The following glossary represents a list of the various terms and definitions that students, faculty, and staff will encounter in Inter-American Adventist Theological Seminary (IATS) documents and conversations. It is recommended to review these terms to have a complete understanding of the subject under discussion.

  • ABD (All But Dissertation): Abbreviation used to describe a Master’s or Ph.D. candidate who has completed all of their coursework and examination requirements but still needs to complete their thesis or dissertation. 
  • Academic Calendar: The Academic Calendar represents important dates and deadlines for each term for students officially registered in the courses listed in the Inter-American Adventist Theological Seminary Course Program. The academic calendar is prepared each term by the Vice President of Academic Affairs and approved by the Institution’s AdCom. This calendar is available upon request in the office of the VP of Academic Affairs.
  • Academic Credential: A grade awarded in the transcription of credits to students upon completing a formally recognized academic program.
  • Academic Honesty: It is expected that the student’s work is their own and is based on their knowledge, ideas and thoughts. It is the absence of cheating and plagiarism. Academic dishonesty or academic misconduct is any type of cheating connected to a formal academic exercise. It can include plagiarism (the adoption or reproduction of ideas or words or statements of another person without due recognition), Fabrication (the falsification of data, information, or citations in any formal academic exercise), Deception (providing false information to an instructor regarding a formal academic exercise, for example, giving a false excuse for missing a deadline or falsely claiming to have submitted work) or Cheating (Any attempt to give or obtain assistance in a formal academic exercise, such as an exam or project, without due recognition).
  • Academic Program: A sequence of credit courses leading to an academic credential (e.g., degree and academic major linked to the degree, academic minor, college certificate).
  • Academic Year: The instructional period is made up of three terms: Term I (January-April), Term II (May-August), and Term III (September-December).
  • Accreditation: Accreditation in university education is a process based on self-assessment and evaluation of its programs and services by professional associations or nationally recognized regional accreditation bodies. Its purpose is to improve academic quality and public accountability. This ongoing quality control process generally occurs every five to ten years. Approval of colleges and universities by professional associations or nationally recognized regional accreditation bodies.
  • Add / Drop: This process allows students to change their course schedules by registering or deleting a course.
  • Adjunct Professor: Part-time instructors at the institution hired as needed with no guarantees of continued employment.
  • Admitted Student: A student that has been accepted by the IATS admissions committee into a program and has confirmed their acceptance. Incoming accepted students are considered admitted students when they confirm their acceptance until their enrollment or the first day they enroll in classes.
  • Alumni: Any student certified as having met all of the IATS degree requirements and has received a diploma.
  • App (Applications): App is short for application, another name for a computer program. Usually, when people talk about applications, they almost always mean programs that run on mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, although there are also applications for computers.
  • Assessment: The term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to assess, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students and academic programs. The assessment has a variety of forms such as Diagnostic, Formative, Summative, Location, Standardized, Portfolio, and Performance (see the assessments in this glossary for their respective descriptions)
  • Assessment with Digital Portfolio: Also known as eportfolio, they are collections of academic works, for example, homework, study results, writing samples, speeches, student-created movies, or projects, which are consistently collected and evaluated by students. Portfolio-based assessments are often used to assess a “body of knowledge,” that is, the acquisition of various knowledge and skills over a specific amount of time. Materials in the digital portfolio are often evaluated to determine if students have met required learning standards.
  • Assistant Professor – Non-tenured faculty member in the process of obtaining a position. This is typically an entry-level position with a probationary period set by the institution after completing a Ph.D. program.
  • Associate Professor – Associate Professor, is a permanent entry position. Many teachers remain in this range throughout their careers once it is achieved. However, some reach the rank of full professor.
  • Asynchronous online courses: These types of courses are not offered in real-time. Students are given content and assignments and given a time frame to complete course work and tests. Interaction generally takes place through discussion forums, video recordings, blogs, and wikis, among others. As a result, there is no class meeting time. Asynchronous online learning environments are effective for students with time constraints or busy schedules.
  • Campus: Campus refers to the university institution that has an affiliation agreement with IATS. 
  • Campus : The land on which the buildings of a college or university are located. 
