So many mysterious terms and acronyms to understand when your student heads off to college! You’ll understand how college works better when you understand the strange terms they use. In our fourth installment of our College Lingo series, Vicki and Lynn define and discuss more of the insider terms that colleges use that may not always be clear to parents. In this episode we cover Blue Light Phones, Articulation Agreements, Federal Work Study, Course Modifications, Independent Study, and Micro Degrees and Certificates. If you missed Parts 1-3, with 18 additional terms, check out episodes #047, #057, and #098.
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There are so many “higher education” terms and jargon that this is our fourth episode exploring the college lingo that can seem like a foreign language. In this episode, we talked about six more terms that may not make sense if you aren’t “in the know.” Having an idea what your student is talking about when they throw around these terms, or when the admissions counselors talk about them, will help parents provide guidance and ask the right questions.
If you want to check out our previous episodes with other terms, check out these earlier episodes.
#047 – College Lingo – Can You Talk the Talk? – FERPA, Parental Notification, IDEA, IEP and ADA, Admission Wait Lists, Faculty Ranks and positions and Academic Advisors.
#057 – College Lingo – Can You Talk the Talk? – Part 2 – Accommodations, Assistive Technology, Degree Map, Degree Audit, Registrar, Academic Probation or Warning.
#098 – College Lingo – Can You Talk the Talk? – Part 3 – Disability Services and Priority Registration, Satisfactory Academic Progress, Minors, the College Catalog, and the Clery Act.
In this episode we unpack Blue Light Phones, Articulation Agreements, Federal Work Study, Course Modifications, Independent Study, and Micro Degrees and Certificates.
With all of these episode, that’s 2 dozen terms. With these terms you’ll understand a whole lot about how college works. Make sure your student knows these terms as well.
If hearing our explanations of the terms in this episode just whets your appetite and you’d like to follow up to learn more, here are a few College Parent Central articles with more information.
Discussing Campus Safety with Your College Student
Eight Phone Numbers Your College Student Should Have in Their Phone
What Is a College Articulation Agreement?
My College Student Received His Financial Aid Package, But What is Federal Work Study?
Don’t forget that you can listen to all of our previous podcast episodes here or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also go to followthepodcast.com/collegeparentcentral to add our podcast (it’s free!) so that you’ll receive each new episode as we release it.
Let us know what you’d like to hear about on future podcasts! Leave a comment below or email us at [email protected].
Transcript:
Announcer: 1:40
Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. Whether your child is just beginning the college admission process or is already in college, this podcast is for you. You’ll find food for thought and information about college and about navigating that delicate balance of guidance, involvement and knowing when to get out of the way. Join your hosts, Vicki Nelson and Lynn Abrahams, as they share support and a celebration of the amazing experience of having a child in college.
Lynn Abrahams: 2:18
Welcome to the College Parent Central podcast. This is the place where we talk about all things related to our changing roles as our kids go off to college. As parents, we’re still pretty important, but our roles do change. My name is Lynn Abrahams and I am coming at this from two ways. One as a parent. I have two sons who have been in and out and through and around college, and I also am a professional in the field. I’m a learning disability specialist and I work with college students who have learning differences, and I am here with my friend and my colleague who can introduce herself.
Vicki Nelson: 3:07
I will. Hi, everybody. I’m Vicki Nelson. I am also the parent of former college students. I have three daughters. Lynn has the boys, I have the girls and they have been to college and been through college and they’re on the other side and we’ve all survived. So I have come to the podcast as a parent, but I am also a college professor, so I work with students every day and I learn a lot from what I see and what I hear from them. So we both bring those two perspectives, and they come together and we love talking about students who are almost college students, students who are thinking about college, students who are in college and sometimes students who are just stepping out of college and, more importantly, we love talking to their parents and, as Lynn said, talking about how our role changes as we do that.
Vicki Nelson: 4:09
So we are today doing what I think is one of our favorite kinds of episodes. This is the fourth episode we’ve done that has to do with college lingo. You know, college has its own sort of language and we’re hearing a lot these days for students and for parents and especially for first-generation students and parents, but not exclusively about what’s called the hidden curriculum and that is just the idea that there’s a lot of things you have to know to get through college and sometimes it’s hidden, it’s assumed, it’s not hidden intentionally to keep it secret, it’s just an assumption that everybody understands this and understands that. So these episodes, it’s the fourth one that we’ve done, have to do with college lingo. What are some of the terms that get thrown around and, as a parent, it would be helpful for you to understand.
