The Program in Film & Media Studies has specific expectations and requirements for any courses taken overseas that a student wishes to count toward the FMS major. Our goal is to be fair to all students and transparent in our processes, ones that are in line with the standard operating procedures of the Office for Overseas Programs. The following are FMS guidelines for students interested in overseas study that might lead to credit in our major:
- FMS majors must complete a study plan, pre-approved by the program's study abroad advisor.
- If a student enrolls in different courses while overseas other than those that were pre-approved for the FMS major, he/she must contact the study abroad advisor in FMS for approval early in the semester abroad. Students should provide the advisor with detailed information about the courses that were not listed in the original, pre-approved study plan, including the nature and number of writing assignments and, if at all possible, a syllabus.
- Upon return to WUSTL, the student must present the study abroad advisor with all syllabi and, whenever possible, graded copies of all work for every film/media course for which they are seeking credit in the major. In some cases, it will be difficult to retrieve graded work from the instructor. Students should return with whatever written materials they can, including copies of all submitted work or ask the instructor to send comments on the work completed directly to the study abroad advisor by email.
- For a student to receive FMS major credit for a critical studies course, the course must require at least two essays demonstrating skills in argumentation developed with analytical rigor. Note: the critical studies courses offered at the FAMU (Prague) ordinarily do not meet FMS workload requirements, which means the student going overseas to that program should not expect that they will earn FMS major credit for such courses.
- While FMS limits the number of credits towards its major from a semester abroad to six, students likely will be studying other subjects and perhaps taking other non-approved film/media courses that would not meet the standard of 300 or 400 level elective courses in FMS. In the case of the latter, the determination of credit will be made by the Office of Overseas Programs. Overseas Programs is only able to award lower division credit (100 or 200 level) that may be counted toward graduation as general education credit, but not towards any major or minor (including FMS).