By A brief view into requirements to finish your degree
By CECELIA ROEDER
Design Editor
Attention all IU South Bend students looking to wrap up their time here within the next semester or two: College graduation is not like high school graduation.
Graduation is more than just completing the final classes on that sheet of paper your advisor has every semester and showing up to your classes. It takes work, it takes planning and it takes lots of paperwork to get that final piece of paper.
Perhaps complicating the problem of fully understanding graduation are the varying rules within IUSB. There are seven schools at IUSB currently: Raclin School of the Arts, Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics, School of Education, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, College of Health Sciences, Social Work and Purdue College of Technology. Each department has varying rules on what it takes to graduate.
It isn’t immediately clear how to graduate within many schools. No graduation information or guidelines can be found on any of the web pages for any of the six specifically IUSB schools. Contacting an individual within the school is always a possibility, but not always a guarantee. The Raclin School of the Arts did not respond to a request for graduation information from the Preface.
The only way to be sure of what you have to do to graduate is scouring the bulletin, talking with your advisor or communication from the school to you personally. One example of contact from within the department being common is with the Heath Science program. Janet Gilroy, student services director for the College of Health Sciences noted that some classes with the health majors were very small.
“Sometimes we have as few as 35 in a graduating class.”
For this reason, the college of Health Sciences can take a more individualized approach to informing students about what they need to know. Students within this area of study are given paperwork and forms within classes to ensure they know the requirements for graduation.
The Judd School of Business and Economics also highly encourages contact with advisors as a way to keep up with all the requirements.
“We send out emails to remind students,” said Patricia Agbetsiafa, administrator of Student Services within the school. “We audit those who apply to graduate to make sure everything is in order. Auditing is when we sit down, make sure every area is covered, and plan out the schedule.”
If you’re looking to graduate after the fall semester, you must apply to your specific school by March 1.