Vicki Nelson: 5:11
So we have six things that we want to talk about today. Lynn has picked three terms that she encounters and I’ve picked three. And if you’re interested in more than just these six, we have done three previous episodes, so you can go back and listen to episode 47, episode 57, and episode 98. And we’ll list those in the show notes, but those are also “talk the talk” lingo episodes. So there’s lots, lots of terms, but today we want to talk about blue light phones. We’re going to talk about articulation agreements, we’re going to talk about federal work study, modifications for students with learning disabilities, independent studies and micro degrees and certificates.
Vicki Nelson: 6:04
So it’s a wide range covers a little bit of everything, and if those things didn’t all sound familiar to you, then stick with us, and hopefully they will before we finish.
Lynn Abrahams: 6:16
Okay, okay. You start, Vicki,
Vicki Nelson: 6:17
I’m going first. All right, I wanted to talk about blue light phones and if you’re in the admissions process, chances are, if you’ve been doing college tours, you’ve seen them and maybe you’ve heard about them. So really, it starts by thinking about campus safety, and campus safety is really a three-way partnership. We like to talk about this tripod all the time in all kinds of contexts, but parents need to talk to their students before they go to college about staying safe and thinking about safety on campus. And then students need to exercise awareness as they are moving around about campus and to behave responsibly, because those are the ways that they’re going to stay safe. And then the college has a responsibility to take precautions to keep students as safe as possible. So between parents, students and the college, that’s going to be how to help keep students stay safe.
Vicki Nelson: 7:21
So blue light phones are one of the things that colleges do to provide a safe environment, and what they are are emergency phones, or sometimes they’re call boxes on a building. Sometimes they’re freestanding that has a blue light above it, so it’s easily spotted, especially at night, that this is an emergency phone, and actually over 90% of colleges and universities that get federal aid have blue light phone system. So almost anywhere that you go you should hear about and see that and these are special phones. It’s not the old fashioned phone booth that we used to have.
Vicki Nelson: 8:06
These are special phones, freestanding or on a building with the blue light that you can see, and you don’t dial the phone. It’s just got a red button and if you activate that red button it connects directly to either campus safety or, in some cases, depending on the school, to local police directly. You don’t have to dial anything, you just press the button and you connect with campus safety. And the good thing is that the dispatcher who receives the incoming call can tell where the call is coming from, because part of the technology is that there’s a locator thing so they can tell where on campus the call is coming from. Even if you can’t speak, even if something has happened and you can’t say anything or you’re trying to be quiet or something, they can see where the call is coming from and they will send help. They’ll send officers or police officers or campus safety, depending on the setup. Sometimes the blue light might flash, which serves as a deterrent. If there’s somebody you know, if you’re uncomfortable because you feel like someone’s following you and this blue light starts to flash, that often might mean the person is going to run away and students can use it to report a crime, to report if they feel unsafe, a medical emergency, a fire, an accident, suspicious activity. They feel unsafe and they want an escort. So any of those things are reasons to push that red button and connect with the call. So it’s really important to encourage your student to locate those blue phones on campus as you walk around campus or take a special walk and just kind of notice where they are. So in an emergency you could notice where they are. And I think the last couple of things to say, these blue light phones started in about 1990 after the Clery Act, the Safety Act, went in on campuses and that was all pre-cell phone, and a lot of students and parents now, I think, may think well, what’s the point of this? Everybody has their cell phone.
Vicki Nelson: 10:35
But a couple of things, the single button, where you don’t have to have the presence of mind to dial, is important. And if you have your cell phone and you dial 911, even if you’re driving and you have a flat tire and you dial 911, that often goes to the state police and then they have to try to locate where you are before they can send help. So the difference with the blue light phone is it goes directly to the closest public safety rather than going to the state. And then they have to figure out where you are and and they can figure out where the system can locate where you are. And then again, you know, thinking about cell phones, sometimes you have no signal.
Vicki Nelson: 11:19
Maybe what you want to report is that someone just stole your cell phone and then you know you can’t, or or you know the battery dies, whatever. But this is a backup plan that can work, so not falling into that, you know, lull of well, we all have cell phones. Why should I worry about this? It’s a wonderful backup system and, you know, even if it’s used less, they found that just knowing that these are there is a lot of peace of mind for students and for parents.
Lynn Abrahams: 11:52
You know I’m thinking as a parent. This is very reassuring to me that this is happening, and if I’m around looking at colleges, I might take a look at what colleges and universities have more than others you know of these blue phones.
