Academic Policies
View Fisher College's Academic Policies
College-Wide Learning Outcomes
Grading Review and Appeal Policy
Withdrawal from College Policy/Exit Survey
Academic Integrity
All students are responsible for maintaining high standards of honesty and integrity in their coursework. Students found guilty of academic dishonesty subject themselves to academic sanctions up to and including expulsion from the College.
Academic Dishonesty includes but is not limited to the following:
- Unauthorized copying, sharing or collaboration on assignments
- The use of unauthorized technology, notes, slips, copying or other illegal means to give or receive answers during examinations or on assignments
- Self-plagiarism: Using an assignment for more than one class, without the permission of the instructor
- Plagiarism: The use of ideas or words of another person without proper citations, written or in presentations. A student should consult his/her faculty when questions arise as to when and how to properly acknowledge the work of others within his/her own oral or written expression
- Contract Cheating: Purchasing assignments or hiring an individual to complete coursework. The College expects that every assignment, such as essays, research papers, lab reports, oral presentations, and examinations, be the product of the student whose name appears on the work
- Fraudulent Course Participation: It is dishonest to share your user login to any class and allow anyone other than yourself to take part in any aspect of your academic coursework for pay, or just for assistance
If a student is found to have violated the Fisher College Academic Integrity Policy, the following penalties, at a minimum, will be imposed.
1. The student will receive a penalty based on the severity of the violation. Violations are categorized as follows:
- Type 1 Violations involves submitting the same assignment in more than one class without prior approval, or unauthorized copying, sharing or collaboration on assignments
Type 1 violations are limited to an assignment-based sanction.
- Type 2 Violations involves cheating on a test or plagiarizing a substantial portion of a paper (recommended guideline 20%* or more).
Type 2 violations at a minimum will be a zero on the assignment and given the relative weight of the assignment may result in failure of the course.
- Type 3 Violations involves contract cheating and fraudulent participation.
Type 3 violations would result in an immediate meeting with Vice President for Academic Affairs, course failure, and possible administrative withdrawal from the college.
2. For any academic integrity violation, a violation report will be completed by the instructor. The student will be informed in person or via email by the faculty member of the sanction that is being imposed. The report will be sent to the Vice President for Academic Affairs where the notification will be kept in the student’s permanent record in the Registrar’s office.
3. After the first Type 2 or Type 3 violation, the student must complete the Plagiarism Online Tutorial. The Office of the Registrar will contact the student with instructions and a link to the course. The student will have 14 days to complete the module.
4. If the student does not complete the module within 14 days, the student will receive written notification from the Office of the Registrar with a two-day final reminder. If the student does not complete the module adter the final reminder, a required meeting will be scheduled with an Academic Affairs advisor or Vice President of Academic Affairs. Any further actions, including possible failure of the course in question will be detailed in the final communications.
5. In addition, after the first Type 3 violation or the second Type 2 violation, the student will be placed on academic warning for their remaining tenure at Fisher College and may result in failure of the course in which the violation has taken place.
6. Subsequent violations during the student’s enrollment at Fisher College may result in immediate suspension for the remainder of that semester or term, or possible expulsion from the College.
7. If students wish to appeal a violation, they must do so within 14 days of the citation date. The appeal will be considered by an ad-hoc committee comprised of three (3) full-time faculty members who are not directly involved in the case. The decision of the appeals committee is final. Appeals can be made by contacting the Vice President for Academic Affairs.
Associate Degree Requirements
- Earn the number of credit hours required for the degree program.
- Earn at least 50% of the required credit hours in course work at Fisher College. This allows for the transfer of no more than 30 credits. No transfer credit is accepted for a grade below C-. Some specialized courses may require a higher minimum grade.
- Meet the College's general or liberal arts distribution requirement as outlined below:
- Freshman English I and II
- 6 credits in Humanities
- 6 credits in Social Sciences
- 3 credits in Math
- 3 credits in Math or Science
- Achieve a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.0.
- Meet all program course requirements.
- Complete 24 of the final 30 credits for the degree at Fisher College.
Note: A student who, after completing all of the requirements for the associate or bachelor's degree, wishes to subsequently earn an additional associate degree in a different program may do so by completing a minimum of 15 additional credits beyond the awarding of the first degree as well as meeting all program requirements for the additional major.
Bachelor Degree Requirements
- Earn the number of credit hours required for the degree program.
- Earn at least 25% of the required credit hours in course work at Fisher College. This allows for the transfer acceptance of no more than 90 credits. No transfer credit is accepted for a grade below C-. Some specialized courses may require a higher minimum grade.
- Take at least one-half of the program's required upper-level (300/400) courses at Fisher College. The program's designated capstone course must be taken at Fisher.
- Take at least one-half of concentration-specific courses at Fisher College.
