The department has put the PandA graduate student handbook of course requirements, assistantship guidlines, exam descriptions, etc on the web. When most of us arrived we received a hardcopy which many of us have found useful in meetings with advisors over credits and schedules. I, for one, was unhappy to hear that future graduate students would not have a hardcopy of this roadmap for themselves. Worse yet, I was afraid that the department could change the requirements and leave you with nothing but the latest webpage to use in your defense.

However, the fear that the web-posted requirements can be readily changed is checked by the paperwork that must be filed before those changes affect you. I talked to Mariana Ibañez, the Graduate Academic Affairs Specialist at OGS, about this. At the Office of Graduate Studies are kept on file the four forms pertinent to changing requirements:

Soon, these forms and their progress through the various ratification committees will be on the web. For now, if a dispute arises between your transcript and your degree, OGS has all of the pertinent, current degree requirements on file. You may view these forms if you make an appointment with Mariana.

IMPORTANT: The form that actually gets you your degree is a sheet listing what you have satisfied. You may have satisfied these requirements by taking exactly what you needed right here at UNM. Or, you may have transferred credits or done work in another department or taken a non-graduate listed course (or any number of scenarios) which your advisor has told you will satisfy so-and-so equivalently in the department catalogue. Well, those courses don't satisfy anything until the department signs off on that form saying that they recognized the outside works towards the degree. So, be sure to discuss with your academic faculty advisor any issue pertaining to credits in question.

WARNING: These files at OGS will only help you if you have taken the specifically numbered required courses at UNM or have already got the faculty to recognize with their signatures other work in their place. But, if you are hoping to have credits transferred or have only a verbal agreement that the department will allow a non-recognized course to be counted towards your degree make sure you get those signatures in the end (and do not get too adversarial in a dispute or you will not get their signatures!).

Ian Hoffman
04 April 2001