Vicki Nelson: 12:06
Yeah, yeah, and so many colleges have them. But it might be an interesting question to ask and say how many do you have? Where on campus are they located? So you know, that’s important in the admissions piece. And then, as you’re thinking about safety, and then you know, once students are on campus, just making sure they have some idea of where you know if they’re in this area of campus, where’s the closest one, if they’re in that area, where’s the closest one? And to be aware, so those are blue light phones.
Lynn Abrahams: 12:43
Thank you, that gave me some extra information. Your turn, my turn. My term is wow, it’s a little different than blue lights.
Lynn Abrahams: 13:00
I’d like to talk about articulation agreements and that’s something you may not know much about, but what it is is a formal arrangement between, usually between community colleges and four-year colleges to help transfer, when students transfer from one to the other. It’s a partnership between colleges. Hopefully, you know, it allows for a smooth transition. You know the goal of these articulation agreements is to protect students from backtracking and repeating or overlapping courses. I spent some time at the college that we work at working with transfer students and that could be really complicated. You don’t want to repeat courses. This articulation agreements can be also sort of a map outlining requirements and for some places it could make things more affordable. I did some looking at Massachusetts and we actually have this is our state, Massachusetts and we have a program called the Commonwealth Commitment Program and it actually offers a 10% rebate of tuition and mandatory fees to make this. You know from when you make this transition, this shift from community college to colleges, to four-year colleges.
Lynn Abrahams: 14:20
So you want to do some research and this is the key point I want to make. Different states have different situations, different colleges have different situations. You could find articulation agreements between community college and four-year private universities. I know Cornell has a particular program that they have where they have an arrangement with community colleges. So you really want to do some research. Some schools may require a certain GPA in order to make the transition easier and get this support, rebate, I guess, is what I’m talking about.
Lynn Abrahams: 15:24
The articulation agreement can be complicated. That’s the other point I want to make. Sometimes it’s between courses and courses, equivalency. I know at our school we have a database where students can get on and see courses from other schools and whether they transfer over to our school. So it could be course to course. It could be program to program, like a particular criminal justice program shifting over to a four year college criminal justice program, a particular program. It could go major to major a particular major. So, I don’t know why these things are so complicated. I have to say there’s a part of me that wonders. Gosh, they make it so difficult to find these, you know, these programs and these benefits for students, but what it means is we need to do our homework, students need to do their research, parents need to do their research, but these articulation agreements can be incredibly helpful and smooth a transition from a two-year college to a four-year.
Vicki Nelson: 16:43
Yeah, yeah, they really are a bonus for a lot of students. So if a student is deciding, I mean anybody can transfer anything.
Lynn Abrahams: 16:56
You don’t need an articulation agreement.
Vicki Nelson: 16:58
But if a student decides I want to start out at a community college, and some just go to a community college for, say, a year, take a few courses and then move on to a four-year. But is there also, and maybe you said it, I’m trying to it is complicated, so I think there’s a guarantee of acceptance. I think we have one, if not two, we’re a four-year, articulation agreement with a couple of community colleges, that if a student completes an associate’s degree at that college, probably with a certain GPA, they’re guaranteed acceptance to the college. So it means you can be assured that if you complete this program and you get your associate’s degree and you have a solid GPA, you know you’re going to get in and then you know that your courses are going to transfer.
Lynn Abrahams: 18:05
So the key here is if you’re in a community college or if you’re looking at community colleges, ask them. Do they have articulation agreements with any particular colleges or universities? Ask those questions. I think more and more students are starting in community college. It’s less expensive. They feel they’re getting some of their basic requirements done before they move on and so when you choose that community college, that’s a key question to ask. Do you have these agreements and please explain to me how it works?
Vicki Nelson: 18:45
And you know, it occurs to me it could be the opposite. You might have your sights on a certain four-year college and it would not be inappropriate to go to an admissions office at a four-year college and say, are there any community colleges with which you have an articulation agreement? And then that might help you choose what community college to go to, because you know you’ve got a path going forward and I think the people at community colleges and the people at four-year colleges all want to help make this path work for students. So they’re not. You know it’s not inappropriate to just ask lots of questions on either end
Vicki Nelson: 19:28
They’re there to to help, and the reason I have these is to make it work for students.
Lynn Abrahams: 19:34
Yep, Yep. It’s really ask a lot of questions.
