Antioch University New England fully supports the use of Supervised Independent Study (SIS) as a valuable means of acquiring knowledge to be applied towards your graduate degree. A special contract form, must be approved by your adviser before the SIS is undertaken. See Registration: Supervised Independent Study.
Appropriate Subjects for an SIS
The subject of an SIS must be consistent with the learning goals of your degree program. It can be oriented either toward a particular skill that you wish to develop further (e.g., computer programming, staff development, or program planning) or a particular substantive area you wish to learn more about (e.g., higher education financing, day-care law, trends in correctional philosophy).
As a rule, no SIS will be approved if a course on the subject is offered during the student’s enrollment at Antioch. The SIS is intended to provide the opportunity to do graduate-level work on a subject not otherwise available at AUNE. Exceptions to this policy must be approved by your department chairperson.
Using a job, internship, or practicum as an SIS
The subject of your SIS can be directly related to a task that you are carrying out as part of your job or internship. In many cases this provides you with the richest learning experience. However, to credit this as an SIS, you must extend your work and learning beyond what you would have done for the job alone. If you are also doing a practicum or internship based upon your job, the work and learning goals in the SIS must be in addition to those articulated in your practicum/internship contract.
Contents of the SIS Contract
The Supervised Independent Study Contract must address the following:
- The title of the independent study, which will appear on your transcript
- The specific learning goals for this project
- The relevance of the proposed study to your professional interests
- The resources you plan to use — e.g. readings, interviews, site visits, field research, etc. Many projects lend themselves to the use of multiple resources, and you should consider visiting agencies that do related work and interviewing people who have had experience with the subject under study. The use of such resources will have the additional benefit of giving you experience doing research of a type different than that carried out through readings.
- The name of your tutor for this project. If the person is not currently an Antioch faculty member, a resume must be submitted with your contract and the choice approved by your advisor.
- The role the tutor will play in supervising the study
- Whether the SIS will fulfill a course or competency area requirement or serve as an elective
- The number of credits the study will earn will be awarded based on the following standard formula: one semester hour credit represents, over a fifteen-week period, one hour in class and two hours of preparation each week. The computation works out to 48 hours per credit. PLEASE NOTE: Individual academic departments may place limits on how many credits may be earned from a single SIS.
Registration: Supervised Independent Study Deadlines
In order to receive credit for a SIS, you must be registered for the semester. Once you have registered for the semester, you may add the SIS to your schedule. To do so, your SIS contract must be filed with the Registrar’s Office by the deadline specified on the Academic Calendar. Students who are registering for ONLY a SIS for the semester, may register at the usual time for a SIS with 0 (zero) credits to fulfill the requirement to be registered by the start of the semester. This would allow you time to complete your contract and turn it in by the SIS contract deadline. However, 0 credits could affect your eligibility to receive student loan funds and deferment of previous student loans. Please contact the Student Accounts or Registrar’s Offices for further information.
If you decide not to complete an SIS for which you’ve submitted a contract, you must email the Registrar’s Office to drop or withdraw, or receive a No Credit (NC) for the registered SIS.
Master’s students will be charged the appropriate per-credit rate for addition of the SIS and payment will need to be provided.
SIS contracts received after the deadlines will be returned to you-and registration will be required in a subsequent semester if you wish to receive credit.
