Some students on the University’s Griffin Campus may have trouble fulfilling a University requirement, members of the Educational Affairs Committee discussed at a meeting Tuesday.

According to University-wide degree requirements, 45 of a student’s last 60 credit hours must be completed “in residence,” which means the hours must be earned on a University of Georgia campus.

But a few students in Griffin are having trouble with this rule and may ask to waive the requirement, said Bob Boehmer, associate provost for institutional effectiveness.

These particular students transferred to Griffin still needing to complete some lower division general requirements. However, the Griffin campus only offers upper division classes, making it impossible for students to complete those core courses in residence.

“They will have lower division requirements that they have to meet in order to get the UGA degree,” Boehmer said. “But we only offer upper division courses at Griffin, so they have to go to – typically Gordon [College] or Clayton [State University] – and get those hours.”

For now, Educational Affairs will deal with these issues on a case-by-case basis. Longer-term solutions might come from better advising of transfer students and offering the lower division courses on the Griffin Campus, Boehmer said.

“There’s a number of those courses that we could offer with UGA faculty,” he said.

But the waiver requests are minimal and broader changes to the overall University policy will not be considered.

“There should be no academic policies applicable to any of the programs on the extended campuses that are fundamentally different than the policies applicable to Athens,” Boehmer said.

The committee also discussed issues related to the University’s policy concerning write-in courses.

Write-in courses are classes taken by students at other institutions, which transfer to the University for credit but do not transfer in with a University course number.

According to the policy, students looking to transfer courses may ask any faculty member who works in the department relevant to the course to assign an equivalent University course number.

But some faculty members say there is inconsistency in which courses are getting approval and who is approving them.

“I find that people who have never taught the course that is being asked for are signing off and saying that it’s an equivalent course,” said Rodney Mauricio, an associate professor of genetics.

He said this could lead to courses inappropriately being classified as equivalents.

“People can sign off [on a course even if they] don’t actually have a knowledge of the course,” he said.

The committee plans to review the policy and come up with suggestions for improvement at a later date.