Student Handbook: Academics

Course credit is awarded in semester hours. The fall and spring semesters shall consist of between 15 and 17 calendar weeks of instructional time. Course delivery consists of traditional on-ground, online, and the blended format, which allows for reduced in-class instructional contact plus an online component.

Summer Session may consist of:

• three blocks of four-week sessions (some combined to make 8 or 12 week sessions),
• two online professional sessions of seven weeks each,
• one, fourteen-week session.

A credit hour will be awarded for a minimum of 750 minutes of formalized instruction that typically requires students to work on out-of-class assignments at an average of twice the amount of time as the amount of formalized instruction. It is acknowledged that formalized instruction may take place in a variety of modes. Thus, a unit of credit equates to three hours of student work per week (1-hour lecture plus 2-hours of out of class work OR 2-3 hours of lab/activity) for 15-17 weeks.

Lecture courses are considered to be 50-60 minutes of lecture class time and two hours per week of out-of-class work. For the typical three-unit class, a student spends approximately three hours per week in class and should be prepared to complete six hours of work per week of outside of class work. A unit of a laboratory/activity course is equal to two/three hours per week. In order to earn credit time, students must also meet institutional and state learning outcomes at a satisfactory level.

Northwest three-credit-hour courses meet for 50 minutes for three-day-per-week courses, 75 minutes for two-day-per-week courses, and 150 minutes for one day courses, for a minimum of 2,250 minutes per semester.

The typical load for an undergraduate student is 14 to 18 academic hours. Undergraduates are considered to be full time with 12 academic hours in any semester. To learn more about academic course load and petitions for excess credit, visit the Student Success Center website.

Courses are numbered such that organization is maintained in the curriculum and level of rigor is identifiable in the course number. The table below outlines course numbering as indicated in the policy.

The honor roll is compiled at each official grading period and includes all full-time undergraduate students earning a grade point average of 3.50 or above in academic courses. 

Students who earn a 3.50-3.99 GPA will be named to the Academic Honor Roll.

Students who earn a 4.00 GPA will be named to the President’s Honor Roll.

Graduation honors are determined by a student’s Northwest GPA, and if there are transfer credits, the cumulative GPA (all college work attempted) must also meet the GPA requirements. Only first degrees are eligible for honors and class rank.

• Graduate "Cum Laude" - Cumulative GPA between 3.50 and 3.74.
• Graduate "Magna Cum Laude" - Cumulative GPA between 3.75 and 3.94.
• Graduate "Summa Cum Laude" - Cumulative GPA between 3.95 and 4.00.

Honors designation for the commencement program will be determined on the grade point averages based on grades recorded on the academic transcript by the Registrar four weeks prior to the spring and fall commencement exercises.

Department Codes are first in a course listing. For example, in the course number 10111, 10 designates the Department of English and 111 represents the course number. The table below shows all current department numbers:

Grade points are calculated based on the final grade on the A, B, C, D, & F scale. The following scale explains the calculation.

• One hour of "A" equals 4 points.
• One hour of "B" equals 3 points.
• One hour of "C" equals 2 points.
• One hours of "D" equals 1 point.
• One hour of "F" equals 0 points.

The Grade Point Average is calculated by taking the total number of grade points and dividing that total by the number of credit hours of work attempted. For example, Bobby Bearcat takes 4 classes equaling 12 credit hours (3 per class). If he gets 2 As, 1 B, and 1 C, the number of grade points would be 39 (6 hours of A multiplied by 4 points, 3 hours of B multiplied by 3 points, and 3 hours of C multiplied by 2 points).

39 grade points divided by 12 credit hours comes out to a 3.25 Grade Point Average (GPA) for the semester.

Grades assigned as NR, NC, W, IP, or P do not factor in to GPA calculation.

View the GPA Calculator Tool from the Student Success Center.

Sample Course Schedule

Understanding the Parts of a Class Schedule

The table above illustrates an example of a class schedule for a semester. Understanding how to read a course schedule is important for designing and making changes to your schedule next semester and beyond. From left to right, the column headers convey the following information about each class:

• CRN stands for Course Registration Number. This is a unique number used to identify a particular course during the registration process. This number may change over time.
• Camp is a shortening of Campus Designation. This refers to the campus in which that class will take place. NW represents the Maryville Campus, WB represents a Web-Based course, WO represents an Online Only course, OP represents an Online Professional course, etc. Students designated as online only must enroll in courses designated WO. Students taking a mixed selection of in-person and online classes will enroll in courses designated WB.
• Course is short for Course Number. This number consists of a group of two initial digits, which indicate the academic discipline, and the last three digits which represent a specific course. For example, 29102 is the Course Number for Fundamentals of Oral Communication, where 29 represents Communication, and 102 represents the course name.
• Sec is short for Section Number. Classes that are offered more than once in a semester are designated with section numbers that differentiate between faculty, date, and time of otherwise identical classes. From the previous example, there might be a section of Fundamentals of Oral Communication on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 1 PM, and a section on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 AM. The first would be designated 29102-01, and the second designated 29102-02. The two digits following the dash represent the section.
• Cr stands for Credit Hours and indicates how many semester credit hours the course is worth. Classes are often 3 credit hours when offered during the regular semester, but may be more or less depending on the type of class. 
• The title column will often abbreviate the name of the course. For example, the schedule states "Intro Mass Media" when the course name in full is "Introduction to Mass Media." "Gen Psychology" would be General Psychology.
• The time of the course is formatted with four digits representing the start time and four representing the end time. There is no colon (:) as in a traditional listing of time. As such, 0100 represents 1:00 PM.
• Days indicate which days of the week a course will meet. Often, this is listed as MWF for Monday, Wednesday, Friday; TR for Tuesday and Thursday; or one day represented by the first letter, such as a course only on Monday evenings being labeled as "M."
• Ses is abbreviated from Session. Each semester is divided into two sessions, also called blocks. Full semester classes take up both sessions, but some may only take place during one block or the other. A class taking place during the last seven weeks of a semester is a second session course, and will be labeled with a 2 in the Ses column.
• Inst Code stands for Instructor Code, which simply lists the name of the faculty member teaching that course.

A monthly billing statement is produced with amounts due on or before the 15th of the following month.  All bills are emailed to the student’s University email account. Students will receive their fall billing statement in mid-July and their spring billing statement in mid- December. Full payment must be made on or before the due date to avoid finance charges. All students are enrolled in a payment plan once their bill is generated. Any unpaid billed balance on the 16^th of the month will incur a 1% finance charge.

Financial assistance, with the exception of Federal Work Study, is applied directly to student accounts. The entry will appear on the monthly billing statement and will reduce the current term balance. The minimum payment and finance charge calculations will be applied to the balance remaining after application of financial assistance.

Office of Scholarships and Financial Assistance website

Petitions regarding financial matters will be heard by the Financial Petition Committee and require a petition.

Student Success Center petitions website