How it works
Requirements exist for a reason, so substitutions are the exception. The strongest case is content equivalence: ‘this transfer course covered the same material as the required one, here's the syllabus.’ A scheduling case (‘the required course only runs in spring and I need it now to graduate’) is weaker but sometimes works with a comparable alternative.
Getting it approved
Submit the form early — not the term you plan to graduate. Attach evidence. If the department says no, ask what would satisfy them; sometimes a specific alternative course or an added assignment bridges the gap. An approved substitution is recorded on your degree audit so it isn't questioned later.
In and around Porter Falls
Curriculum decisions at Porter run through the departments that meet in Founders Hall and the Applied Arts Building, then to Faculty Senate, then to the Provost in Millwright Hall. The pace is deliberately slow and the review calendar is published.
The practical details
Grounds: A course with equivalent content (often a transfer course or a cross-listed one), a scheduling impossibility, or an approved accommodation. Who decides: The department or college that owns the requirement, not your advisor alone. Bring: The syllabus of the proposed substitute, and a short case for why it's equivalent. Anything time-sensitive — an accommodation, a booking, a deadline — is worth confirming directly before you rely on it, because the specifics here can change from term to term.
If you have a question
The office behind this is Office of the Provost (Millwright Hall, Room 300). Call (715) 555–0130 or email provost@uwporterfalls.edu during the fall and spring terms, or sign in to MyPorter to send a message or book a time. If it turns out another office owns the question, they will route it rather than send you back to the start.
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Every office, person, building, phone number and statistic on this page is invented; nothing here describes a real institution or a service you can actually contact.