Graduate Certificates

A Graduate Certificate is an integrated group of courses that is designed to have a very clear and focused academic topic or competency as its subject area. Often, a Graduate Certificate may meet a clearly defined educational need of a constituency group, such as continuing education or accreditation for a particular profession; respond to a specific state mandate; or provide a basic competency in an emerging, usually interdisciplinary, area.

A Certificate is not a graduate degree program (it is typically between 9 and 15 credits), but it does provide the student formal recognition of the mastery of a clearly defined academic topic. 

Graduate Certificates are becoming an increasingly important component of the total range of graduate educational opportunities offered by a modern, comprehensive research university. Often, Certificates are pursued by students who are also pursuing a graduate degree in a traditional discipline, or who may already have earned one or more graduate degrees. 

Although formal admission to a specific Graduate Certificate is handled by the Director of the Certificate, a student seeking to pursue a Graduate Certificate must also apply to and be enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Kentucky. Some Certificates may require concurrent enrollment in a degree-seeking program of study, however, many students will be enrolled only in the Graduate Certificate program of study. 

A list of Graduate Certificates can be found here.

More information on admission requirements and specific plans of study for a particular Graduate Certificate can be obtained here.

Note that admission to or completion of a Graduate Certificate does not guarantee subsequent admission to a graduate degree program; that is a separate process, and different criteria prevail.

All graduate certificate-seeking students must submit an online application to the Graduate School; this applies even if they are currently enrolled in a graduate program at UK. If enrolled, there is no application fee; those who are not enrolled in graduate school at UK must pay the standard application fee of $65.00. 

For currently enrolled students there is no limit to the number of hours that can be applied to both the degree and the certificate (unless the program/certificate owners specify otherwise). For a certificate to be awarded all students are required to apply for their certificate in MyUK, using the same process as when students apply for degrees: https://myuk.uky.edu/irj/portal (Click on Student Services /myRecords / Graduate Degree Application)

Each graduate certificate must have a designated Director, who is appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School. The Director will represent the certificate on matters such as admission to and successful completion of the graduate certificate, enforcement of certificate requirements and maintenance of records. The Director can be either an associate or full member of the Graduate Faculty of the University. 

• Online form for nominating a DGC is available here
• List of current Directors of Graduate Certificates is available here