Degree and Graduation Requirements

Concordia offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music degrees, as well as a Master of Education in World Language Instruction. It is important that students understand the requirements of their desired degree. Advisors will assist in selecting programs of study. All students have access to Degree Works, an electronic degree audit system. This tool, as well as the academic catalog, provides students the information necessary to evaluate their progress toward degree completion. The Office of the Registrar manages the system. Any questions or concerns about the degree audit and the information it provides should be directed to the office. However, the final responsibility for meeting all requirements rests with the student.

Students graduate according to requirements published in the Concordia College Catalog at the time of their matriculation at Concordia, or any one subsequent catalog published during their enrollment. Students who are readmitted two years or more after their last enrollment must satisfy requirements published in the catalog in effect at the time of readmission, or any one subsequent catalog published during their enrollment. Graduation rates are available from the Office of the Registrar.

Bachelor of Arts Degree – Requirements
1. General
A. 126 semester credits (excluding music ensembles)
B. Cumulative GPA of 2.0 in Concordia courses and in all courses combined
C. Residence requirements met (see Residence Requirement below)
D. 40 semester credits with senior college credit (courses numbered 300 and above)
2. Major
A. Completion of all requirements for at least one major, as outlined in the department pages of the catalog
B. A minimum of 50 percent of the major requirements must be Concordia coursework
C. A minimum GPA of 2.0 in Concordia courses and all courses in the major presented for graduation. Individual departments may have more restrictive polices. Please consult the individual department page for details.
3. Liberal Arts Core Curriculum requirements
The requirements for the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum are listed on Page 24.

Bachelor of Music Degree – Requirements
1. General
A. Minimum 126 semester credits (excluding music ensembles)
B. Cumulative GPA of 2.0 in Concordia courses and in all courses combined
C. Residence requirements met (see Residence Requirement below)
D. 40 semester credits with senior college credit (courses numbered 300 and above)
2. Major
A. The Bachelor of Music degree is available in five different areas: instrumental music, piano, voice, music theory/composition, and music teaching. Each program has its own requirements, which are listed in the music department pages.
B. A minimum of 50 percent of the major requirements must be Concordia coursework
C. A minimum GPA of 2.0 in Concordia courses and all courses in the major presented for graduation
3. Liberal Arts Core Curriculum requirements
First-Year Experience courses and both Religion courses (as listed In the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum)

Master of Education – Requirements
The requirements for the Master of Education are listed in the graduate program pages of the catalog.

Graduation
Graduation Honors: The required grade point average (GPA) scale for graduation honors is 3.5 for cum laude, 3.7 for magna cum laude and 3.9 for summa cum laude. Honors listed in the Commencement program are based on grades up to but not including the current semester. The final honors status is determined after all grades are known.

All academic work, including transfer credits, is counted in determining graduation honors. Two GPAs are computed for all students — a Concordia GPA and a cumulative GPA that includes grades from transfer credits. (If a student has no transfer credits, the two GPAs are identical.) Graduation honors are based on the lower of the two GPAs.

Diplomas and Commencement Participation: Diplomas are printed and released only to students who have satisfied all graduation requirements and who have settled all financial obligations with the Business Office. Students who are within 12 semester credits of completing their graduation requirements and will complete them by the end of the summer may participate in the May Commencement ceremony. December graduates typically will participate in the May commencement ceremony after graduation. However, December graduates may elect to participate in the commencement ceremony preceding graduation if registered for all remaining degree requirements. A diploma is not awarded until all graduation requirements are met.

Residence Requirement: To fulfill this requirement, students must earn at least 28 semester credits on campus and must spend the last two semesters preceding graduation as a full-time student at Concordia.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
The Academic Virtues
As a community of study, Concordia College seeks to nurture in all of our members the human qualities that enable us, individually and collectively, to engage in our academic enterprise. The academic enterprise, like any other “coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity” (MacIntyre p. 175), requires that its practitioners possess certain qualities which make the academy possible, and without which it can exist as an academy in name only. These human qualities, or virtues, make possible not only our collective existence as a community of study, but also our individual participation in our chosen fields of study.

Students, faculty and administrators relate to one another in a way defined by the purposes and standards that make our community an academic community. A student may choose to pursue a particular major in order to become powerful, wealthy and famous. But power, wealth and fame are “external goods” that may be achieved by means other than pursuing a particular academic major. The purposes and standards that make our community an academic community of the church are not concerned primarily with “external goods,” but rather with goods that are “internal” to the various academic disciplines and “eternal” before God. This also suggests that, to lack integrity, one misconstrues what we profess to be humanity’s ultimate and most worthy goal, to live with God in a community of perfect justice.

To become a student within a particular discipline is to enter a form of activity with its own methodology and standards of excellence. While a discipline’s methodology and standards of excellence are not immune from criticism and change, “we cannot be initiated into [such] a practice without accepting the authority of the best standards realized so far” (MacIntyre p. 177).

As you study a discipline, you learn to appreciate the feelings or ideas of others, and in so doing you learn to be empathetic.

As you study a discipline, you learn to distinguish between excellent and average examples of disciplinary practice, giving each person (including yourself) what is due them; in so doing you learn to be fair minded.

As you study a discipline, you learn that you must expose your ego and limited knowledge to criticism, and in so doing you learn to be courageous.

As you study a discipline, you learn that the quest for knowledge is never completed, and in so doing you learn perseverance and humility.

The Centrality of Integrity to Academe
Without a commitment to the virtues of fair mindedness, courage, perseverance, intellectual humility and empathy, the academic enterprise, individually and collectively, is doomed to failure. Yet none of these virtues is possible without the central virtue of integrity. When we say that the Concordia community expects all of our members to act with integrity — to act with honesty, uprightness and sincerity — we speak in a language of virtue as well as of duty. We say, unequivocally, that dishonesty is always wrong.

We say that dishonesty is wrong because it is unjust, robbing everyone of the knowledge of what each person is due.

We say that dishonesty is wrong because it is cowardly and intellectually false.

We say that dishonesty is wrong because cheaters prefer ease and expediency to hard work and perseverance.
We say that dishonesty is wrong because it robs the student of the goods internal to the practice of the student’s chosen discipline.

We say that dishonesty is wrong because the dishonest seek only the goods external to the academic enterprise, namely, wealth, power and fame.

Because academic dishonesty in all its forms is so fundamentally contrary to the community of study, because it is so fundamentally destructive of the moral virtues required of those engaged in the academic enterprise, we must collectively and individually reaffirm the central importance of the virtue of academic integrity at Concordia College. This document represents just such a collective and individual reaffirmation of the core principles of the college. Faculty, students, administrators and staff members are charged with specific practices and responsibilities in following these principles. These obligations are described in full in the Student Handbook. Additionally, faculty members follow practices germane to the fair evaluation of student performance. These practices are described in the Joint Statement on Academic Responsibility, located in the Faculty Handbook.

Academic Integrity Violations
Refer to the student handbook for procedures regarding academic integrity violations, including plagiarism.

Bibliography
Alasdair MacIntyre. 1981. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

Richard Paul. 1990. Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World. Rohnert Park, CA: Center for Critical Thinking and Moral Critique.

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