of the Manual (Version 18.2):

  1. Adds definitions for “Financial Responsibility Composite Score/Composite Score,” “Out-of-State Learning Placement,” “Professional Licensure,” and “Provisional Admission/Provisional Status.” Replaces the word “Agreement” as a defined term with the term “Unified Agreement” (the text of the definition is unchanged).
  2. Replaces the unidentified acronym “OPEID” with the term “Office of Postsecondary Education Identification” number. Adds the designation “Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)” when referencing federal regulations, such as in the explanatory notes in Sections 4.8 and 5.2.
  3. Terms occurring in Version 19.1’s list of Definitions are now generally capitalized in the text of the SARA Manual.
  4. Standardizes terminology to clarify that States are “Members” of SARA, while Institutions “participate” in SARA.
  5. Replaces the words “college,” “university,” and “school,” appearing singly or together, with the defined term “Institution.”
  6. Includes policy modifications approved by the NC-SARA Board on November 1, 2018: Subsections 3.2 (d and e) and Subsection 3.3, as amended, under certain stated conditions allow an Institution to be approved or reapproved by its Home State for participation in SARA on Provisional Status for up to two years.
  7. Section 5.4, clarifies the status of short courses that last exactly six hours
  8. Subsection 5.7 of Version 18.2 (Participation by Tribal Colleges) and Subsection 5.8 of Version 18.2 (Participation by federally owned or federally chartered institutions) have been moved from Section 5 (Coverage and Limitations of SARA) to Section 3 (Institutions and Participation) as Subsections 3.1 (c and d). Text was unchanged except for capitalization of defined terms.
  9. Changes the pre-existing statement that casual use of a cell phone by an institutional representative does not establish Physical Presence within a SARA Member State from an “Explanatory Note” to a continuation of the policy statement about establishing mailing addresses and phone exchanges (Section 5.10, (a), 7).
  10. Adds the words “leased, rented, owned or donated” as examples of the types of spaces considered to be a “semi-permanent fixed space” for purposes of Section 5.10, (a), 1, (a) 11)
  11. To increase clarity, changes the order of statements within Section 6.1 (Data submission by participating institutions).
  12. Incorporates NC-SARA Board action of November 1, 2018 to change the title of the Executive Director of NC-SARA to “President and Chief Executive Officer of NC-SARA”.

SARA administrative forms and institutional applications

New versions of SARA administrative forms (for both states and institutions) are included in Version 19.1 and are separately available HERE. The new versions incorporate the capitalization of defined terms and clarify that time periods stated as “days” relate to “calendar days.” To ensure efficient processing, there is a new email address to submit forms to “forms@nc-sara.org“.

The updated SARA applications for Institutions are available and may be seen HERE.

Marshall A. Hill
President and CEO, NC-SARA
March 21, 2019

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