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REGISTRATIONThe Registrar’s OfficeThe Registrar's Office exists to serve the faculty, administration, students, and alumni/ae of the seminary in numerous ways. For students and alumni/ae, we provide such services as registration and course changes, quarterly grade reports, grade-change reports, transcripts, enrollment certification, loan deferments, student ID cards, the Student Directory, veterans' benefits assistance, graduation clearance and processing, and more. The Registrar's Office is located right inside the front door of the Student Service Center at 250 North Madison. The office is open to you Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. If we can't help you during normal hours, we'll be glad to make an appointment to meet you in the evening. You can always leave completed registration packets, Add/Drop forms, Incomplete requests, deferment requests, and other such things in the secure drop box just outside the front entrance of the Student Service Center when the office is closed. You'll find much useful information and email addresses for further contact on our website at www.fuller.edu/registrar, or you can call us at 626-584-5408.
Quarterly Schedule of ClassesThe schedule of classes offered in Pasadena each quarter is planned and developed by the three schools, with the Registrar's Office coordinating and facilitating its production and publication on its website. Our goal is to make the schedule for the following Fall, Winter, and Spring Quarters available to you by April 15, and the schedule for the following Summer Quarter by December 1. The searchable schedule on the website will be updated constantly to show any changes, addition, or cancellation of classes. Schedules for classes at Extended Education sites are also available on the Fuller website.
Registration and Course Change Calendar: Pasadena CampusAcademic Calendar. The academic calendar with dates for at least the current year can always be found on the Registrar's Office website at www.fuller.edu/registrar/calendar.asp.Fall Quarter. Registration for returning students takes place at the end of August, about a month before classes begin. New students register Thursday and Friday of Welcome Week, the week before classes begin. Both groups of students are scheduled according to a priority system (see Priority Lists). If you cannot register in person during Registration Week, you can register using a Self-Registration Packet, available from your academic advising office. However, if the registration packet is not received in the Registrar's Office before the first day of the quarter (for ten-week classes), or the first day of an intensive period (for one- or two-week courses), you will be charged a $30 late registration fee. Other Quarters. Registration for returning students for other quarters takes place during the eighth week of the previous quarter. The same priority system is used to schedule registration times. New students register on an announced day, usually the Friday before the first week of the quarter, or the day before classes start (see New Student Registration). If you cannot register in person during these times, you may register using Self-Registration Packets. However, if the registration packet is not received in the Registrar's Office before the first day of the quarter (for ten-week classes), or the first day of an intensive period (for one-, two-, or five-week courses), you will be charged a $30 late registration fee. Registration and Course Change Deadlines. Course changes (adding and dropping of classes, including changing of grading status) are processed beginning Monday after Registration Week in all quarters. To request any change in registration, you must see your academic advisor for an Add/Drop form, and bring the completed form to the Registrar's Office. No registration or course change is official until it is recorded by the Registrar's Office. To meet the deadlines the seminary has established, any registration or course change must be received in the Registrar's Office by 5 p.m. on the day indicated below. All registrations (including Field Education, directed studies, internships, theses, dissertations, continuations, etc.) are subject to these registration deadlines. If extenuating circumstances cause you to miss a deadline, you may petition for an exception. We're sorry, but ignorance of the deadline, lack of time, forgetfulness, or inability to register for financial reasons do not provide a basis for petition. Deadlines: Course Changes (Pasadena Campus)Ten-week classes. Ten-week classes include all courses which do not have a regular meeting schedule, such as field education, continuations, directed studies, internships, dissertations or theses, etc.