Vicki Nelson: 19:36
Yeah, and to be, I think it’s good you know good sort of questions. Yeah, and to be, I think it’s good. You know a good sort of warning. Maybe it’s too strong a word, but you know that it is complicated and you will need to ask questions and try to wrap your head around it all.
Vicki Nelson: 19:53
Super, okay, my turn again, boy, we’re covering the gamut here, so I talked about blue light phones, which are safety, and now you’ve talked about articulation agreements, which is, you know, transferring and moving the swirl that happens with students from school to school.
I want to talk about money. Everybody’s favorite topic, because I want to talk about the Federal Work Study Program, which is, I think, often misunderstood. I know with one of my daughters I had three that went to college and my first one, I think, did not receive federal work study, and my second one did. But it took a while for us to wrap our heads around what it was and how it worked, and a couple of things took us by surprise with that. So the first thing is it’s part of your financial aid package, so you have to fill out the FAFSA and then this is the federal work study program, so it’s based on the FAFSA, and when you get your financial aid package you know here’s what the tuition is and here’s how much federal aid you’re going to receive, and here’s maybe some merit aid from the college. And then you may see an item there that says federal work study, X amount of money, and it’s great. That’s that much less that we have to do. There’s something like 3,400 colleges and universities in the country use it. So this is very, very common that you would see it. It’s based on financial need and it’s federally funded.
Vicki Nelson: 21:40
Here’s one of the keys. It’s not a guarantee of money. It’s not that they’re going to give you. I’m going to make up a total number, I have no idea $6,000. I may be so far off, I don’t know, but it’s not that they’re saying we’re going to give you $6,000. It’s we’re going to give your student an opportunity to work while they’re on campus to earn up to X amount of money. So it’s not a gift of money, it’s a gift of opportunity to work on campus. It’s a reimbursement program. So you still need to pay the tuition and then your student gets reimbursed for working. They have a job on campus and they get paid money usually monthly, could be weekly, depends on the college and then that’s to reimburse you for the tuition you’ve paid. So if parents have paid the tuition, the student is getting the money.
Vicki Nelson: 22:45
So it’s important, if you have work-study, to talk early on. Right when you get that package of how that’s going to work, do you say to your student okay, you’re going to have federal work study, X amount of money, that’s going to be your spending money. We’re not going to give you spending money. Or we expect you to use that to buy your textbooks. We’re not going to do that. Or that’s your free money. That’s great, you know. It’s just, it’s for you. You can do whatever you want with it. Or we expect you to pay us because we paid the tuition. There are all kinds of ways to do it, nothing right, nothing wrong. But do know that you have to pay the money first and then this is a reimbursement program to get it back and it goes directly to the student.
Vicki Nelson: 23:31
Not every job on campus will be work study, but many, many are, and there are all kinds of things. It can be working in the library, working in the cafeteria, working, tutoring, doing office and clerical work, working for buildings and grounds, working in the admissions office. There are all kinds of jobs on campus that are work-study, and each school decides which jobs and how you apply. So usually you would apply in the fall you get a job on campus and then you’re, instead of it coming. Basically what it is is, instead of it coming out of the college’s pocket to pay you for working on campus, it comes out of the federal money pocket to pay you for working on campus. What else? There’s often a limit on the number of hours you can work, and it’s usually no more than 20 hours a week and it’s usually at minimum wage, and you can only have one work-study job at a time on campus. So you can’t say, oh, I’m going to have this one for 20 hours and this one for 20 hours, I’m going to work 40 hours a week. Students shouldn’t be working that many hours anyway, but there is a limit on what you can do.
Vicki Nelson: 24:44
First-year students usually get the less interesting jobs. You need to reapply every year because you need to refill out your FAFSA every year. So the amount that you get in your financial aid package would be for a year. I think one of the things and this is where it took us a little by surprise when my daughter got work study is to think about how realistic it is to be working that amount of time. So you get a certain amount of money. Say, okay, they’ve given me and again I’m making up numbers $6,000 for the year. That would be $3,000 each semester, although it could be carried over mid-year if you didn’t use it all up the first semester.
