2022-2023 Course Catalog

Academic Credit

A credit hour is the unit of academic credit for all courses. One credit hour is the equivalent of one semester hour. Credit hour graduation requirements are specified by each degree program.

For each credit hour, Chatham University requires the equivalent of 50 minutes of classroom instruction per week and a minimum of two hours of out-of-class student work, per credit hour for a given term. This is based on the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS™) definition for credit hour, which states that a credit hour is a unit of measure representing the equivalent of an hour (50 minutes) of instruction per week over the entire term.

Chatham also adheres to the Federal standard of total expectation of total learning hours in a semester regardless of the time frame for delivery. This means that a course delivered over 15 weeks or over 7.5 weeks will have the same total minutes of instruction.