General Information for Faculty and Staff

Sometimes, students transfer from another institution to complete their degree at MSU. Other times, they are taking a course elsewhere just over the summer, or they intend to study abroad!

In these cases, course equivalency between our Jabs MSU courses and the courses students took elsewhere needs to be determined.

When a Student Comes to You for Help

Please help your student walk through their end of the process. We've made a webpage for them too! You can view the Jabs Student Course Sub Process here. 

If your student plans to take a course elsewhere

Please work with them to check if this course has already been approved by using the Transfer Equivalency Guide (TEG). If your student's desired course needs evaluation, please have them submit the Jabs Course Substitution Request Form.

Transfer Equivalency Guide (TEG) Tip! If a course is noted as "ELEC 100," "ELEC 200," "ELEC 300," "ELEC 400," etc. then this course still requires evaluation - please encourage your student to submit!

If your student plans to study abroad

If your advisee is planning to study abroad, please assist them in auditing their DegreeWorks for courses that they have not yet taken toward their degree requirements. Please encourage them to look for similar courses at their desired institution. Take a look at the Jabs Study Abroad Transfer Equivalency Guide; here you and your student may view courses that have already been approved. Once they have a plan, they may begin submitting the Jabs Study Abroad Course Substitution Request Form.

Jabs Study Abroad Transfer Equivalency Guide Tip! Courses listed in this database are already APPROVED!

It is important to note that once students receive their decisions regarding their requests, they must also complete a Study Abroad Course Approval Form (managed by the Office of International Programs) located in their study abroad portal. This form requires an advisor's signature. If you receive one and are comfortable signing, please do so. If you are not comfortable signing, please designate Cagnie Miller at JabsGlobal@montana.edu as the replacement.

Step-by-Step Process

  1. Student submits appropriate Jabs Course Substitution Request Form
  2. Coordinator receives and processes form
    1. This includes sending the request via email to a designated subject area faculty expert - we call them reviewers!
  3. Faculty Reviewer decides if the course is "approved" as equivalent, or "denied" as inequivalent and lets the respective coordinator know via email.
  4. Coordinator will then:
    1. Record these decisions in our internal database
    2. Notify the student via email and copy their primary advisor
    3. Record these decisions in the student's DegreeWorks notes

Who Manages What?

Transfer or Current student related requests:

Danielle Victory is here to help at JabsAdvising@montana.edu or danielle.victory@montana.edu !

Study Abroad related requests:

Cagnie Miller is here to help at JabsGlobal@montana.edu or cagnie.miller@montana.edu !

If you're not sure who to contact, please reach out to both of us and we will be happy to help.

Information for Course Substitution Reviewers

When students are bringing courses from other institutions with them to MSU, we strive to support them through a fair procedure of determining accepted equivalency. In order to accomplish this, we ask for your, the faculty reviewers', help and expertise.

Boilerplate Guidelines and Expectations

When the Jabs Office of Student Services (OSS) receives a course substitution request from a student, the Academic Coordinators will manage said requests and reach out to the proper authorities to request determination of equivalency - these expert authorities being you!

When you receive a request from JabsAdvising@montana.edu or JabsGlobal@montana.edu, please utilize the instructions below.

NOTE: Courses do not need to be an exact match; generally, we look for about an 80% overlap. When reviewing, please consider the following:

  • Learning outcomes
  • Textbook(s) used
  • Course description
  • Course calendar (if available), including how much time is spent on key topics
  • Assignments
  • The student’s ability to succeed in follow-on courses
  • Course level (for study abroad only):
    • Many institutions outside the U.S. follow a 3-year degree model, which makes aligning course level with our 4-year upper-division/lower-division system challenging.
    • When applicable, please assess whether the course meets the rigor to be assigned upper-division credit at MSU and include that in your evaluation decision.

Not all syllabi—especially for international or study abroad courses—will include all of these elements. We often have to work with whatever the student can provide.

To honor our students' time, we request a response within one week of the initial request reaching you, barring extenuating circumstances.

Thank you for taking the time to review our students' substitution requests! Your support means a lot to our students.