STUDY ABROAD COURSE APPROVAL GUIDELINES
Approval of study abroad courses for majors is granted by the Chair of the Department. Please be aware that “Approval by Chair” on eBear does not guarantee that the course will count for your major—only that it theoretically can. Progress toward fulfillment of major requirements must be monitored/approved by your major advisor.
Approval of study abroad courses for nonmajors (including minors) is granted by the departmental Study Abroad advisor.
Please make sure you correctly mark your status, so that your ebear submission will be forwarded to the right person.
To submit a course for study abroad approval, please present as much as you can of the following information, in the program’s documentation rather than your own description. Whenever it is possible to submit a specific syllabus in addition to brochure descriptions, please do so. If you cannot furnish all pertinent data through ebear, please obtain a paper approval form from the Study Abroad Dean’s Office and submit to the appropriate person in SLAC.
- Course department/discipline and numbering. Official title and description.
- Instructor information: title/degrees
- Number of credits awarded by program. Total number of in-class instruction hours; number of meetings per week, length of meetings, total number of weeks. Please keep in mind Barnard may not assign the same number of credits as the study abroad program.
- Percentage of class time conducted entirely in Spanish.
- Travel or fieldwork associated with course.
- How evaluation is conducted (number of quizzes, exams, compositions, other elements of grading). Amount/length/language of written work required.
- For language courses: Level of the course, according to American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages proficiency guidelines (elementary, intermediate, advanced, superior), or Common European Frame of Reference Guidelines (A1-2, B1-2, C1-2). If another proficiency framework is used, or none, please detail.
- For language courses: were any of the four basic language skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing) isolated, or especially emphasized.
- For literature/culture/upper-level courses: was the focus on Spain, Latin America (single country or global), transatlantic.
- Please submit also the course numbers and titles of other Spanish courses taken at Barnard. If you already took Intermediate 1 and/or II (for example), you cannot receive major credit for the same level of course taken abroad.
Majors/minors: If you find that you need to change your course choices while already abroad, or during a period when you cannot reach an advisor at Barnard, please look at our course-level descriptions under the menu “Courses” (language, bridge/introductory, upper-level). Consider whether your chosen courses would fit within those categories, and always take a course at a level higher than those you’ve taken before.