Five-week classes
Two-week classes
One-week classes
Special note about audits. An audit registration is simply permission to attend a class. Once registered, audits cannot be dropped and no refund is given unless the class fills with credit students, so that auditors are dropped automatically. Registration and Course Change Calendar: Extended EducationTo meet the deadlines the seminary has established, any registration or course change must be received in the local extended education office by 5 p.m. on the day indicated below. All registrations (including Field Education and directed studies) are subject to these registration deadlines. If extenuating circumstances cause you to miss a deadline, you may petition for an exception. We're sorry, but ignorance of the deadline, lack of time, forgetfulness, or inability to register for financial reasons do not provide a basis for petition. Deadlines: Course Changes (Extension Campuses)For all courses with scheduled class meetings, whether weekly or intensive in format, such as field education and directed studies, the deadline for registering or changing grading status (between grade and pass/fail status) is prior to the second class meeting. There is a 100-percent refund for classes dropped prior to the second class meeting. There is a 50-percent refund for classes dropped prior to the third class meeting. For classes with five to seven class meetings, the deadline for dropping is prior to the fourth class meeting, and for classes with eight to ten class meetings, prior to the fifth class meeting. There is no refund in either case. For weekend classes, each weekend is considered a single class meeting. All courses which do not have a regular meeting schedule, such as field education and directed studies, have a special schedule for registrations, drops, and refunds:
Preparation for RegistrationHere's how to prepare for registration:
Registration PoliciesRegistration for all Pasadena campus courses during the scheduled registration week utilizes a priority registration system that assigns days and times for registration based upon a variety of factors (see below). Registrations after that week are accepted in the order received. Priority Lists. Priority lists, listing students alphabetically and showing the priority day and time of registration assigned to each student, are available on the Registrar's Office bulletin board and at Advising Offices about three weeks before registration. We also send you an email notice of your priority day and time. If your name does not appear on the list or you don't get an email notice, just contact the Registrar's Office. Not being on the posted priority list does not have a negative impact on your priority assignment. If we need to add you, you will be added exactly where you would have been if you had been on the original list. You may register any time after your assigned time, but no authority exists to allow any student to register before her or his assigned priority time. Returning Students. If you are a returning student who has registered in Pasadena in any one of several previous quarters, and you have not applied for graduation and live in the Southern California area, you are assigned a priority day and time for registration. (These parameters are designed to keep the initial list manageable and realistic.) If you don't appear on the list, just request a priority day and time assignment from the Registrar's Office. Priority assignments are made according to the following order, with the highest priority first:
New Students. Priority assignments are also made for new students. The students selected are those who have indicated that they intend to begin that quarter. The factors used to assign the priority times are (in order from top to bottom, as above): application date, decision date (when admission was granted), and program (same order as described above). Audit-Only Students. Audit-only students are not included on the priority lists. Audit-only registrations are generally not accepted until the deadlines to register for credit have passed, since credit registrations have priority. Self-Registration Packet. If you are unable to register in person, you can use this packet to register. The packet is only needed when you can't register in person. If you can register in person, you don't need this packet. It is available from your Academic Advising office. Also, the packet is only needed for initial registration (i.e., not for adding or dropping classes). Audit-only students do not need this packet. There are special conditions which apply to this kind of registration, which are explained clearly in the packet. By using the packet, you affirm that you have read and understand the conditions of this self-registration. You (not your advisor) are responsible to see that the completed packet is received by the Registrar's Office before the registration deadlines. If the office is closed, the packet may be left in the secure drop box just outside the front door of the Student Service Center at 250 North Madison. Your registration cannot be processed unless all forms are completed, clearances have been obtained, payment in the proper amount is enclosed, and your packet is received in the Registrar's Office before registration deadlines. The registration is processed in the Registrar's Office, with the financial portion handled by the Student Accounts office. You can check your schedule and your student account through Campus Pipeline. If your Self-Registration Packet is received before or during Registration Week, your registration will normally be processed at your assigned priority time (if it is received in time), or as soon as possible after that time. Late Registration. Initial registrations involving any ten-week classes (including directed studies, field education, practica, theses or dissertations, continuation, and any other enrollment that does not have a regular schedule of meetings) not received in the Registrar's Office prior to the first day of the quarter will be charged a late registration fee of $30. Initial registration for an intensive course not received in the Registrar's Office prior to the first day of the intensive period will be charged a late registration fee of $30. Registration Changes. You may add or drop classes, or change between Pass/Fail, Graded, and Audit status for a class, at any time between your initial registration and the normal deadlines for such changes. (See Registration and Course Change Deadlines for details). You must get an ADD/DROP form