 Hi, I'm Lindsay Morrison, the NCSSM Registrar. In this short video, I'm going to share some information with you about the academic program at NCSSM and our graduation requirements. In this presentation, we'll discuss the graduation requirements for your two years at NCSSM, look at sample schedules, and briefly touch on the placement and course request process. Let's start with an overview of your graduation requirements for your two years at NCSSM. The chart on the right gives an overview of every graduation requirement you have to complete in your two years here. We expect that all students will enroll in five courses each semester. That course count does not include courses like residential education, physical activity courses, and additional electives like fine arts. If you ever have questions about whether a course is included in your five course requirement per semester count, that information is included in the course catalog. While I'm going to focus now on curricular requirements, NCSSM also has some non-curricular requirements and a special term called January term, which are required for all students. More information about those requirements can be found on our course catalog introduction website, which can be reached through the course request resource board in Blackbot. Now let's talk about curricular requirements. First, each student is required to complete a year-long course called American Studies. This is a double credit course that fulfills your junior English and History and Social Science requirement. In addition to American Studies, each student must complete one senior English course, which is any English course numbered in the four thousands. And if their final humanities requirement, students must take either another senior English or an interdisciplinary humanities elective course, which includes most of our four thousand level HEU courses. For world languages, NCSSM requires that each student meet the minimum admission requirements for the UNC system schools, which is two units of the same language. We also require at least one semester of a language course while at NCSSM. Based on placement and prior credits from your home school, students will take between one and four semesters of world language. Each student is required to take one course from our engineering and computer science department. In math, each student is required to take three semesters, which must include the completion of pre-calculus or higher at NCSSM. Our science department, which includes biology, chemistry, and physics, requires five semesters of study, one semester in biology, one semester of core chemistry, one semester of core physics, and one elective credit in both chemistry and physics. NCSSM requires all students to take one additional STEM or STEM interdisciplinary elective, which can include any course in science, engineering, computer science, or math. Next, all students must complete three credits of residential education, including Cornerstone and College and Career Planning in junior year, and one RE elective in senior year. One credit of physical activity, which can either be a course taught by our PA staff or participation in a varsity sport, is our final curricular requirement. Another requirement as a whole can be a bit overwhelming, so let me break it down by year. In junior year, all students need to complete the Year Long American Studies course, two math courses, three science courses across two different disciplines, one or two semesters of world language depending on prior credit and placement, the Cornerstone and Career and College planning courses for residential education, and one credit of physical activity. In senior year, one math, one senior English, the remaining two science courses and one residential education elective are typically taken. For some other requirements, like engineering and computer science, the STEM elective, and the humanities elective, those are more flexible and students can choose to take them in either year. To get a better visual picture of these requirements, I've provided a couple example schedules. I've chosen to show schedules that include both the junior and senior year courses so that you can see the progression across two years. Should you want to take some notes about how your two years met look in preparation for requesting your courses, the sample schedule document found on the course request resource board in Blackbaud has a page with blank schedules and a similar format to these examples. In both these examples, American Studies and the required residential education courses for junior year are highlighted in blue, indicating that they are required and must be taken in those semesters specifically. In this first example, this student has chosen to take as recommended two semesters of math, both their core chemistry and chemistry elective, and add their core physics course in the second semester. It's highly recommended that you complete either your core chemistry or your core physics course in first semester of your junior year, though it's not strictly required. It looks like this student came in with no prior language experience and so is taking four semesters of world language across junior and senior year. Additionally, they've decided to take the required engineering course as a junior. In senior year, the student completes their remaining two science requirements with their biology course and their physics elective, takes their senior English and interdisciplinary humanities elective, completes the residential education elective, and finishes their third semester of math. This student has opted to use their senior J term experience to complete their STEM elective requirement by taking a credit bearing J term course. Though it's not required to take a credit bearing course in J term, if a student is looking to add more flexibility to their semester availability, it's a potential option. After completing all of their requirements, this student still has several spaces to select general electives that are of interest to them. And in the additional elective category, the student has added in some of our wonderful fine arts courses and varsity sport in senior year. In the second sample schedule, we see many similar elements, but with some tweaks. While this student still takes American studies, residential education, math, and completes their PA credit by playing a varsity sport in junior year. This student opts to take their core physics and biology class in first semester, then take their core chemistry class in second semester, choosing to save both their chemistry and physics elective courses until senior year. This student also only had to take one semester of world language. In senior year, the student's senior English and interdisciplinary humanities elective, remaining math course and chemistry and physics elective are all accounted for. Because the student completed their computer science and STEM elective as a junior, they have a lot of flexibility in senior year to choose general elective courses. I hope the example schedules have helped you understand how all the requirements can come together to create your unique schedule, but before we can build your schedule, we need to know your placements and have you submit course requests. NCSSM provides placements for all students in math, chemistry, physics, and American studies. Our world language and engineering and computer science departments also provide placements to students who have prior experience. More information about placements in each of these departments can be found on the Welcome Day information on Blackboard. Students will not receive their placements until our course requesting system opens in Blackboard. We will open that system on June 15th. At that time, students will see their placements, entered as either requirements for courses you must take, like American studies, or recommendations for things where you have choice about what options to take in junior year. The course request system will remain open from June 15th to June 26th. Please note that course requests are not the same as course registrations. After you submit your requests and alternates in Blackboard, the registrar's office builds schedules and reviews of them to ensure that students are registering courses that meet all of their graduation requirements. Those schedules will not be released until July 30th. Since your requests are not scheduled on a first come, first serve basis, there's no need to rush to complete your requests as soon as the system opens on June 15th. Take your time and make sure to get all of your questions answered. There are a lot of resources available for you at registrar.ncssm.edu. The course catalog, course offerings, course meeting patterns, and course pathways documents can help you in considering your course requests. The registrar's office will be holding two webinars on Tuesday, June 16th and Wednesday, June 24th from 7 to 8 p.m. so that students and families can drop in to ask questions about course requests and graduation requirements. The registrar's office is always happy to answer questions via email as well at registrar at ncssm.edu. Thank you for taking time today to learn about the NCSSM academic program. I hope the information will be helpful to you and we look forward to meeting you all in person very soon.