Policies & Procedures

Policy 2.4: Graduation

Graduation Requirements: 

1. A student will earn an award (certificate, diploma, or Associate of Applied Science (AAS) degree) upon satisfactorily completing all requirements for graduation and complying with all applicable policies of the college.

    

2. Students must maintain a minimum cumulative 2.0 grade point average (GPA) to be eligible for a certificate, diploma, or AAS degree. Note that some program majors may have additional GPA and/or grading requirements for graduation.

    

3. Students who do not meet graduation requirements will be notified via their student email account. Students must reapply for graduation after meeting the requirements.

    

4. Students will graduate at the end of the semester in which they complete all course requirements. However, a student may be allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony if they desire to walk with their cohort but have outstanding graduation requirements of 7 credits or less and the courses are offered the following semester. The student will not receive an award until successfully completing outstanding program requirements. If more than 7 credits are left to be completed, the student will be allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony after all program requirements are completed the following semester.

    

5. Official transcripts and awards will not be released to students with unpaid balances of more than $500 and more than 30 days past due.

    

6. Students who achieve a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5 by the last semester completed prior to graduation will be recognized as honor students at the graduation ceremony and in the graduation program. The calculation does not include the final semester grades.

    

7. Students who achieve a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.5 at the time of award completion will receive a transcript notation indicating graduation with honors. Note that this calculation includes the final semester grades, which is different than the calculation in item 6.

    

8. Students seeking exceptions to the requirements must submit a graduation appeal to the Dean of Student Affairs.

    

9. Anoka Technical College reserves the right to automatically post certificate, diploma and degree completion to the student academic record upon the verification that all program requirements have been satisfied.

    

10. To receive a certificate, diploma, or degree from Anoka Technical College, students must earn one third of the credits required for graduation through enrollment in Anoka Technical College courses.

     

11. When credit is awarded through Credit for Prior Learning (CPL) internal college assessments, those credits count toward the one third requirement of courses as enrolled at Anoka Technical College (as described in Minn State Board policies 3.35 and 3.21).

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History:

Unknown adoption date

             04.2016           Revised

05.2017           Removed reference to graduation fee; changed number of outstanding graduation requirement credits from six to seven.

02.2019           Added statement #2 regarding maintaining 2.0 GPA (moved from procedure to policy).

04.2020           Clarified gpa threshold for honors, added honors notation on transcript, added language on automatic posting of degrees, and specified that CPL counts towards            residency requirement.

09.2021           Revised language surrounding how graduation denials are communicated; revised language concerning when transcripts and awards would be released; removed language on transcript provided upon award conferral; made clarifying language changes.