Going back to school can be an incredibly rewarding experience, whether you're looking to move up at work, build your resume, or just learn something new. The Office of Professional Programs at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, offers a great environment for pursuing a graduate degree, a post-graduate certificate, or professional development hours.
Of course, you need to know that any continuing education (CE) program comes with challenges. All the educational opportunities at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, come with high expectations. Success requires hard work, smarts, and no small degree of perseverance. Plus, this isn't like the first time you went to college: you have to balance your education with all the other demands you face—your job, your family, and your real life.
What exactly should you be worried about? There are two main types of problems that can come up for CE students.
- First, you have to pay attention to academics. You aren't just taking courses; you want to do as well as you can in those courses. That means going to class, studying hard, and getting assignments done early.
- You aren't just a student, though. You're also a member of a community. Your school expects you to treat your colleagues with respect and to represent all the best values of that community.
In what follows, you'll find important information on how to deal with problems in both these areas. As a bonus, though, you'll also learn how to get help if you should need it. You have the wisdom, maturity, and skills to do this, but sometimes it's also nice to know someone has your back. Attorney-advisor Joseph D. Lento does.
Academics
The whole reason you're going back to school is to learn things, so let's start by talking about academics.
The Office of Professional Programs at UMBC offers courses in a wide range of subjects, from cybersecurity to industrial psychology, data science to biotechnology. The one thing that connects all the school's many courses together, though, is an emphasis on serious rigor. You can't expect to improve your job prospects with a degree from a second-rate school. You want UMBC to hold you accountable, since that raises the university's reputation. Of course, that means you have to bring your A-game to every class you take.
Degree and Certificate Requirements
Your experience at UMBC will have a lot to do with your particular goals. Are you looking to learn something new, or are you after a graduate degree? Ultimately, you have a number of options.
- Professional Development Courses: The Office of Professional Studies partners with the Institute of Extended Learning (IXL) to provide courses for anyone who wants to improve their skills at work. You don't receive college credit for these courses, but there's no application process, so you can begin learning whenever you're ready.
- Post-degree Certificates: These programs allow you to enhance your expertise and add a little something extra to your resume. A certificate in engineering management, for instance, can be just the thing for an engineer who's looking to move up at their company. A certificate in college teaching might be the missing piece a high school English teacher needs to make the jump to teaching community college. Certificates typically require 12 to 15 hours of coursework and take a year to complete.
- Master's Degree: Finally, you can also earn a master's degree through the Office of Professional Programs in many of the same subjects in which you can earn certificates—education, engineering management, software engineering, and community leadership. These degrees require around 30 hours of coursework and usually take 2 to 4 years for a part-time student to complete.
If you're looking to actually earn college credit you can include on your resume or count towards a degree, UMBC expects you to meet certain academic standards. Again, the school doesn't want to provide credentials to anyone who hasn't put in the work. To that end, post-graduate and graduate programs require you maintain a minimum 3.0 grade point average to remain in “good” academic standing. Anything lower, and you are placed on probation. Should you continue to struggle while on probation, you can be dismissed from the school entirely.
Finally, you should keep in mind that UMBC works on a plus/minus system. That means an A- doesn't count as much as an A. The former will earn you 4 points, while the latter will only earn you 3.7 points. That can make a big difference when it comes to keeping your GPA high.
Satisfactory Academic Progress Policy
Many CE students fund their education through federal aid programs. If you're one of them, you also need to know about UMBC's SAP, or Satisfactory Academic Progress policy. The federal government requires every college and university to maintain an SAP policy to ensure that no one can simply live off financial aid without genuinely pursuing a certificate or degree. Failing to meet SAP requirements won't affect your standing at UMBC, but it will cause you to lose your scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study funds.
UMBC's SAP requirements include three criteria:
- You must maintain a minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA.
- You must complete at least two-thirds of the courses you attempt.
- You must complete your certificate or degree within 150 percent of the minimum credits required by the program.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, conducts SAP reviews once a year, in June. There is no probationary period. If you fail to meet SAP criteria, you become ineligible for federal aid until such time as you are again meeting them.
The university does offer an appeals process for students who may be struggling academically as a result of extenuating circumstances. This process involves submitting an appeal along with supporting documentation. In addition, you must submit an “academic plan” detailing how you plan to improve moving forward.
Attendance Policies
UMBC does not have a universal attendance policy as such, though some colleges and departments do. You can certainly expect that many of your individual instructors will have attendance requirements, though. These are usually mentioned in the course syllabus.
In most cases, faculty have wide latitude when it comes to punishing students for excessive absences, especially if they've given you fair warning of what consequences you face. Some instructors lower grades, but some will drop you from the course or even fail you if you go over the limit.
Academic Misconduct
College is tough no matter who you are, but it's particularly hard for continuing education students who have to balance their studies with all the other aspects of their life. Just because it's difficult, though, doesn't give you license to resort to dishonesty to complete your coursework.
UMBC's academic misconduct policy lists six specific kinds of integrity violations:
- Fabrication: The invention of data or citations as part of an academic exercise
- Falsification: Alteration of data or citations as part of an academic exercise
- Plagiarism: The presentation of another person's words or ideas as your own.
