What a catalog year is
The university catalog is republished every year, and degree requirements change from edition to edition — a course is added to a major, a general-education category is restructured, a credit total shifts. When you enter Porter, you are assigned a catalog year (usually the one in effect when you started), and that edition's requirements are the ones you must meet, even as newer catalogs come out.
Why it protects you
It means the rules cannot move under you mid-degree. If the biology major adds two required courses in your junior year, you still graduate under the requirements that existed when you declared. Your degree audit is built against your catalog year, which is why it is the reference that matters, not the current catalog on the website.
When it changes
Your catalog year can change if you: change your major or add one (you may move to the catalog in effect at that point), leave Porter and return after a gap (often a semester or more) and are readmitted, or take longer than a set number of years to finish (some catalogs expire after five to seven years). Adding a minor usually does not reset it.
Choosing to move forward
You can sometimes elect to move to a newer catalog if its requirements suit you better — for instance, if a course you already took now counts toward the major, or a burdensome requirement was removed. It is all-or-nothing: you take the new catalog's requirements as a set, not a mix. Your adviser and the Registrar can model both before you decide.
How to find yours
Your catalog year is on your degree audit and in the student portal under your program information. If you are not sure which requirements apply to you, that is the first thing to confirm with your adviser — planning against the wrong catalog is a common cause of a surprise in the final year.
Requirement changes that apply to everyone
Occasionally a change is applied university-wide regardless of catalog year — a system-level general-education mandate, a change required by an accreditor. These are announced directly. Absent such an announcement, assume your catalog year governs.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.