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Graduate education is the pursuit of knowledge at an advanced level. Graduate educatin is distinct and different from undergraduate education both in kind and in degree. It demands of students greater intellectual maturity and autonomy, a deeper responsibility for their own learning, more intense study, and the master of different and more comples skills. An earned graduate degree is a distinction. Award of the degree symbolizes both the student's accomplishment and the university's endorsement. A student may judge his or her own achievement, but the university must decide what it will or will not endorse. Specifically, graduate education imposes certain obligations, and a student receiving a master's degree must have demonstrated the following:
1. an in-depth knowledge of significant theories, issues and findings, and mastery
of appropriate skills within a specific discipline;
2. the ability to apply such knowledge and skills;
3. the ability to read, interpret, and evaluate research literature and to relate
results to selected areas of interest;
4. the ability to analyze problems and to critique attempted solutions, especially
within the student's own discipline;
5. the ability to integrate knowledge from a variety of disciplines;
6. the ability to design and implement a research, scholarly, or creative project; and
7. the ability to communicate scholarly thought to professional colleagues through
writing and discussion.
There are two categories of graduate degree-seeking students.
Graduate degree-seeking students are those students admitted to a graduate degree program.
Master's degree candidates are those degree-seeking students who have applied for and been admitted to candidacy.
Student study plans are developed with advisors before the end of the first trimester of enrollment. The advisor will explain the degree program and, with the student, develop a study plan that will lead to degree completion of the selected major. The student study lan will detail the degree requirements for the major selected in effect at the time of admission as a degree-seeking student. It will specify the amount of transfer credit, proficiency credit, and credit for experiential learning applied toward the degree requirements; the total credit-hour requirement for the degree; required and elective courses; and the maximum number of credit-hours and/or courses that can be taken off campus and applied toward the degree.
Students are encouraged to contact faculty members in specific discipline areas in which they have interests for additional academic advisement.
The study plan must be reviewed and updated whenever a student:
1. applies for acceptance of transfer credit earned from another institution after
enrollment at Governors State University;
2. wishes to substitute course work specified on the plan;
3. changes major; or
4. is readmitted.
Students choosing to take a course not specified in the study plan may find that such credit may not apply toward the degree requirements.
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