Vicki Nelson: 25:31
Once you reach the end of that, then you can’t work anymore. So, okay, it’s this amount per semester. Now find out what minimum wage is and then divide that. How many hours over the semester will your student have to work? And what took us by surprise was when we said you know you’re going to have to work 20 hours a week to get this. It’s not like, oh, I’ll work five or 10 hours a week, but in order to get the full amount that you’ve been allotted, this is how many hours you have to work. So you know, just to really look at it and do some math and figure out how much they can work, how much they want to work, how much they can earn and I mentioned, you have to reapply every year. And the one last thing is that money that you earn for federal work-study is fully taxable as income. So many students don’t earn enough that they have to pay income tax anyway, but if they do, they have to know that the work study is also taxable. So kind of like articulation agreement, it’s a little bit complicated,
Vicki Nelson: 26:42
But just knowing, and again, financial aid people are there to answer your questions. So if all of this you know, if it makes sense to you, great. And if it’s a little confusing but you’re suddenly saying, wow, that’s more complicated than I thought, take your questions and the financial aid people are happy to work with you. It’s a great program, as long as you understand how it works.
Lynn Abrahams: 27:08
You know. I just want to add that one of my kids got a great job through this program working for the museum at his college, and so some very sweet jobs, like the jobs that people really want, are saved for this program, which can be wonderful. He absolutely loved working at the museum, so that was part of his whole experience.
Vicki Nelson: 27:36
And something like that in particular would look great on a resume.
Lynn Abrahams: 27:40
Yeah.
Vicki Nelson: 27:41
You know, if you’re working in the cafeteria it’s not bad because you’re showing that you’re responsible and you show up and you do all of that. But some of these really sweet jobs you’re right, would look pretty good in that way. And they’re also working on campus is really a good thing to do because it connects you to the campus. It connects you to the people on campus you get to know some of, depending on the job, the administrators, the faculty, the staff. There are a lot of great things about it besides the money.
Lynn Abrahams: 28:20
I have a number of students who didn’t really feel connected until they got a job on campus and then, all of a sudden, they were, like you know, part of the community. So it’s a great opportunity, it’s a bonus. Okay, so I get to go next, and the next term I’m going to talk about is modifications, and so I’m a learning disability specialist. That’s my world, and this topic of really accommodations versus modifications is a topic that I’ve brought up before. I know that in the past, one of our podcasts, I talked about the word accommodations, because that is incredibly important.
Lynn Abrahams: 29:12
When a student comes to a college and they have a documented learning disability, and they have a documented learning disability, they are allowed certain accommodations, and the point is that the words that they use are the college provides an equal opportunity for the participation of qualified students. The point of accommodations is to prevent discrimination, to level the playing field. Accommodations might be something like extended time on tests or a distraction-free environment for tests, or text-to-speech or speech-to-text software to speech or speech to text software. So these are ways to support the student, to make it an equal experience for these students along with all the other students in a course. A modification is different and it is literally modifying something in the class. So modifications are changes in the requirements for students. When you’re in high school and you have an IEP, there are often modifications very specifically stated in the IEP, changes that teachers have to provide for students. It might be something like reading less than other students or something very concrete, but in high school that could be part of the IEP, but that IEP is not legal in college.
Vicki Nelson:
That’s really important that parents understand that.
Lynn Abrahams: 31:04
Because if students have received certain modifications and they’re used to it, once they get to college it’s a different world. Again. the laws shift and the goal is to prevent discrimination, but it’s not necessarily to create a successful college experience for the student. So modifications are different. I found a really good example of this that made it so clear to me, and it was actually by Elizabeth Hamblet in her book the Seven Steps to College Success, and Elizabeth Hamblet is one of our co-podcasters.
Vicki Nelson:
She’s one of our team.
Lynn Abrahams: 31:50
She’s one of the team, but she talks in her book about a student who’s in a public speaking class. Now, Vicki has taught public speaking classes, You’re a communication professor, so you have been in this situation and what if a student who has a diagnosed, a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder or a language-based learning disability. And they go up to the professor and they say I would like to be exempted from speaking in class because I can’t do it, Excuse me. So what Elizabeth Hamblet says in her book is an accommodation for that. Well, first of all, to allow the student not to do it is a modification that changes what is required for students, so that is not required by the college to do. An accommodation might be something like allowing the student to speak to a smaller group instead of the full class, or even speak alone to the professor. But here’s the point it’s the professor’s call on whether that’s a modification or not.
Vicki Nelson:
That was going to be one of my questions.
Lynn Abrahams:
And if the professor feels that this is changing the course objective, then they are allowed to say no, that’s a modification.
