SUMMER COURSES IN PHYSICS

DEPARTMENT POLICY

Each year, a substantial number of Colgate students seek permission to take one or more introductory physics courses at other colleges or universities in order to satisfy Colgate requirements. In most cases, students are genuinely concerned with course scheduling conflicts or heavy courseloads during the regular academic year. However, the quality of instruction in summer courses at other institutions can vary tremendously: to grant Colgate credit, we must be sure that the summer course is equivalent to the corresponding Colgate course in content, workload, and standards of achievement. Be aware that our standards are high. For this reason, the following guidelines will be used to assess summer transfer credit requests.

  1. Permission to take a summer course for Colgate credit must be obtained from the Physics Department before you take the course. There are no exceptions to this rule. The summer catalogue, syllabus, hours of class and lab meetings, and name of textbook are needed to evaluate the course.
  2. The course should be offered by an accredited 4-year college or university.
  3. The course should meet in lecture for a period comparable to the corresponding Colgate course. Our courses meet for 50 minutes, four times per week, for 14 weeks, for a total of about 47 hours per semester. Thus, a 5-week course should meet for 2 hours per day, five days per week.
  4. Each course should have a laboratory which meets at least 10 times, for at least 3 hours per meeting, to be equivalent with Colgate’s lab expectations.
  5. Each course should last at least 5 weeks. It is simply impossible to master a semester’s material in less time, no matter how intense the timetable.
  6. Before Colgate credit is granted, students must demonstrate competence by scoring a "C" or better in a two-hour exam given here at Colgate in the fall. The exam will be equivalent in level and coverage to the final exam of the corresponding Colgate course. (Note that a "C" is the lowest grade which can be transferred into Colgate.) Last year 50% of the students taking the tests passed them. This is not meant to be a discouragement, but to stress that we take this matter very seriously.

    The above guidelines are meant to apply primarily to courses which are not required for concentration in Physics or Astronomy. Concentration credit is another matter, and any such requests must be treated with especial care.

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