from an academic advisor and bring or send the completed form to the Registrar's Office. Any appropriate charges or refunds will be calculated by the Office of Finance and Accounting and posted to your account. There is a $5 charge added to your account for the processing of each Add/Drop form (no matter how many changes are on the form). Important Note about Dropping Classes. When you register for a class, you enter into a contract. This contract has certain stipulations, including a schedule of deadlines and tuition refunds. If you want to drop a class, don't just stop attending or tell the professor. If that is all you do, you haven't dropped the class and you are still liable for full tuition and a grade (which will be an F if you do not complete the work for the class). See your academic advisor for an Add/Drop form, and bring it to the Registrar's Office right away. The longer you wait, the less tuition you will get back. Responsibility. You, and you alone, are fully and finally responsible for seeing that your own registration materials are complete and accurate, and that they are delivered to the Registrar's Office. Your advisor may help you complete the Class Request Card or the Add/Drop form, but you are responsible to make sure that it accurately represents your wishes in terms of the classes listed, grading status, etc. Petitions for change based on "mistakes" made by you or your advisor on registration forms will be denied. No registration transaction is complete until it is delivered to the Registrar's Office within the appropriate deadlines. This is your responsibility, not that of the advising office. Disenrollment Policy. The seminary reserves the right to disenroll you under any of the following conditions:
In most cases, you will have five working days to remedy the situation before being disenrolled. In case of repeated offenses, however, the seminary reserves the right to disenroll you immediately. In all cases, once you have been disenrolled, you will not be reenrolled for that quarter, even if the situation is subsequently resolved. Future enrollment will depend on whatever conditions are imposed by the offices involved as necessitated by the situation. Closed Classes. When a class reaches a stated enrollment capacity, which represents either a room capacity (with no larger room available) or an agreed enrollment limit, the class is closed. The Wait List provides a means for you to add the class for credit if openings occur within registration deadlines. Auditors are normally not added to a class after it has closed, even if openings occur. Wait Lists. You may request to be added to the Wait List for a closed class when you register or at any time thereafter. The Wait List ensures that openings in closed classes will be made available to students in the order in which they were added through Tuesday of the first week of the quarter. Details on how the Wait List works are available from the Registrar's Office and on our website. Auditing Classes. Auditing a class refers to the privilege of attending a class on a noncredit basis. "Informal" audits are not permitted, even if a professor says you can sit in on the class. To be present in a class requires that you be registered as a credit student or an auditor, and no professor is authorized to make exceptions to this policy. Some classes are closed to auditors. Some professors do not permit auditors to participate in the class at all, merely to attend; others may permit or even require various degrees of participation. Regardless of your program, you or your spouse are permitted to audit master's-level classes in all three schools for a fee of $25 per course as long as you are enrolled for credit, or have been during the current academic year (fall through summer). Enrollment as an auditor is subject to all limitations of class size, the priority of students enrolled for credit, any special requirements for auditing a particular class, and the exclusion of auditors from a particular class or a given type of class. Other special audit privileges are also offered to Fuller graduates, pastors, and missionaries (see the Fuller Theological Seminary Catalog) who are not otherwise Fuller students. Once registered, audits cannot be dropped, and no refund is given. If none of these free or reduced-charge privileges apply to you, the audit fee is half of the regular credit tuition for the class. Audit charges must always be paid in full at registration if you are only auditing that quarter. Audit registrations are not recorded on transcripts. No transcripts will be issued for audit-only students. Continuing Education Units. Continuing Education Units (CEUs) may be earned by auditing Fuller classes. CEUs are based on actual class contact hours (one CEU for every 10 hours of contact), not academic units. If you wish the seminary's Continuing Education Office to maintain a record of the CEUs that you have earned, a one-time fee of $15 is required. Otherwise, no record will be maintained. In no case will CEUs be reported as, converted to, or transferred as academic credit. CEUs cannot be earned for classes you take for academic credit. Prerequisites. If a class you wish to take has a prerequisite, you must have completed the prerequisite in order to take the class. If you fail or have an Incomplete in the prerequisite, you have not completed it and cannot take the class. Overlap Classes. You cannot enroll in a class that overlaps in scheduled meeting times, in whole or in part, with any other class. This includes short-term (e.g., two-week and five-week) classes that conflict with regular ten-week classes. There can be no petition for exceptions to this faculty policy, and individual faculty are not authorized to make exceptions in any way. Directed (Independent) Studies. There are various guidelines governing Directed Studies in the various schools and programs of the seminary, covering the structure of such courses and their place in the curriculum. From a registration standpoint, however, all Directed Studies (also called independent studies or readings) are considered ten-week courses, and therefore are subject to all the deadlines for ten-week courses. If you are not in good academic standing, you cannot register for Directed Studies. Also, please note that Directed Studies do not permit you to attend a scheduled class; they are, as the other name indicates, "independent." To attend a class, you must be registered for that class in some way. Field Education Courses. You must arrange Field Education experiences through the Field Education Office. These arrangements, however, don't constitute registration. You still must make sure you register for the appropriate Field Education course each quarter. Field Education courses are considered ten-week courses, and are therefore subject to ten-week registration procedures and deadlines. Also note that Field Education enrollments are valued at four units for purposes of enrollment certification and maximum enrollment limits, regardless of the number of units of credit involved (even zero units). So if you're taking two 4-unit classes and a 1-unit Field Education course, you are full-time (for most purposes). And you can't enroll in more than 16 other units and a Field Education course, even if it is only a 1-unit registration. Intensive Courses. One- and two-week intensive courses are offered in all quarters. There are special considerations that apply to these courses:
