On the Record

May 28, 2025

In This Issue

• RIM Month 2025 - All videos now available
• Calculating Retention for End of Term and End of Semester
• 2025 Training Schedule

RIM Month 2025

RIM Month is now behind us, and we want to thank everyone again who participated in any of our nine training sessions. We really enjoyed seeing you, answering your questions, and getting your feedback on what worked and what didn’t. 

As promised, all of the webinar recordings are now captioned and posted on the event SharePoint page, which you can visit here: https://utexas.sharepoint.com/sites/RIMS-DRMCPublicResources/SitePages/RIM-Month-2025.aspx.

If you remember something from a webinar that you want to review, but you don’t want to watch the whole video, open it in Panopto, and you can use the Contents headings on the left to click through the major sections of the training.

Please let us know if you have any trouble accessing the videos.

Calculating Retention for End of Term and End of Semester

This is the time of year when many of us think about disposing of materials whose retention is based on the end of the semester, such as AALL350 Student Coursework, Tests, Assignments (AC+1); AALL352 Course Records (AC+5); and AALL408 Official Course Instructor Surveys (CIS) (AC+10). The AC definition for all of these is “end of semester in which course is taught.” But what does “semester” mean?

We use the Office of the Registrar’s academic calendar for our definition. They have a webpage (https://registrar.utexas.edu/calendars) that lists the current and upcoming academic calendars, plus a link to the academic calendar archive. If you click on the 2024-2025 calendar, you’ll see that the Fall semester includes the Fall and Winter terms, so the Fall semester didn’t end until January 11, 2025. And the Spring semester includes the Spring and May terms, so the Spring semester doesn’t end until June 4, 2025.

If you want to know when you can dispose of student coursework for Fall 2024, the retention for those records is AC+1, where AC = the end of the semester. The end of the semester was January 11, 2025, and they must be retained one year, so they must be held through January 2026 and will be eligible for disposition in February of 2026.

Another example is if you have course instructor surveys (CIS) from Fall 2014. If you find the academic calendar for 2014-2015 linked from the webpage above, you’ll see they did things a little differently then, and the Fall semester ended in December 2014. CIS have to be kept 10 years, so those surveys are eligible for disposition in January 2025.

We know that calculating retention can be tricky, so feel free to use our Retention Period Calculations page on our DRMC SharePoint site, which anyone can access with their Microsoft 365 login credentials. And of course, you’re always welcome to reach out to us with your questions at rims@austin.utexas.edu.

2025 Training Schedule

Our training schedule for 2025 (and a little bit of 2026) is now up and available for registration in UTLearn.

Our very popular RIM Month session on managing email is coming back in August. “Manage Your Mailbox Before It Manages You” is great for any UT employee, so spread the word!

Remember that if you’re ever interested in a class for a group in your department, please reach out to us! We are happy to present one of our regular classes or customize a training for your needs.

• Manage Your Mailbox Before It Manages You
  • Target Audience: All UT employees
  • Format: Webinar
  • Upcoming Date: August 6, 2025
  • Register here in UTLearn
• IG101: Records and Information Management for DRMCs
  • Target Audience: Departmental Records Management Contacts (DRMCs)
  • Format: Webinar
  • Upcoming Dates: July 31, 2025, October 15, 2025, and January 22, 2026
  • Register here in UTLearn
• IG103: What Everyone Needs to Know about University Records
  • Target Audience: All UT employees
  • Format: Webinar
  • Upcoming Dates: August 26, 2025, November 12, 2025, and February 17, 2026
  • Register here in UTLearn
• IG110: Learning the Records Lifecycle
  • Target Audience: All UT employees
  • Format: In Person
  • Upcoming Dates: June 10, 2025, September 25, 2025, and December 2, 2026
  • Register here in UTLearn
• IG112: DRMC Fundamentals – The Records Inventory
  • Target Audience: DRMCs
  • Prerequisite: IG101, IG103, or IG110
  • Format: In Person
  • Upcoming Date: October 28, 2025
  • Register here in UTLearn

• UTRRS 8.1 Resources
• DRMC Resources
• Records Management Plan
• Imaging Departmental Records
• Records Inventory
• Request to Dispose of Records