The University announced its shift to a new advising and course planning program — Stellic — in an email sent to the community March 17. The program has been phased in over the past year to allow students a smooth transition, beginning with select students using Stellic last summer and adding a larger group of students in the fall. As of March, the program is officially open to all students.
The University has used SIS since 2009 to assist students with course planning and degree progress tracking. While other private course planning tools have been available, such as Lou’s List and Coursicle — two websites which allow students to view University class offerings each semester — some students favor Stellic for features they say are easier to use.
This program facilitates communication between students and advisors, and offers opportunities for students to connect with advising resources, according to Program Director for Stellic Josipa Roksa. She also highlighted that students can use the planner feature to explore different majors, while simultaneously viewing how a certain academic plan could meet major and general education requirements.
“We are excited that students will be able to plan classes and explore majors using a tool that will have built-in knowledge about requirements,” Roksa said. “Instead of using spreadsheets to plan their courses, students can use an intuitive, user-friendly platform to plan their educational journeys at U.Va.”
Last summer, incoming Engineering students used Stellic for first-semester course planning. Following this implementation, first-year students in the College of Arts and Sciences were also phased in during the fall semester and used the program to review second-semester course options after starting with the Student Information System for their first semester.
According to Roksa, currently only first- and second-year students can use the program to view their degree requirements and progress. As part of the multi-year phasing in process, third- and fourth-year students will continue to use SIS to view their degree requirements but can use Stellic to plan courses and communicate with advisors. Students of all academic years will also continue to use SIS for course enrollment in the future.
Stellic started as a student project at Carnegie Mellon University and was named after one of the school’s academic advisors. The Stellic website lists around 50 universities that currently use or are in the process of implementing the new program.
First-year College student Kate Butler started using Stellic for course selection for the Spring 2025 semester and said she appreciates the auto-generated class recommendation and multi-year plan features.
“Before classes are released, I pull up my Stellic… [and] I feel so much better,” Butler said. “It’s just so much better.”
On Stellic, students can list up to three potential majors and the program will recommend courses that fulfill requirements and times to take them. Butler appreciates this feature and how it facilitates her course planning process.
“The morning classes released, I clicked auto-generate and it made it all for me, rather than going through [the] time conflicts,” Butler said. “... I would recommend it to everyone.”
First-year Engineering student Sara Elster started using the program over the summer. She initially learned Stellic and then had to learn how to use SIS. She compared the new program to SIS.
“They just had us use it immediately and then trying to learn SIS after was confusing,” Elster said.
Butler also appreciated the multi-year plan feature, which allows students to make multiple plans that extend through their entire tenure at the University. She is planning on applying to multiple majors and finds it helpful to see what each path could look like.
Butler and Elster both said that the main issue with Stellic was a glitch where if the course-planning page reloads, everything resets and you have to start all planning from scratch.
Roksa spoke on the responses she and the program have received from students and faculty throughout the process.
“While feedback has been largely positive, we are continuing to gather input from students and advisors to further refine how Stellic supports them,” Roksa said, “... We recognize that adoption of any new system takes time, and we are committed to ongoing improvements based on students’ and advisors’ feedback.”
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