When students throw their caps into the air at graduation, they expect to move on with their lives — not come back to school to take more classes.
But even when a student walks at graduation, they are not fully graduated until their degree has been conferred, meaning that it has been awarded by the university, said Sue Ohrablo, director of academic advising at H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship.
Ohrablo said that conferment is a process that involves several steps starting with the student applying for his or her degree.
“The advising office starts the review of the completion of program requirements,” Ohrablo said. “Then it goes through the registrar’s office. Then the registrar’s office gives it to the board of trustees. Then the board reviews the list of names and confers them once a month.”
For example, if a student applies for a degree May 10, the degree will not be conferred until the end of May. Even when a student has completed all required classes, a student still has to apply for his or her degree to make it official.
Jennifer Lopez, senior communication studies major, didn’t know that she had to apply for her degree and thought she graduated last May when she walked at commencement. Lopez, who is taking the last class to complete her degree, was upset when she received an e-mail in June saying that she needed another course to graduate.
“In my case,” Lopez said. “I was waiting for my diploma because I’m applying to graduate school, and it just didn’t happen. Instead, I got that e-mail and now I have to wait to get my diploma, hopefully, in December.”
Lopez thought that since she had been at NSU for four years, she was eligible to graduate.
“You think you’re graduating,” Lopez said. “You’re expecting your diploma in the mail. You want to be able to put that on your resume and I felt for sure that I was clear to go,” Lopez said. “I’d been there long enough and I’d taken enough classes.”
Lopez said that she thought the graduation process should be more organized.
“I think that, especially for the senior students or students who have about 120 credits, it should be automatic to get evaluated for a degree,” she said. “And they should know at least two months before graduation that they’re going to get an extra class in December so it doesn’t take them by surprise.”
These surprises are sometimes caused by misinformation. Ohrablo said that when students do not follow their program’s catalog, which contains rules for completing their education.
“When you enter and begin classes, that’s called your catalog term,” she said. “That means the curriculum, the actual expected set of courses that you take, cannot and will not change, so as long as you stay enrolled concurrently and step out no more than a year.”
According to Ohrablo, students might go online to check which courses they have left, but are actually looking at a different catalog since curriculums are changed and updated. This may result in students taking courses that do not apply to their catalogs. Students’ catalogs do not automatically change to the latest ones unless they ask their advisers to switch them to the new curriculum.
Ohrablo said that there are three things students should do to ensure they do not have to take any classes after their senior year: apply for their degree, apply for their commencement ceremony, and make sure they receive their diplomas in the mail.
Ohrablo suggested that stu-dents check with their advisers at least once a semester prior to registration to plan their courses. She also suggested that students check their Curriculum, Advising and Program Planning evaluation degree evaluation system on WebSTAR.