- Cheating: The use of any unauthorized materials in completing your coursework
- Improprieties of authorship: Failing to give proper credit to the original authors of words and ideas
- Facilitating academic dishonesty: helping someone else to commit any violation of the academic integrity policy
Less serious misconduct is generally dealt with by instructors, who may assign informal sanctions as they see fit. These can include
- A verbal or written warning
- Re-submission of the assignment or makeup work
- Additional assignments on the nature of academic honesty
- Lowered grade on the assignment in question, up to a zero
- Lowered grade in the course, up to an F
Instructor decisions in these cases are “final and conclusive and not subject to appeal.”
More serious infractions or repeat offenses are subject to additional sanctions from the Associate Dean of your college. Often, these include suspension and dismissal. You can challenge such decisions through a hearing before the Graduate Council Grievance Committee. Procedures can be complicated, though, and it's always better to have an attorney-advisor by your side if you're going to take on your school.
Academics: What Could Go Wrong?
You might be surprised by the idea that an attorney could help you deal with academic issues. The fact is, student success is sometimes as much about navigating bureaucracy as it is about how you do on exams. An attorney with experience working with students can help in many ways. You can't know, for instance, when a professor might decide that your family crisis isn't a good enough reason to miss class, or that simply forgetting to include a source in your paper qualifies as plagiarism. An attorney can help you negotiate with faculty, submit appeals, and prepare for hearings. In many cases, they may accompany you to proceedings and offer advice on what arguments to make and how to conduct witness cross-examination. Whether you've been accused of some complex cheating scheme involving artificial intelligence and mirrors, or you're simply struggling to keep a 3.0 GPA, you owe it to yourself to find out just what a skilled attorney-advisor may be able to do for you.
Disciplinary Misconduct
The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, monitors what you do outside the classroom as closely as it does what you do inside the classroom, in some cases even more closely. For example, you can be dismissed from the university for getting a DUI, even if it was issued off-campus.
UMBC's Student Code of Conduct is extensive and covers
- Fire and safety regulations
- Behaviors that jeopardize the health and safety of you and others
- Alcohol
- Illegal drugs
- Theft and property damage
- Unauthorized entry
- Falsifying university documents
- Disruption of university activities
- Gambling
- Improper use of computers or technology
- Failure to comply with a university official
- Abuse of the Student Conduct Review system
- Skateboarding, rollerskating, and rollerblading
- Violation of copyright
If you live on campus, you're also subject to residence life policies regarding everything from how loud you can play music in your room to how you behave in the cafeteria.
It's important you remember that your online conduct is regulated the same as your “real world” conduct. Many of the Office of Professional Studies' courses are offered online, and you're expected to follow certain rules about etiquette and behavior when you're working on these platforms. This includes
- Behaving professionally
- Treating others with respect
- Avoiding profanity and socially-offensive language
- Dressing appropriately when others can see you
- Avoiding inappropriate surroundings
Finally, one particular sort of disciplinary misconduct deserves special mention. Sexual misconduct isn't just a violation of school policy. It's also a violation of federal law under Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments. Title IX mandates that all educational programs treat sexual discrimination and harassment seriously, that they pursue accusations zealously, and punish those found responsible appropriately. As a result, the minimum penalties in such cases are usually suspension. The most common penalty is dismissal.
Investigations and hearings are also governed by the law and involve a complex set of rules and procedures. An attorney-advisor can be useful in helping you defend yourself from all sorts of misconduct, but if you've been accused of sexual misconduct, you should never try to handle the situation on your own. It's simply too delicate, and too much is at stake. An experienced attorney-advisor can make sure you are treated fairly and that you're given every right you deserve under the law.
Joseph D. Lento: Continuing Education Student Attorney-Advisor
If you've been out of school for a few years, the first thing you need to know is that things have changed in education.
- Cheating is on the rise, so professors are more hyper-vigilant.
- Academic expectations grow higher every year.
- In today's political climate, no school can afford to be seen as soft on discipline, and every school conducts rigorous investigations and doles out stiff penalties.
It's worth recognizing, though, that you've changed too. Sure, you care about passing your courses and getting your degree, but that's not the highest priority in your life anymore. You've got a partner, a mortgage, and kids to worry about. Satisfying your boss's demands is probably far more important to you than pleasing your professor.
Most continuing education faculty understand the particular kinds of stresses you're under, and most are willing to work with you to make your educational experience rewarding. If you should find, though, that an instructor won't let you make up an exam you missed because one of your kids was down with the flu, or an administrator wants to dismiss you from your program because you didn't put a quotation mark in the right spot, know that you have options.
Joseph D. Lento has helped hundreds of students just like you deal with school-based issues. He knows the law as it applies to education, and he's practiced in dealing with faculty and administrators. Whatever problem you might be facing, from issues with technology to accusations of sexual misconduct, don't wait to see what will happen. If you're in trouble, contact the Lento Law Firm's Student Defense Team today, at 888-555-3686, or use our automated online form.