Enrollment ServicesEnrollment Verification. The Registrar's Office is responsible for processing loan deferments and other forms of enrollment verification (e.g., for RTD bus passes, scholarships, insurance policies, etc.). Student ID Cards. Student photo ID cards, which also serve as library cards, are issued to new students each quarter during registration. These cards are permanent ID cards, and they are updated annually with a validation sticker. Replacement cards are $5 (no charge for replacement due to legal name change). Loan Deferments. The policy governing deferments varies according to the academic program in which you are participating. Only previous work or current enrollment may be verified. The Registrar's Office cannot verify enrollment for deferring your loan for a given quarter until you have registered for classes for that quarter. Enrollment verifications are processed on a quarter-by-quarter basis. The Registrar's Office provides a special service that keeps you from having to bring or send in those annoying loan deferment forms every quarter. Just come in and complete an Automatic Loan Deferment form, and we'll report your enrollment status to your lenders or loan servicing agencies automatically each quarter that you are enrolled. If you drop below half-time enrollment in a given quarter, both you and the seminary must report that status to the lender or loan servicing agency. You should always consult the Office of Financial Aid concerning the possible implications for your loans (past and present) before reducing your academic load. Veterans' Assistance. Eligible veterans may receive educational benefits for training at Fuller Seminary. If you are eligible for benefits, contact the veterans' representative in the Registrar's Office. When you receive VA benefits, you are responsible for reporting immediately to the veterans' representative any changes in your program or status that affects the amount of these benefits. The Registrar's Office is required to notify the Department of Veterans Affairs of any such changes, as well as unsatisfactory progress, such as grades of F or Incomplete. (Incompletes are considered unsatisfactory until completed within the time the seminary grants for completion.) The VA may require that you refund benefits paid for any course not completed with a passing grade. If you receive veterans' benefits and you fail to meet the standards for good academic standing within two consecutive terms of enrollment after being placed on probation, you will not be eligible for benefits until you have regained good academic standing. International Students. Federal immigration law requires that students who have come to the United States on F-1 or J-1 visas be enrolled full-time (a minimum of 12 units for most programs) at all times, with the possible exception of summer or other approved vacation periods, and under certain extenuating circumstances. In any case, approval of the immigration counselor in the Office of International Student Services is required. If you are not enrolled full-time and have not received an approved exception, you are considered "out of status" by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Enrollment Status and LimitsStudent enrollment status is defined only on a quarterly basis in most of the programs of the seminary. This applies especially to enrollment verification for loan deferment. In addition to the following definitions, there are special guidelines which apply to certain classes and certain programs. Contact the Registrar's Office for details. If you don't know whether you need to be full- or half-time for deferment of your loans, contact the Office of Financial Aid. Please note that for all purposes except new loans and grant-in-aid, Field Education registrations in the School of Theology are all considered as four units, regardless of the number of units for which they were registered (even zero units). For all purposes, only registrations in a particular quarter are counted. Work registered in a previous quarter but not yet completed is not counted as current enrollment. Maximum Load. For master's-level programs, the maximum load is 20 units in any quarter. For this purpose, Field Education registrations in the School of Theology are all considered as four units, regardless of the number of units for which they were registered (even zero units). So you can't enroll in 20 other units and a field education course, even if it is only a 1-unit registration. For doctoral students in the School of Psychology, the maximum load is 16 units per quarter. Full-time Study. For master's-level programs, the minimum full-time study load is 12 units per quarter. In the PhD programs of the Schools of Theology and Intercultural Studies, and the DMiss program, eight units per quarter at the 700- or 800-level is considered a full-time study load. For doctoral students in the School of Psychology, the minimum full-time study load is 12 units per quarter. Half-time Study. At the master's level, 6 to 11 units per quarter constitutes half-time study status; this is also true of the psychology doctoral programs. Half-time status for other PhD programs and the DMiss program is defined as four to seven 700- or 800-level units per quarter. Three-quarter-time Study. For students receiving veterans' benefits, 8 master's-level units per quarter constitutes three-quarter-time study status. The same is true of psychology doctoral classes. Three-quarter-time status for other PhD programs and the DMiss program is defined as six 700- or 800-level units per quarter.
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