- Meet the College's general or liberal arts distribution requirement outlined below:
Bachelor of Arts
- Freshman English I and II
- 12 credits in Humanities
- 9 credits in Social Sciences
- 3 credits in Math
- 3 credits in Quantitative Reasoning (QR)*
- 3 credits in Science
- 3 credits in Global Awareness (G)**
Bachelor of Science
- Freshman English EN 101 and EN 102
- 9 credits in Humanities
- 15 credits in Social Sciences
- 3 credits in Math
- 3 credits in Quantitative Reasoning (QR)*
- 3 credits in Science
- 3 credits in Global Awareness (G)**
- Achieve a minimum GPA of 2.0
- Meet all program course requirements.
- Complete the final 30 credits for the degree at Fisher College.
*One course must meet the Quantitative Reasoning requirement. In courses designated Quantitative Reasoning, students will learn methods to describe, organize, display,
summarize, and make statistical inferences from numerical data derived from real-world problems
**One course must meet the Global Awareness requirement. The Global Awareness requirement promotes the understanding of concepts that impact the world, by enhancing knowledge of the world's people, cultures, environments, regions, or nations. In some programs, this will be fulfilled by a degree requirement.
Note: A student who, after completing all of the requirements for a bachelor's degree, wishes to subsequently earn an additional bachelor's degree in a different program may do so by completing a minimum of 30 additional credits beyond the awarding of the first degree as well as meeting all program requirements for the additional major.
Certificate Requirements
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Earn the number of credit hours required for the certificate.
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Earn at least 50% of the required credit hours in course work at Fisher College for certificates of 24 credit hours or more.
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Earn at least 75% of the required credit hours in course work at Fisher College for certificates of fewer than 24 credit hours.
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Achieve a minimum GPA of 2.0.
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Meet all program requirements.
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Complete 12 of the final 15 credits for the certificate at Fisher College for certificates of 24 credits hours or more.
College-Wide Learning Outcomes
Because of its commitment to academic excellence, the College requires that its graduates have demonstrated competencies in written and oral communication, computational skills, critical thinking and research skills, technological literacy, civic responsibility, and racial, ethnic, and cross-cultural understanding. Toward this end, each student is provided the opportunity to demonstrate the following competencies, abilities and interests:
- Effective communication skills, including the abilities to speak and write cogently, and to conduct research demonstrating information literacy.
- The ability to understand and apply basic analytic-mathematical operations and to make logical inferences from quantitative data.
- Critical thinking skills to organize and process information and to formulate effectively reasoned conclusions.
- Self-awareness and confidence, and the recognition of one’s role and responsibility in an individual, social, civic and moral context.
- An understanding of the multicultural values within a diverse American and global society sufficient to enable the student to interact collaboratively with others of a different culture.
- Learning skills necessary for lifelong personal and professional development.
Fisher holds two commencement exercises for students. One in May for undergraduate students and one in June for Graduate students. Students who graduate during the previous August and December are invited to their respective commencement ceremony.
Commencement
Course Withdrawal
All students are expected to remain in, and complete, all courses in which they are enrolled once the Drop/Add Period has ended.
Boston Campus students may withdraw from a 15-week semester course after the Drop/Add Period ends through eleven weeks (approximately 3/4 of the semester) and the withdrawal grade will not affect their grade-point average.
Graduate and Professional Studies students may withdraw from a 7- or 8-week term through approximately 10 days before the term ends and the withdrawal grade will not affect their grade-point average.
The last days to withdraw from a course will be published each year in the academic calendar.
No voluntary "W" will be issued after the dates mentioned above. Students registered in courses on those dates will have to remain in the course until the conclusion of the exam period and receive an earned grade from the instructor.
A student is not officially withdrawn from a course until the Office of the Registrar has received and processed an official course withdrawal form signed by the student and the student's instructor or Site Coordinator. It is the student's responsibility to secure these signatures and to submit the course withdrawal form to the Office of the Registrar.
Grading Review and Appeal Policy
A student may request a review of their final grade if they believe there is an error in the mechanical calculation of the grade or the grade was not compliant with the stated policy on the course syllabus. The evaluation of student work is the responsibility of the instructor and is not subject to review. The process for review is as follows:
The student must contact the faculty member within 15 days of the receipt of the grade and request a full review of their grade based on stated criteria in the syllabus.
If this does not resolve the student issue, they may send a written appeal for a grade review to the Vice President of Academic Affairs within 30 days of receipt of the grade. The written appeal must include:
- a copy of the syllabus
- the faculty member’s response and grade calculation
- an explanation of the alleged calculation error
- copies or documentation of student grades that do not match the faculty interpretation
The Vice President for Academic Affairs will review the materials and request any additional documentation from the faculty member. After reviewing the information from the student and the faculty member, the Vice President for Academic Affairs will notify each of the review decision. This decision will be final.