Graduate College Policies

Graduate Assistant Policies

Graduate Assistants and Health Insurance (View Policy)
Graduate Assistant contracts for doctoral students on a full-time contract (20 hours per week of work) with tuition must also include 70% of the cost of single coverage in cases where students have student health insurance through the university. When the contract is fully funded by department/college GA allocation dollars, the cost associated with health insurance coverage will be covered by the College of Graduate Studies using GA allocation dollars set aside by the Graduate Dean. The PI is responsible for covering the cost of health insurance for students funded on grant dollars for any future grants, starting with applications dated on or after April 1, 2024. Grants received or applied for prior to this deadline are grandfathered in and the health insurance cost will be covered by the College of Graduate Studies. GAs funded on grants that do not allow for coverage of health insurance will be covered by the College of Graduate Studies.

Enrollment and Degree Completion Policies

Deadlines for thesis/dissertation defense and submission of final document to grad studies. (View Policy)
In order to ensure timely processing of thesis and dissertation documents and degree posting, students must defend their thesis/dissertation by the end of the 10th week of the semester in fall and spring (end of the 7th week for summer semester) and the final document must be submitted to the College of Graduate Studies for format review by the end of the 13th week of the semester in fall and spring (10th week of summer semester). Exemptions from these deadlines may be granted by the Dean of the College of Graduate Studies in cases where the student's defense is delayed for unexpected reasons outside the student's control.

Graduate Credits Earned While an Undergraduate (View Policy)
Programs may not exceed the approved number of double-counted credits for students in accelerated master's (a.k.a. 4+1) programs. If your program is approved for 9 credit hours of double-counting and you have 4 credit hour courses, your students will only double-count 8 credit hours. We will not count partial courses. Starting Fall 2024, accelerated master's programs may not double-count more than 9 credit hours of graduate coursework. Additionally, undergraduates may only take nine (9) credit hours of graduate coursework at the 500-level outside of an accelerated master's program and count those courses towards a subsequent master's degree if those courses were not used towards the undergraduate degree. As a reminder, here is the relevant section of the Graduate Catalog.

Curriculum

Cross-Listing Courses (View Policy)
Graduate Council and the College of Graduate Studies strongly feel that the listing of courses across more than one level, for example, 300/500 or 400/600, does not reflect positively on the quality of our graduate courses. As such, the Graduate Council will not approve such cross listing unless there is a compelling justification.