It is sometimes possible to receive Swarthmore credit for chemistry courses taken at other colleges and universities. If you wish to take a chemistry course on another campus, and to receive Swarthmore credit for doing so, it is essential that you follow the proper procedure, and that you plan in advance. It is also important to realize that not all courses will be eligible for credit. (Note, however, that courses taken by Swarthmore students during the academic year at Bryn Mawr or Haverford are handled by a different procedure (cross registration), and under ordinary circumstances are automatically eligible for Swarthmore credit).
The procedure to follow is as follows:
(1) Get essential information and materials about the course you wish to take, including:
(2) Get a pre-approval form from the registrar's office.
(3) Bring both the course materials and the pre-approval form to the chair of the department, or to another faculty member designated by the chair. The chair or other faculty member will look at the materials you have brought, and make a TENTATIVE assessment about the suitability of the course. Signing of the pre-approval form is NOT a guarantee that the course will be eligible for Swarthmore credit, but rather an indication that the course is HIGHLY LIKELY to be eligible, based on the information available at the time. If the course is deemed to be suitable, then you must finish the procedure for receiving Swarthmore credit after you have completed the course.
(4) You will need to bring your completed course materials back to the faculty member you consulted earlier for pre-approval. You should bring the actual lecture and laboratory syllabi used, your exams, your lab notebook, your lab reports, etc. You will also need to bring a final transfer credit approval form, which is available from the registrar's office.
(5) If everything is in order, the faculty member will
then fill out the final transfer credit approval form, which then must be
returned to the registrar.
Two points about this process are particularly important to bear in mind:
(1) The pre-approval is only tentative. It represents an indication by the chemistry department that we BELIEVE the course you are planning to take is eligible for Swarthmore credit. However, it is not an absolute guarantee. That is because sometimes the materials we see beforehand, when we sign the pre-approval form, do not accurately represent the way the course actually ends up being conducted.
(2) We grant transfer credit in two slightly different ways. If the course you propose to take is substantially equivalent to one of our courses, we direct the registrar to write it down on your transcript with that course number. On the other hand, if the course is of a nature such that we believe it deserves recognition as a Swarthmore credit, but it is not substantially equivalent to any particular one of the courses we offer at Swarthmore, then we direct the registrar to write the course down as Chemistry XXX, i.e., with no Swarthmore equivalent course number. The title of the course appears on the transcript in either case.
The latter distinction makes some difference for students who wish to take a chemistry course at another campus, and then take a subsequent course here at Swarthmore. For instance, consider a student who wanted to take first semester organic chemistry (Chemistry 22) elsewhere, and then continue with second semester organic chemistry (Chemistry 32) at Swarthmore. This plan would be viable only if the course taken off campus qualified specifically for Chemistry 22 credit, rather than just "generic" chemistry credit. A course that only qualified in the "generic" sense would not adequately prepare a student to step into Chemistry 32.