Other Options for College Credit

Through our Prior Learning Assessment program, faculty members who are subject matter experts knowledgeable in specific areas (Business, Engineering, etc.) evaluate non-college learning from your experiences (work, life, military, volunteer, etc.) to see how they compare to a course's outcomes. This will help our faculty decide whether the learning from these experiences can be considered for college credit. For example, if you have experience as a supervisor in an industrial manufacturing firm, we will ask you to demonstrate what you have learned about production problem solving, cost-effectiveness, and supervision, and how that learning can be related to the objectives of a college course.

To be eligible for possible college credit, your prior learning experience must:

• Be equivalent to quality college-level learning
• Equivalent to a course in your program of study.
• Able to demonstrate to qualified evaluators that you possess the appropriate knowledge, competencies, skills and/or habits of mind for a particular field or fields.
• Grounded in both theory and practice. College credit will not be awarded for solely the application of a manual skill or a narrowly prescribed routine or procedure. You must have a demonstrated knowledge base of specific subject matter and understand why you do what you do.
• Generally applicable outside of the specific situation in which you acquired the experience and indicate your knowledge of basic principles of the subject area.