Faculty Guide to
Off-Campus Study

Welcome to the Center for Global Programs! We thank you for your support in helping Denisonians gain a global perspective on their education. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for any questions at globalprograms@denison.edu.

Academic Planning 

As part of our application process, students are required to meet with their advisor or a faculty member in their major department, to discuss their academic plan and sign off on their intention to go off campus for a summer or semester. 

CHANGES THIS FALL: This year the student will complete a digital Transfer Credit Form to indicate their plan to study off campus and to list the courses they think they need to take while off campus to stay on track. Once completed by the student, this form will go to you, the advisor, to complete. The student must schedule a time to meet with you to discuss this form before you complete and submit it. Please meet with your student and walk through the remaining requirements they must fulfill in order to graduate on time. Discuss courses they could take off campus to help them stay on track, but please also find backups for anything they want to do while away as we cannot guarantee any particular course will be offered or will transfer to fulfill a Denison requirement.  After this meeting, please complete your portion of the form and submit it.

From there it will go to the Off-Campus Study Team, who will refer to it while reviewing the student's application. Once approved, the OCS team will add any personalized feedback for the student to the Transfer Credit form and send it to the Registrar's Office. You will also receive a copy so that you can see what we have shared with the student. This feedback will also be sent to the student directly via a Decision Letter from our portal. 

Important Note: We assume that after the student discusses their plan with their advisor, and then chooses programs, that they are choosing programs that will fulfill their needs. If we see any issues with the program they have chosen, we will note those in the feedback, but will not prevent a student from applying to the program they've chosen as long as they are eligible. 

Helpful tips to keep in mind:

• The standard course load for OCS programs may be as few as 3 courses or as many as 5-6.

• Many programs have at least one required course.

• Denison requires students to take the local language while abroad (see our Language Policy), so please factor this into planning. 

• To the extent possible, try to limit the number of required courses your student must take during the semester off campus. Instead, discuss various plans and backup plans, so that even if the student can't take that course abroad, they will not jeopardize their ability to graduate on time. 

  1. If students could elect to fulfill a requirement while off campus but could also take it another semester on campus, please indicate that clearly in the Advisor Comments so that we know if there is flexibility. 

• Electives mean courses that count towards Denison elective credit, but not towards a major, minor or GE. Many majors have options to fulfill requirements (e.g. any 200-level ENGL course), please list these as a major requirement in the field on the left and then list a particular course number only if the student must take that exact course. 

• The GE Competencies (e.g., P, Q, R, & W) should be completed on campus and not off campus!

OCS Program Selection

You can view all of our approved semester OCS programs in Via Global. Students who are interested in Summer options should visit this page that explains how to select programs for these terms. All students are required to attend a Group Advising session where an OCS Advisor from the Center for Global Programs walks students through the process of searching and selecting an appropriate OCS program. Some departments recommend specific programs through Departmental Advising Guides. 

Departmental Advising Guides

The Center for Global Programs is working with department chairs across campus to design and publish departmental advising guides. The goal is to have these guides aid students in navigating the off-campus study process by providing department-specific policies and recommendations. You can see the guides we've already published here. This is an ongoing project, and new guides will be added in the future. 

OCS Application

For full details about the application process, timeline, and deadlines, visit our Application Process page. Students are required to start the application process in the early fall for programs starting the following summer, fall, and spring of the following academic year. Typically, students apply their sophomore year to study off campus as juniors. Students start the process by opening the Denison OCS Application on our platform Via Global (on Application Process page). Denison limits the number of students approved for programs and terms through caps, so please encourage students to apply as soon as they express interest to ensure the best chance of receiving a space on their first choice program. If students miss the application deadline, please instruct them to email our office right away so that we can talk to them about what alternative options are available to them. 

Transfer Credit for OCS Programs

The Registrar's Office provides detailed instructions for students to navigate the transfer credit process in MyDenison (must log in to view page). Following a student's approval to OCS, the advisor will be notified via email along with any feedback we've given the student. From there, the Transfer Credit Form will be used for students to secure transfer approval for specific courses. To ensure that OCS credit will transfer back to Denison, students must obtain transfer credit pre-approval before their program begins (note, however, that students studying with university programs will not always have their courses until they are on site; in those cases, students should secure approval at that time).

Without pre-approval for a given course, there is no guarantee that it will transfer back to Denison!

OCS Language Policy

Denison students studying in a non-English-speaking country during the semester are required to take a foreign language course in the local language offered by the program or partner university (see our policy here). This requirement is waived by Denison for students with a documented language disability accommodation on file in Denison's Academic Resource Center (ARC), although there are some programs that would require a language course regardless of an accommodation. Some programs have a similar requirement, but this applies to all programs in non-English speaking countries for Denison students. 

Additional Helpful Information to Share with Students

• While students are off campus, a 12-credit generic “placeholder” is placed on the student's record (INTD 075 - 12 credits). Upon completion of the program, the number of credits shown on the student's OCS transcript will replace the “placeholder” credits.

• Credits earned at another institution, including those earned abroad, are displayed on Denison’s transcripts in the upper left-hand side under “TRANSFER CREDIT ACCEPTED BY THE INSTITUTION.”

  • They will not display in the Denison credits area for semester abroad since the students did not attend Denison during that time.

  • Transfer grades display as “T*” where the “T” denotes transfer and “*” denotes the grade.

  • Transfer grades DO NOT factor into the student's Denison GPA.