Articulation Agreements
Current Shepherd University Students
A Shepherd student must apply for transfer approval to take a non-Shepherd University course prior to enrollment at another institution. To apply for transfer approval, the student must submit a permission/approval form (green form) obtained from the Registrar’s Office prior to registration at the other institution. The student will follow all procedures enumerated on that form, including signatures of approval from the department chair of the discipline where the equivalent Shepherd course is offered, and from the student’s faculty advisor. After obtaining the appropriate signatures, the student submits the completed form to the Registrar’s Office.
If the transfer form is not approved for any reason, the student may petition the Admissions and Credits committee for an exception to academic policy regarding the transfer of those credits:
- No Shepherd University D or F grade can be replaced by an equivalent transfer course.
- Only courses from regionally-accredited institutions of higher education may be transferred to Shepherd.
- A maximum of 72 transfer semester hours from accredited two-year institutions may count toward undergraduate graduation requirements.
- The last twelve hours of coursework before graduation must be completed at Shepherd.
- A GPA deficiency in the Shepherd (institutional) GPA cannot be made up at another institution.
Once you have completed an approved course at another institution, you must have an official transcript sent to the Office of the Registrar at the address below. No credits will be posted based on an unofficial transcript of any kind.
Prospective Students
First, you must have an official transcript sent to Shepherd by your previous school. No credits will be evaluated or posted based on an unofficial transcript of any kind. The Office of Admissions and the Office of the Registrar work together with the academic departments to evaluate your credits in an expeditious manner, and will make every effort to have an evaluation ready for you by the time you attend an advisement/registration session. There are exceptions, of course: if your official transcripts are delayed for any reason, for example, or if your credits require additional review by multiple department chairpersons.
Second, you must declare a major because different majors impose special restrictions. If you change majors, by the way, the way your transfer credits apply to your new degree program may also change!
Third, after receiving your evaluation from the Office of Admissions, you may believe that some of your courses, which may have transferred as elective only, are very much like Shepherd’s courses. Take a copy of your transcript, a catalog description of your course, and a course syllabus, and go to the chairperson of the department which offers the comparable course at Shepherd. Explain the course and be prepared to answer questions about what you learned. If the chairperson decides that it is a satisfactory substitute for the Shepherd course, he or she will send the appropriate form to the Office of the Registrar.
FAQs:
Unfortunately, I earned some lousy grades at the school I’m transferring from. Will these show on my Shepherd transcript?
Our policy is to post all courses and grades–the good, the bad, and the ugly–so that your faculty advisor can understand your entire academic history.
I’ve taken a couple of different 4-credit lab science courses at the various schools I’m transferring from. Do I still need to do another full 8-credit sequence from the General Studies listing in the catalog?
- A statewide policy, the West Virginia Core Coursework Agreement, provides for flexibility for transfer students in how they satisfy our General Studies requirements. With some restrictions–such as when your degree program requires a specific General Studies course or sequence of courses, for example–you can use transfer courses falling within broad General Studies categories to satisfy our General Studies requirements. So, depending on your program, we might be able to allow those two 4-credit lab sciences to satisfy our GS lab science requirement, whether they match our requirements or not–or even whether they match each other or not!
- The same flexibility applies to transfer courses within Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Communication and Literature, and Mathematics.
- If you are bringing in only one 4-credit lab science, you can combine that course with any other 4-credit lab science course from the GS listing in the catalog.
- Students presenting a single 4-credit introductory Biology course in transfer from another institution should make an appointment with the Biology department chair, Dr. David Wing, dwing@shepherd.edu, to determine which Shepherd General Biology course articulates with the transferred course.
- Though this agreement was designed to apply to students moving between institutions within West Virginia, we apply this flexibility to all of our transfer students, regardless of where they are transferring from.
The chair of the department offering your program may be able to give you some preliminary and unofficial information too. You can see department names and send email to chairs HERE.