  • Carnegie Unit: The Carnegie Unit is a system developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that based academic credit on the number of time students spent in direct contact with a classroom teacher.
  • Catalog (bulletin): The IATS catalog contains the complete list of courses offered as part of the official IATS curriculum. It can be found at: https://setai.edu.
  • CIP Code: The classification of programs that provides a taxonomic scheme for all fields of study. All concentrations have a CIP code.
  • Conditional Admission: acceptance to the institution that depends on the student completing their first courses or meets specific criteria before enrollment. This may include a requirement to achieve a certain level of proficiency in a language or other requirements established by the institution.
  • Contact Time: A contact hour is defined as 55 minutes of scheduled instruction presented to students. The contact time and the student’s preparation time are used to calculate semester credit hours. See Credit Hour or Carnegie Unit
  • Content Management System (CMS): Used to create, upload and display content. It creates the frame around a website that stores and determines how the content is displayed. These systems can add and manage most types of content, such as images, audio files, movies, text, and most of the commonly used web page elements. A CMS can also determine things like a public or private access to certain pages, how to respond to a returning visitor rather than a first-time visitor, and most other aspects of running and maintaining a website. This is where most content managers make daily updates to their website and deal with certain SEO factors such as meta-tagging and image resizing scales.
  • Course: A particular subject, such as GSEM501, NTST600, among others. All courses are listed in the IATS Catalog at: https://setai.edu.
  • Course Document: Document that collects all the information related to the creation or modification of a course. It is delivered for institutional approval to the Vice President of Academic Affairs and serves as the basis for preparing the Syllabus.
  • Credit Hours: Credit Hours are the number of credits awarded for completing one contact hour of classroom instruction and two hours of preparation during the term.
  • Curriculum (Curriculum): A comprehensive program of study leading to a degree.
  • CV (Curriculum Vitae): A document detailing your accomplishments similar to a resume, but longer. It is generally applied for at academic institutions when applying for a position as a scholar or to satisfy other requirements.
  • Degree Requirements: The courses required for the MA in Pastoral Theology, MA in Biblical-Theological Studies, Doctorate in Ministry, and Ph.D. Biblical-Theological Studies. In addition to these requirements, students must complete all the requirements that the IATS has indicated before receiving their degree.
  • Delivery method: This is sometimes called a mode of delivery or delivery methodology. The mode of delivery represents the instructional method used to communicate course content with students. At the IATS, the current delivery methods for Seminar courses are face-to-face, remote, or online. Professors who wish to offer courses using the online delivery method must receive the approval and training offered by the institution.
  • Designated School Official (DSO): A designated school official (DSO) is the person on campus who collects and reports information about international students to the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) and helps international students in the visa and employment authorization process.
  • Diagnostic assessment: Administered before students begin a lesson, unit, course, or program. Students are not necessarily expected to know most, or even none, of the material assessed by previous assessments; They are generally used to (1) establish a baseline against which educators measure learning progress throughout a program, course, or instructional period, or (2) determine overall academic readiness for a course, program, level degree or new academic program to which the student may be transferring.
  • Diploma: The diploma is a formal document issued by the Seminar to symbolize that a IATS degree has been conferred (awarded) by the institution to the recipient.
  • Distance Education: education is a formal educational process in which most of the instruction in a course occurs when students and instructors are not in the same place. The instruction can be synchronous or asynchronous. A distance education course can use the internet (online); one-way and two-way transmissions via open broadcast, closed-loop, cable, microwave, broadband lines, fiber optics, satellite, or wireless communications devices; Audio lectures, DVD and CD-ROM are used as part of the distance learning course or program.
  • Doctorate: A doctorate in philosophy (Ph.D.) or a doctorate in ministry (D.Min.) is awarded to students of the Seminary after completing all the requirements for graduation by the respective academic program and specified in the IATS Catalog.
  • Electronic Repository (Dropbox): A repository is a storage place for electronic files or works that can be shared to collaborate with study or work colleagues. Examples of repositories can be Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, among others.