The way this made sense to me was there are certain skills that students are required to get through their courses. There might be requirements in their field of study. Public speaking might be one of those. You might have to know how to speak in public in order to do a certain major, political science or something, and so that’s required. There might be some requirements in medical classes that are required to go to medical school because it’s part of the actual job. The student will be required to do that.
Lynn Abrahams: 34:16
If they need the course to be modified in order to do it, then they ought to stop and think about whether this is what they want to be doing. Okay, Because there are so many choices. I mean also, if you want to be in the medical world, there’s so many choices. There are ways to do other things, but the key is here that colleges are required to provide accommodations to level the playing field, if it doesn’t interfere with the course’s goal. Okay, and it’s a hard distinction. I know a number of students come from high schools and they really feel that they should get certain accommodations that the college is not required to give. It’s all about the goal of the course, the objectives of the course, and whether you’re changing that. You’re not really supposed to be modifying a course in the college level.
Vicki Nelson: 35:13
So it sounds as though if you have a student who’s had an IEP as they’re going to college, it’s important for parents to understand this first of all and then to talk to their student and talk about what, this is such an important distinction. Let’s look at your IEP and say what on that IEP has been an accommodation and what on that IEP has been a modification, and know that the modifications are not going. There’s no guarantee of anything, but the chances are better that the college will grant you either the same or similar accommodations, but not the modifications. So to understand that.
Lynn Abrahams: 36:08
Right. I have worked with students on the college level who have come in with their past IEP limited the amount of work they were required to do. That’s just not going to happen on the college level. That’s a modification. That’s a change.
Vicki Nelson: 36:27
And it strikes me that I like your example of what some of the modifications might be for that student in terms of speaking. Another modification. That might be something. Again, it depends on you know what are the outcomes of this course and what is the barrier. Why do you think you need modifications? But a modification in some cases might be, we’ll allow you to take that course instead of this course. Sometimes you know, if we really think about it and it would put the department, I would think, in that position of really saying, okay, what are the outcomes of this course that’s the barrier for you, and are there any other courses that we offer that would achieve those same outcomes for this student but would not have that barrier?
Lynn Abrahams: 37:27
So here’s a key difference between high school and college, though.
Vicki Nelson:
Okay,
Lynn Abrahams:
In college it’s the student’s responsibility to find that, not the college’s responsibility. In high school. It’s the high school’s responsibility to find another course to substitute. In college a student may do their own research and say and bring it up to the department and request it.
But it’s not the department’s job to find that substitution.
Vicki Nelson: 37:59
That’s really. That’s good, yeah, yeah, yeah. Responsibility is on students, on the student, yeah, and understanding that an accommodation levels the playing field.
Lynn Abrahams: 38:03
And it’s good for parents to have these discussions with students because at this point you know parents can be a really good support, you know, if students, you know, parents can help students understand what some of these shifts are, if they understand it themselves.
Vicki Nelson: 38:32
And if you know if a student has an IEP, has had an IEP all through and there are. I think like one of my daughters is a SPED teacher, so I you know, I know that she has IEP meetings with families and by high school, making sure that your student is part of that IEP meeting so that they really are taking ownership,
Lynn Abrahams:
Absolutely.
Vicki Nelson: 39:02
Yeah really important. Okay, I want to do another one which has to do with studying and classes and courses.
Vicki Nelson: 39:11
This is a little more on the other end of the spectrum because it’s in terms of, it’s something more for, probably, junior and senior year, not so much for this, you know, beginning of college. So it may be down the road for some people. Or if you have a student in college, it, you know, it helps to start thinking early on and they may come home talking about it. And that’s an independent study, which is really, you know, essentially what it says. It’s doing some work independently, by yourself rather than in a course. So an independent study is for a student who is interested in a particular subject or a particular course or really wants to pursue something, but the school doesn’t offer that course or that topic in their curriculum. They look and they say I really want to do something with this because it’s related to my profession and I just want to dig into this. They look through all the courses that are offered and say they don’t have anything on it. So then what that student can do is go to a faculty member with a proposal, you know, or even just an idea, and then the student and the faculty member work together on a proposal to create a course that this student will do independently.
Vicki Nelson: 40:36
It’s independent study and it usually is maybe junior year or, more likely, senior year, and the student needs to be, they need to understand themselves well enough to know whether they’re going to be able to work independently. You know, without a class that you have to go to all the time and deadlines and all of that I mean you still may have deadlines, but you have to be more self-motivated and all that. So then the student takes this topic, this idea, to a professor, find someone who’s willing to sponsor them and then together they create this course.
