Advising System - 2020-21 Graduate Catalog

Careful planning of a degree program is important for all graduate students, and especially vital for those who spread graduate work over more than one year. For this reason, incoming graduate students need to know their responsibilities as well as those of the program and the Graduate College.

Student Responsibilities

Each student is responsible for meeting the specific degree requirements outlined in this catalog and the deadlines published under “Academic Regulations,” also in this catalog.

Graduate Advisor

Students have a graduate advisor (also called a major professor) who is the primary academic, intellectual contact for the student. This advisor and the graduate student work together in their creative activity/research. The graduate student receives guidance from this advisor as well as from the examining and thesis or dissertation committee when appropriate.

Graduate Coordinator

In addition, each program has a graduate coordinator whose duties include informing graduate students about the policies, practices, and deadlines of the Graduate College. This person is responsible for monitoring the academic progress of each student throughout his or her degree program. The graduate coordinator also provides various kinds of written certification of a student’s degree progress which are subsequently posted in the official records of the Graduate College and Office of Registration and Records. Specific requirements about the various steps in matriculation toward the degree are available from the program’s graduate coordinator and the Graduate College.

Graduate College

The Graduate College serves primarily as a monitor of the student’s progress toward a degree and is the coordinator of activities that are beyond the scope of the program.

International Student Services

International Student Services provides student advising, work authorization and advising, advocacy, on-boarding, programming and personal support for international graduate students. The Office is the liaison with the U.S. Department of State, US Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Homeland Security concerning student immigration issues.  ISS also serves the BGSU community as a resource for international recruitment and transcript evaluation, as needed. The International Student Services Office is located at 319 Administration Building.