Continuing Education Units
Questions about CEUs?
Contact Ashley Fredericks, university CEU coordinator, for additional help.
(804) 828-1322
murphyae@vcu.edu
The Continuing Education Unit allows VCU to record an individual’s successful completion of various activities, allowing individuals to earn CEUs in order to maintain or increase expertise in a career field or renew professional licenses. It is solely up to the certifying agency — not VCU — whether to accept or decline VCU CEUs.
In order to offer VCU CEUs for participation or attendance at a particular event, a university school, college, department, program or office must apply through VCU Continuing and Professional Education to sponsor the event. Non-university entities do not have the ability to request CEUs directly from VCU Continuing and Professional Education. The request must be sponsored and applied for by a university unit with expertise in the content area.
What is a CEU?
The CEU is a uniform unit of measurement for noncredit continuing education activities that meet certain requirements. As measured by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training, one CEU is defined as 10 contact hours of participation in an organized continuing education experience under responsible sponsorship, capable direction and qualified instruction.
A CEU is not equivalent to undergraduate or graduate credit and CEUs are only recorded to one decimal point (i.e., 14 contact hours is equivalent to 1.4 CEUs).
Criteria for awarding individual CEUs
VCU requires the following criteria be met by the university schools, colleges, departments, programs or offices awarding or sponsoring individual CEUs:
- The noncredit activity is planned in response to an assessment of educational need for a specific target population.
- There is a statement of objectives and rationale.
- Content is selected and organized in a sequential manner.
- There is evidence of pre-planning, which should include opportunity for input by a representative of the target group to be served and the faculty or administrator having content expertise.
- The activity is of an instructional nature and is sponsored or approved by an academic or administrative unit of the university best qualified to affect the quality of the program content and approve the resource personnel.
- There is provision for registration of individual participants and the capability to generate data for institutional reporting.
- Appropriate assessment/evaluation procedures are utilized and criteria are established for awarding CEUs to individual students prior to the beginning of the activity. This may include the evaluation of learning outcomes, student performance, instructional procedures and course effectiveness.
The CEU process
Requesting CEUs through VCU
When a unit within the university chooses to sponsor a CEU event, the process must be initiated with a CEU Event Approval Form (request an application from ocpe@vcu.edu). This form must be fully completed with all required signatures and submitted directly to VCU Continuing and Professional Education at least one calendar month prior to the event start date.
If approval is awarded, VCU Continuing and Professional Education will enter the event in the office’s online registration system. At this time, the event will be turned over to and managed by the appropriate CEU manager (see contact information below).
CEU Manager Contacts
College of Health Professions - Patricia Porter, plporter@vcu.edu
College of Humanities and Sciences - Collin Cox, coxcd@vcu.edu
All Other Areas - Contact Ashley Fredericks, VCU Continuing and Professional Education, murphyae@vcu.edu
Changing an event
Any changes to an event must be emailed to ocpe@vcu.edu at least five business days prior to the event start date.
Canceling an event
If an event is canceled, notification must be received via email to ocpe@vcu.edu no later than the start date of the event.
Looking to register for a CEU event?
Contact your event coordinator directly, or if you've been told to register through VCU Continuing and Professional Education, visit the Course Directory where you can enroll and pay.