Vicki Nelson: 41:19
Sometimes you’re required to have a certain GPA in order to do it. If your GPA is low, there may be some question about your ability to do it on your own. And you’ve got to know you’ve got good study habits and all of that. So what to do? You start early, plan early, because it takes time. It’s not something that you know, the first day of classes you go and say I need another course, I’m going to do an independent study Work with the professor who’s going to sponsor it, and you usually need to write a proposal and there may be a form. You know colleges love forms.
Lynn Abrahams: 42:00
Lots of forms.
Vicki Nelson: 42:02
And it’s probably online these days and you usually the things you need to think about and work with the professor. You need to have a purpose or a rationale for why you want to do this thing, why you can’t just take a course that’s already there? How does it fit in with your academic goals? Why is this the right thing for you? What is going to be the content of the course? What books are you going to read? What articles are you going to read? What are the outcomes and objectives? This is language that professors use, but the outcomes are what do I want the student to have accomplished by the end of this course? Every course I teach, I have to say here are the outcomes. Here’s what the student should be able to do at the end of, or know or understand or produce by the end of the course. So you would need to work with your professor. What are the outcomes and objectives? What are the assignments going to be? What are the due dates going to be for those assignments? Is there going to be just one paper due at the end. Are there going to be things along the line? When are they going to be? How is it going to be assessed or graded? Are assignments going to be graded? Is it one grade at the end? What is the weighting of assignments? All of those things you would normally find on a syllabus you’re working out together with the professor. And then what is going to be the schedule of meetings? Sometimes the professor may say, based on all this other stuff we’ve thought about, if we meet once a month we’re going to be fine and depending on someone else, it might be. I want to meet with you once a week and we’re going to talk about what you’ve learned that week and where you are and how it’s progressing and all that. You and the professor work that out. So essentially, you’re planning a course and then you’re going to do that course on your own, together with that professor, and then you submit that form and you have to get approval. So the registrar or sometimes there’s a committee or the department, somebody needs to say, yep, we’ve looked at this, it looks good, it makes sense. Make sure you, when you’re planning your schedule, it’s a course, it’s not a class, that that’s listed in the same way. But you have to make sure you have enough time in your week, every week, to do this thing. It’s a real course that you’re doing. You’re just doing it on your own and being sure that you think you can stay organized and motivated and disciplined. So you know, there are all kinds of things that could be.
Vicki Nelson: 44:43
If you’re a creative person and you’re in a theater program, perhaps, and you’re a writer, it might be I’m going to write a play by the end of the semester and then you know you work with the professor in terms of what research do you have to do about playwriting? And maybe you have to do historical research because you’re setting it in a certain time. Maybe you want to write a novel. Maybe you’re an education major and you want to design an entire curriculum around something and you want to do that. Maybe you want to produce a film. Maybe you have done a project or a paper in a class and you want to take it to the next level because it really inspired you. Or you’re a science major and you’re a researcher and you want to research something, particularly in the lab, so all kinds of things can be done and it’s a great opportunity to tailor-make something just for you.
Lynn Abrahams: 45:39
You know, it sounds like the first step is finding a faculty member. That’s key, you know.
Vicki Nelson: 45:49
Actually, that’s the second step. The first step is to have an idea of what you think you want to do or what you want to study, and it could be very concrete or it could be vague, but you have something, you have an idea, and that’s going to determine who do you approach. You know who are you going to ask to work with, right, but yeah,
Lynn Abrahams: 46:13
and if you get somebody to work with you, then You’re good to go.
Vicki Nelson:
You’re probably good to go, but who knows?
Lynn Abrahams:
But it’s a great opportunity to know about. You know, the last thing I’m going to talk about are just three terms that I’ve heard thrown around and you know, I wasn’t sure I understood what they were. The three terms are micro degree, certificate programs and certification, and the reason I’m picking these three things are that many students choose not to do the sort of typical four-year route in college. They might choose a shorter, more abbreviated program, and at least a micro degree and a certificate program are those kinds of programs. So a micro degree is an abbreviated educational program and it usually supports some kind of job training or specialized training. It usually consists of three to five classes and takes less than a year to complete. So there are more and more of these programs popping up.
Lynn Abrahams: 47:29
Colleges will offer these little chunks, basically, and they’re calling them micro degrees. It’s a quicker process. It’s a quicker process. Now, a certificate program is very, very similar to that. It sort of is a program that verifies that a student received education about a certain topic. And certificate programs can take less than a year or they can be even longer, these can be a little bit longer and they’re usually offered both online or in person.
