Academics > Course Credit

Course Credit

External credit
Operation Wallacea is affiliated with the University of St Andrews in Scotland, Imperial College London and the University of Nottingham. St Andrews and Imperial College audit the four week Tropical Research and Field Study course that Operation Wallacea run at our Indonesia, Honduras, Peru, South Africa, Cuba, Guyana and Madagascar sites each summer. Nottingham University audits the training and research in Egypt. 

The course structure allows students to join as Research Assistants and design their own expeditions while undertaking assessed coursework. These universities have an academic on site to assess the work produced by the students. At the end of the expedition students are sent graded transcripts. In UK universities the course is being offered as credits which are worth approximately 20% of the credits needed for a year and these generally translate into similar percentages for North American Universities.  The course is designed to be run in any environment and can be applied to many different parts of an undergraduate or postgraduates degree, including biology, ecology, conservation, biogeography and many more.  It can also be used for lab credit for non-scientific students.

The course fees are $1000 on top of the normal expedition fees, meaning for four weeks a student pays a total of $4400 for 3-6 credits plus the experience they gain. Students are welcome to stay on site past these four weeks, however they would do so as normal Research Assistants and cannot gain more credit. If there are students interested gaining this external course credit then we will be happy to work with your Study Abroad office to determine how the credits can be transferred.

Download the course overview (for students from North America)

Download the course overview (for students from Europe, Asia and Australia)

Internal credit with academic on site
Another option is to send an academic from your university into the field at one of the research sites and do the assessment of the training and research independently so that you can offer your own course credit. All the students from your university would need to attend the site where you had provided an academic. If this is of interest then we will need to establish an affiliation and work out how to make this available to your students.

Internships and independent study with no academic on site
Students can gain credit from within their own institution for our expeditions without the need for a home university academic to be on site using an internship or independent study programme. If your university requires the students to be assessed or conduct some specific research the details can be worked out in advance and the staff on site will ensure these requirements are covered.

Dissertation or thesis students
Students using the research programmes to gather data for a dissertation, thesis or capstone project will gain credit for submission of their dissertation, thesis or report which will be assessed by their home university.

Assessing the programme on site
If you wish to come to our sites to observe an expedition and see how you can implement a course structure for your university then this is encouraged although not essential. This can be done through the Class Group Visiting Academic scheme which costs $500 a week.