African Studies Certificate

Certificate Requirements

Graduate students may earn a certificate in African Studies upon completion of the following requirements:

• A total of six African Studies courses (18 credits) is required. Any Graduate Class can count towards the African Certificate if there is at least 25% African content and individual students focus on an issue or country in Africa while doing their project and or research paper for the class. In special instances, with the consent of the academic advisor, approved upper-level undergraduate courses may be accepted. For a full list of approved courses, click here.
  • Graduate students should complete a minimum of 6 unique credits of coursework. In other words, at least 6 credits of the course work used to complete the requirements of any graduate level certificate in UCIS must be in addition to the credits used to complete the student’s primary degree program. In consultation with the academic advisor, students may fulfill these standards through one of the following options:
    • Students may contextualize non-credit bearing internships that are required in various graduate degree programs as credit bearing experiences for UCIS certificate programs. Prior approval must be received from the academic advisor to pursue this option.
    • Students who can add content courses without affecting their tuition bill will be encouraged to do so.  
    • Students who are exempt from the language requirement because of previous coursework or heritage language skills may use language course credits towards the requirement for “additional work beyond the graduate degree.
  • The 6 credits may be comprised of the following combinations:
    • Two language courses (* see notes below)
    • A language course (* see notes below) and a content course
    • Two content courses

* Language courses may be used in the following circumstances: 

For certificate programs that require three years of language proficiency, students may count language courses in the third year (i.e. grammar, conversation, courses taught in target language) that are above the intermediate level.

For students in any certificate program who are exempt from the language requirement due to previous coursework or as a heritage speaker, the introductory courses in a second language (either LCTLs, or a commonly taught language with a clear and stated relevance to their research or professional goals) will count.

For students completing two graduate level UCIS certificates, at least nine (9)credits of the course work used to complete the certificate requirements must be in addition to the credits used to complete the student’s primary degree program. At least 3 of these credits must be in content coursework. All 9 cannot be language course credits.

• Language proficiency: Two years of college level study of an African language or equivalent Proficiency of a European language other than English relevant to African Studies as a consequence of Africa’s historical experience (French, German, Portuguese and Spanish).
• A Research Paper focused on the area of concentration under the supervision of an African Studies faculty member written for a graduate class.
• GPA requirement is 2.5 for all courses to be counted towards the African Studies Certificate.