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Advisor Approval Forms: Who Signs Them?

Study Abroad Forms: A Guide for Academic Advisors

As an academic advisor, you may be asked to fill out and/or sign various types of forms for your students when they study abroad.

OIP Academic Advisor Approval Form:

You will be asked to sign the OIP Academic Advisor Approval Form after the student has been accepted to an OIP program. Ideally, students will bring it to you filled out, with possible classes already listed. In some cases, they may not know what classes will be offered ahead of time; this is very common when they are going to enroll directly in a foreign host university. If that is the case, we recommend you take the advising appointment as an opportunity to review the student's progress towards degree and make sure they understand which requirements they still need to fulfill and what sorts of classes considered appropriate. Students automatically earn in-residence LS&A credits for all coursework completed on OIP programs, so signing or not signing the form will not determine whether the student receives credit. The form is a framework to indicate how the credits will count.

Signing the form indicates tentative, conditional approval only. It is not binding on either the student or the advisor. Students may change their course selections, and the advisor's approval is not formalized until after the coursework is completed. OIP's main concern is that the student has consulted an academic advisor, and some understanding has been reached about how credits might be counted, before the program begins. It could be as simple as indicating that a course in a given subject area (e.g. art history) would be considered to meet a distribution requirement (e.g. humanities).

Who should sign?

Distribution credit: General advisor
Concentration credit: Departmental Concentration Advisor
General credit towards degree: General Advisor

Non-U-M Study Abroad Approval Forms:

You may see these at the application stage, or possibly after the students have been accepted.

The program providers ask applicants to have someone (usually a “study abroad advisor”) sign this form saying that the student is in good academic standing (sometimes they ask for the student's current GPA) and that s/he will be able to earn transfer credit for the classes. They may also ask whether the student has U-M's permission to participate in the program.

Even though they often request a signature from a “study abroad advisor,” OIP staff cannot sign these forms, because

  1. We don't handle transfer credit & have no say over whether students will receive any; it's handled by the Credit Evaluators in the Admissions Office; and
  2. We don't all have access to the student file to look up and verify the student's academic standing.

The best way to handle such requests is to have the student make an appointment with a general academic advisor, who can review the file at that time and verify GPA and academic standing. U-M students do not need permission to study on non-U-M programs, so if the form has a question about that, just write “permission not needed.” The best way to answer questions about credit transfer is simply to write “see attached” and attach a copy of the OIP transfer credit disclaimer (also known as the “Beaver Letter”). The letter spells out U-M's policy regarding transfer credit. It also includes the address of the Credit Evaluators, which is where transcripts from the program should be sent. A supply of these letters is available in the LS&A Advising Office.

If you ever get a question about why the form is not signed by a designated study abroad advisor, you can explain that U-M handles study abroad differently than many other universities and does not have a “study abroad advisor” who is responsible for approving transfer credit. It is the student's responsibility to make sure the program classes are eligible for transfer credit. If they are not listed on the transfer credit equivalency tables, the student needs to submit a transfer credit pre-evaluation form to Admissions well ahead of time.

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