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Graduate in Four Years & the Degree Planning Process
The Degree Planning Process
Picture yourself (and your family/friends) at Ohio State's
commencement. You have completed all requirements for a baccalaureate
degree, and this day is the culmination of your career as
an undergraduate student. Graduation is often a very exciting
and important time in a person's life and we are here to help
you achieve this goal in a timely fashion, a time frame you
are comfortable with.
To complete your degree at The Ohio State University in four
years requires careful planning and making decisions about
majors at an early point in your academic career. If it is
important to you to finish in four years, sample four-year
plans are available for review and should help you plan effectively.
These plans are samples, not models. There are many possible
ways in which to order and combine course choices, and the
plans you will find are not intended to be definitive. The
business of constructing your own plan should involve an ongoing
dialogue with your faculty adviser in the field of your major.
Sample Four Year Plans
In helping students to develop degree plans, each college
has a special degree planning process that is supported by
university-wide information and tools. Orientation is the
first step in the process. Familarizing students and parents
with the degree requirements initiated the process.
Some students have lives that enable them to complete a degree
in four years with relatively few adjustments in their academic,
financial, or personal situations. Other students have lives
that will enable them to complete a degree in four years,
but only if the plan they develop with an adviser is both
comprehensive and disciplined. Still other students will make
decisions or have experiences that push degree planning beyond
four years. For these students, we want to provide the kind
of support that will enable them to make new plans with an
appropriate time frame and want to be certain that we always
have a planning and support apparatus in place for such students.
All the general degree plans we put forward will be based
on four years. We then will work with students to develop
individual plans that reflect their personal circumstances
and that are sufficiently flexible to accommodate the many
decisions students make about how to use their time.
Factors Affecting Time to Degree
Assigned Academic Advisers
- See
Your Adviser Often!!
The College of Food, Agricultural, and
Environmental Sciences provides several people to assist with
academic issues and planning. Each student is assigned a faculty
adviser upon admission of the College who teaches in the department
offering the major. Each major also has a coordinating adviser
who serves as a backup to the adviser. The college office
then has a college counselor and Assistant Dean for Academic
Affairs who serve as resources to the coordinating adviser,
faculty adviser and student.
Although students will be contacted by any of these individuals
about degree progress during the year we ultimately rely on
students to schedule appointments with advisers to discuss
their individual situations.
The Survey Course
In the first quarter
at Ohio State, each new student enrolls in a survey course
offered by the college of their enrollment. The basis for
all the surveys in all colleges is the curriculum required
to complete a degree. Progress towards a degree is completely
dependent on a thorough knowledge of the degree structure,
the courses that are part of the general and specialized areas
of the degree, and all the issues that affect decisions about
performance.
Therefore, as part of the survey, each student will meet with
her or his assigned adviser to devise both four year degree
plans and six quarter degree plans that will serve as important
two year benchmarks for measuring degree progress. It is our
hope that students will use their advisers often to monitor
their progress and to discuss the wide range of decisions
students make regarding their degrees.
Degree Audit
Run a Degree Audit Report from the Registrar's
On-Line Services Website.
Beyond a thorough working knowledge of the degree structure
and all the courses in it, one of the most important tools students
and advisers use in degree planning is our degree audit system.
At any point, a student can use the University Registrar's web
site to request an evaluation of how all the course she or she
has completed are used to meet both general and major area course
requirements. This also is an excellent document for entire
families to use in assessing degree progress issues. Advisers
are not permitted to share the degree audit with anyone except
students and other university staff, but we hope students and
their families will agree to review this document periodically.
While the degree audit is available to students at any point
in their undergraduate careers, advisers will periodically send
an electronic degree audit connection to students with special
commentary about their unique situation. We hope these electronic
mailings will prompt students to schedule an appointment with
their adviser if there are any questions or issues that arise,
but at a minimum, we want to be certain we give each student
periodic assessments of their degree progress and performance.
This kind and amount of contact will begin with a student's
first quarter at Ohio State, and it will continue until a student
has completed a degree. Again, there are many complicated decisions
and events involved with each life during the undergraduate
years, but we want to be absolutely certain every student has
complete and accurate information about their degree status
throughout their time at Ohio State.
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Planning Your Degree |
