FSA Degree Program: Transfer Credit and Prior Learning
EOU’s FSA degree program offers many opportunities for transfer credit and credit for prior professional learning. These opportunities are designed to help individuals bring together the different currents of their professional education and training into a coherent whole.
Academic Transfer Credit
EOU accepts course credit from most accredited educational institutions. On a student’s admission, transferred credit converts into EOU’s quarter-term equivalent and is granted by the Registrar’s academic officer.
The Associate of Arts transfer degree granted by Oregon colleges and universities and some institutions in Washington automatically fill EOU’s general education requirement.
Upon approval, associate degrees in Fire Science will meet the lower-division fire science course core courses. If an admitted student has not fulfilled the lower-division requirements through coursework, the student will need to consult her or his FSA degree program adviser about whether more lower-division academic work needs to be completed.
Agency-Sponsored Learning
EOU recognizes the link between education and training in the professions. For this reason, EOU’s academic schools permit some agency-sponsored learning, or professional training, to translate into academic credit when that learning or training relates to an academic discipline represented at EOU. Up to 45 credits may be earned this way. For some agency-sponsored learning, the student will pay $50 per credit hour.
Credit for approved courses taken at the National Fire Academy is free when applied to an FSA degree at EOU.
Credit for Prior Learning and Assessment of Prior Experiential Learning
FSA students seeking to turn non-credit professional learning into transcripted credit for the program’s lower division requirements may do so through “credit for prior learning” at community colleges. FSA students seeking credit through this process first need to find out whether their local community collegewill provide such assessments and credit transcripting services. If not, the student’s adviser will refer the student to Chemeketa Community College, Portland Community College, or any other FSA Consortium community college partners for assessment.
Students may document college-level mastery of curriculum areas at EOU by creating learning essays, which are merged into a final product called a portfolio. Portfolio essays are submitted and evaluated by EOU faculty to determine whether credit can be granted. A student may qualify for up to 45 credits with the portfolio process. For FSA program students, this option is especially applicable to the 27-credit upper-division elective category in the major covering Business, Social Science, and Communications topics.
APEL 390, EOU’s “Assessment of Prior Experiential Learning” course, is a four-credit course offered face-to-face in various Oregon locations and online. Students have four terms, following the term in which APEL 390 is taken, to write and submit their essays. As essays are submitted, EOU faculty review the work and decide how much academic credit will be granted. At the conclusion of the review process, the student is billed $50 for each credit awarded.
APEL credit may not always be transferable to other institutions.
EOU accepts prior experiential learning and other non-traditional credits from other accredited institutions on a case-by-case basis.
