Principal Licensure

Successful candidates for this graduate certificate should possess the following attributes:

• Can work with people from across varying cultural, social, economic, and religious backgrounds
• Results oriented
• Collaborative
• Can focus on multiple tasks/projects at one time
• Experience with a wide range of technology
• Believes that all children can learn

Federal regulations require the University of Cincinnati to publicly disclose whether completion of certain programs that lead or may lead to professional licensure or certification would meet a given state’s educational requirements for a specific professional license or certification required for employment in an occupation (regardless of whether the program is on-ground, online, or hybrid). To learn whether a University program meets a given state’s educational requirements, please visit the University of Cincinnati's State Authorization webpage.

All students are assigned a faculty advisor.

Before a candidate can graduate, he or she must meet the following requirements:

1. Be registered for at least one credit in their program in the academic year, after having met minimum degree course requirements to be considered a graduate candidate throughout the academic year.
2. Have all NG, N, I, UP, SP and F grades removed for degree courses.
3. Posting of satisfactory grades for the semester of graduation.
4. Satisfactory completion of all applicable College and program requirements as provided by the major advisor, filling out the Checklist for Completion of College/Departmental Requirements for Graduation and sending it to the Graduate School.

On a case-by-case basis, a student may petition to have graduate credit from an accredited college or university counted as the equivalent of another course in the curriculum and accepted as transfer credit. In such cases, a student will have to supply a course syllabus to ensure that the content in the course taken at another university is equivalent to the content of the course in the Principal Licensure graduate certificate. A course with a similar name or the same name as a course offered at the University of Cincinnati does not necessarily mean that the content of the course is similar enough to accept it as transfer credit to our program.

Students may transfer up to 50% of graduate credit from an accredited college or university.  Courses taken outside an accredited college or university—such as non-credit professional development—will not be accepted. Only courses with grades of B or higher will be considered for transfer. No credit is given for previous work history. Courses taken more than 7 years prior to a student’s entrance into the program will not be accepted as transfer credit.

Speakers of English as Second Language: If an applicant’s first language is not English, they must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or another comparable test unless they have previous degrees from higher education institutions in the United States. The recommended test scores are: 92-93 for Internet-based TOEFL; 237 for Computer-based TOEFL; 580 Paper-based TOEFL; 6.5 for IELTS; and 62-63 for PTE. The test must be taken within two years prior to application to the program.