  • Emergency Remote Education: Unlike experiences planned from the beginning and designed to be online, emergency remote teaching is a temporary change from instructional delivery to an alternative mode of delivery due to crisis circumstances. It involves using fully remote teaching solutions for instruction or education that will otherwise be delivered in person or as blended or hybrid courses and will revert to that format once the crisis or emergency has subsided. The primary goal of this teaching method is not to recreate a robust educational ecosystem but rather to provide temporary access to instruction and instructional support in a quick and easy to set up manner during an emergency or crisis.
  • Enrolled Student:  A student of the Seminary who is enrolled in at least one course for credit.
  • FERPA: The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law designed to protect privacy and limit access to student education records. Visit the following link for more information: www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco.
  • Flipped Classroom: The method of offering a course that uses class time for discussion and experimental activities and time outside of class to read and view course content (for example, presentations of material are offered online).
  • Formative Assessment: These are assessments in students’ learning process that are administered several times during a unit, course, or program. The overall purpose of formative assessment is to provide educators in-process feedback on what students are learning or not so that instructional approaches, teaching materials, and academic support can be modified accordingly. Formative assessments can generally take various forms, from more formal tests and assignments to informal questioning techniques and class discussions with students.
  • Full Professor: Refers to the rank of a faculty member who has advanced beyond the associate professor level.
  • Full-Time Student: Students in Master’s programs are considered full-time when they are registered by a minimum of twelve (12) credit hours per term. Students in doctoral programs are considered full-time when they are enrolled for a minimum of six (6) credit hours per term.
  • Grade Point Average (GPA): Grade Point Average is calculated by dividing the total number of grade points earned by the total number of credit hours attempted. At the IATS, the GPA can range from 0.0 to 4.0.
  • Graduate Record Examination (GRE): The GRE is a standardized test of verbal, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing that measures readiness for study at the graduate level.
  • Graduate Student: A student who has enrolled and is enrolled in a master’s or doctoral program.
  • Hybrid Courses: A course delivery method in which the delivery of the course over the internet predominates but includes face-to-face sessions (60% or more online).
  • Hybrid Programs: Some courses are in-person, and others are offered at a distance (online).
  • In Progress: It is a grade that indicates that a course is still in progress.
  • Institutional Effectiveness: Institutional effectiveness refers to how well an institution achieves its results and goals through its mission. The main objective is to lead and support a systematic review of the institutional mission, goals, and results, using research-based planning and continuous evaluation, which will result in continuous improvement in institutional quality.
  • Learning Management System (LMS): An LMS is an online learning management system developed for a virtual environment, which we access thanks to an internet connection, in which we can learn and train. It allows the administration, distribution, and evaluation of programmed training activities within an online teaching or e-Learning process. Examples of LMS’s are Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, Google Classroom, among many others.
  • Listener (Not for Credit): When a student registers for a course as a listener, they are not looking to earn credit hours. The student will have this course recorded as a listener course in the student’s record and transcript.
  • Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): An online course aimed at unlimited participation via the web. In addition to traditional course materials such as recorded lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs offer interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions between students, teachers, and teaching assistants.
  • Master’s degree: A Master’s degree is granted after completing the requirements for a master’s program as established in the institutional catalog. More information for each Master’s degree can be found in the Institution’s Catalog.
  • Non-traditional student: The US National Center for Education Statistics defines non-traditional students as meeting one of the following seven characteristics: late enrollment in postsecondary education; attends the institution part-time; works full time; is financially independent for financial aid purposes; have dependents other than a spouse; is a single parent, or does not have a high school diploma. These are students enrolled in credit courses.
  • Online Learning: Online education is a flexible system of instruction that encompasses any learning that takes place over the internet. Although the term is often interchanged with distance education, it should be noted that online education is a subdivision within distance education. Online learning provides educators the opportunity to reach students who may not be able to enroll in a traditional classroom course and supports students who need to work on their own hours and at their own pace. (See distance education)
  • Part-time: A student enrolled in less than six (6) credit hours during a term. Students in doctoral programs are considered part-time when they are registered for a minimum of three (3) credit hours per term.
  • Pedagogy: According to the Oxford dictionary, Pedagogy is the science that studies the methodology and techniques applied to teaching and education.
