Degree Requirements

Requirements for Certificates

Undergraduate certificates in the College are offered as concurrent credentials earned while a student is an undergraduate at Indiana University pursuing a conventional baccalaureate degree with a declared major. To earn certificates students must complete a significant body of work in a sub-specialty or interdisciplinary field of study. The certificate marks the acquisition of a particular set of related skills that cross traditional curricular boundaries and can have practical applications that grow out of skills earned in the classroom. Certificates can require as few as 21, and as many as 30, credit hours of work. Many Indiana University students outside the College add certificates to their pre-professional degrees. Due to their interdisciplinary nature, certificates often include a wide variety of core skills courses from a broad spectrum of departments and (inter)disciplines.  

In completing requirements for certificates, students should be aware of the following College of Arts and Sciences policies and procedures:

  1. A certificate must include at least 21 credit hours.
  2. A certificate must include at least 9 credit hours at the 300–400 level.
  3. Students must complete at least 9 credit hours in the certificate in residence on the Bloomington campus.
  4. Certain departments and programs do not count 100-level language courses toward the requirements for their certificates.
  5. Any course in which the student earns a grade below C– may not be used to fulfill a certificate requirement.
  6. The grade point average of all courses taken in the certificate must be at least 2.000.
  7. Some certificates may have a higher overall grade point average requirement.
  8. Courses taken to satisfy the Foundations requirement in English Composition may not be applied toward a certificate requirement.
  9. With the approval of the department or program offering the credentials, students may earn both a certificate and a major from the same department or program so long as the two credentials are fundamentally different.
  10. The Policy on Counting a Course toward Multiple Degree Objectives applies.

Course–specific requirements for certificates can be found in the "List of Certificates" or in departmental entries in this Bulletin.