Lynn Abrahams: 48:09
One of my sons, after his four-year college degree, went and did a certificate program in software design, and so it really helped him because it gave him real hands-on work in that particular subject. Not to be confused with a certification Now, certification shows that the student has passed some kind of test that usually demonstrates you know, sometimes it’s job related, in that there are industry standards for certain jobs and students have to prove that they have passed that, you know, either some test or some hands-on performance that shows that they are ready to go. So a certification could be a quicker thing, that could be an assessment, a test. But micro-degree and certificate programs are becoming more and more popular, certainly less expensive. They’re more focused on job training and there are more and more of them around.
Vicki Nelson: 49:23
It’s really interesting. And it’s interesting to differentiate and you know so, you know certification, I’m thinking. You know our education majors have to pass the MTEL, which is the Massachusetts I don’t know teaching something or other teacher of elementary education or something like that. And that’s the big thing. A lot of their work through their curriculum is preparing them to take this test that they have to pass and get that certification in order to teach in the public schools.
Vicki Nelson: 50:00
The nurses have that certification. I used to know what it was because I have one of my daughters is a nurse, but it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal that they have to take in order to become a registered nurse. So they’ve been around, yeah, and it can be a quick thing, but it also can be, you know, a capstone thing of a program that the whole program is working toward being able to get this certification to work in the field. Or it could be in the middle of a program to allow students to pursue the degree.
Vicki Nelson:
I think education actually has that two step thing, that students at the end of the first year need to take one phase of that in order to continue in the program, which can be a really good thing, because if you can’t pass that, you don’t want to spend four years and then not be able to pass the end one.
Vicki Nelson: 50:57
So, yeah, and these micro degrees, and do you know? Um, and you know, maybe we don’t know, but it would be something for somebody to ask if you have a, if you have a couple of micro degrees somewhere, can they then be sort of combined and put toward, if you, if you do a micro degree in this and micro degree in that, and then maybe you in that, and then maybe you say you know, I think I want the full Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science. The micro degree could count toward that?
Lynn Abrahams: 51:29
So that’s the question you ask every college. And every college that offers this kind of degree? You want to ask them you know that particular question.
Vicki Nelson: 51:39
We don’t have to know all the answers. We just have to know what are the important questions to ask. Well, really, that’s very true. What we want to do is arm parents to have conversations with students, to be able to ask the questions you need to ask and to know the terminology when you hear it thrown around and in education, for some reason there are they people love this fancy terminology and a lot of acronyms too, you know.
Lynn Abrahams: 52:12
So you want to. Don’t feel bad about asking.
Vicki Nelson:
Maybe sometime we’ll do an episode just on acronyms, acronyms, just do all of these acronyms
Lynn Abrahams:
Well you know, one of the reason we started doing this was that you and I were in education episode just on acronyms, Acronyms, Just do all of these acronyms. It would be helpful. One of the reasons we started doing this was that you and I were in education in higher ed and we had so many questions about some of this terminology.
Vicki Nelson: 52:33
When our kids went to school.
Lynn Abrahams: 52:35
When our kids went to college.Yeah, and every college is different, so you know so you know.
Vicki Nelson: 52:37
I think the important thing for parents is, if you’re hearing a lot of these things that don’t make sense, don’t feel overwhelmed and just sort of you know, throw up your hands, ask, ask your student if they know and if your student doesn’t know, together see if you can find out. Because the more you understand about this terminology that we all use, the better you’re going to be in a position to be able to advocate and get what you need and understand as you move through and there are lots of terms. So we hope these six helped. We’ll list them in the show notes for this episode and we’ll also list those earlier three episodes and then also on the College Parent Central website, collegeparentcentral.com. If you go to resources, the tab at the top, there is a glossary and there are over 100 terms there of just about anything you could possibly think of to want to know, although I keep thinking of new terms and we keep building that list.
Vicki Nelson: 53:45
Some of the ones we talked about today are there and some aren’t yet, but you start to learn the language, learn to talk, the talk and it will help.
So thanks for sticking with us through all the way to the end. We hope it was helpful. If you know anyone else that you think would find any of our podcasts or all of the articles on the website helpful, whether they’re at the beginning of the process, in the middle of the process or thinking about next steps after college. Please share our information with them and we invite them to join along. So thanks a lot and we’ll see you next time.
Lynn Abrahams:
Bye-bye.