  • Performance Assessment: These generally require students to complete a complex task, such as a writing task, a science experiment, a speech, a presentation, a performance, or a long-term project, for example. Educators often use collaboratively developed common assessments, grading guides, rubrics, and other methods to assess whether the work produced by students shows that they have learned what they were expected to learn. Performance assessments may also be called “authentic assessments,” as some educators consider them more accurate and meaningful assessments of learning achievement than traditional tests.
  • Placement Assessment: Evaluation used to “place” students in a course, course level, or academic program. For example, an assessment can determine if a student is ready for Basic, Intermediate, or Advanced Greek.
  • Plagiarism: The illegal use of someone else’s words or ideas as your own without acknowledging that person through an academically accepted dating process.
  • Preparation Time: Preparation time is represented by 60 minutes of unscheduled or out-of-class work that the typical student is expected to complete. Prep time and contact time are used to calculate the appropriate semester credit hours each course takes. See Credit Hours or Carnegie Unit.
  • Prerequisites: Programs or courses that a student must complete before enrolling in a program or course.
  • Recommendation Form: A written letter required by the institution that evaluates your qualifications and abilities. The IATS requires letters of recommendation as part of the admissions process.
  • Standardized Assessment: This type of assessment is designed, administered, and graded in a standard or consistent manner. They often use a multiple-choice format, although some include open-ended and short-answer questions. Standardized tests can be administered to large populations of students of the same age or grade level in a state, region, or country, and the results can be compared between individuals and groups of students.
  • Statement of Support: An official document that proves the adequate funding of an individual or organization to cover the educational and living expenses of a sponsored student while enrolled in the institution.
  • Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS): A computerized government system that maintains and manages data on international students and exchange visitors during their stay in the United States. It is part of the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP).
  • Student Learning Outcomes: Listed in the course syllabus, student learning outcomes are represented by a statement that formalizes the competencies, practical and professional skills, higher-level thinking, and analytical skills that the instructor expects students to earn upon completion.
  • Summative Assessment: Used to assess student learning at the end of a specific instructional period, generally at the end of a unit, course, term, program, or school year. Summative assessments are generally graded tests, assignments, or projects used to determine whether students have learned what they are expected to learn during the defined instructional period.
  • Syllabus: Document prepared by each professor for a course of study. It is given to students at the beginning of the course and serves as a guide for them and the teacher.
  • Synchronous Online Courses: This method requires the instructor and all enrolled students to interact online simultaneously. Similar to a webinar, participants interact via video, text, video, or audio chat. Synchronous learning environments allow students to participate in a distance course in real-time. It should not be confused with Emergency Remote courses. See Online Education.
  • Term: Each of the three sections into which the academic year is divided: Term I (January-April), Term II (May-August), and Term III (September-December). Each term lasts eight weeks.
  • Thesis advisor:  It is the professor who works closely with a student in the choice, planning, and execution of a research plan, in carrying out the research, and in the presentation of the results. The senior advisor serves as chair of a committee of faculty members who review the progress and results of the investigation.
  • Thesis Defense: The defense of a thesis in front of a panel of experts where a master’s or doctoral student shows evidence of mastery of the content of his thesis.
  • Title (degree): See Master or doctorate degree.
  • Title IX: It is a federal civil rights law passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. This law and its amendments protect people from discrimination based on sex and against sexual assault and harassment in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance. 
  • Traditional Education: Also known as face-to-face education (F2F). It is the instructional method where the course content and learning material are taught in person to students. This allows for live interaction between a student and an instructor. It is the most traditional type of learning instruction. In face-to-face learning, students are held accountable for their progress on the date and time of the specific class meeting.
  • Transcription: Also known as an academic transcript or grade record. The academic transcript represents the official record of the institution of the academic history of a student, the grades obtained, and the associated grade point average. Also listed on the transcript are declared academic credentials, academic credentials awarded for students who have completed their degree, and college honors awarded by the institution upon awarding the degree.
  • Virtual Campus: A virtual campus or eCampus, refers to the institution’s online offers where the work is completed partially or entirely online.
  • Withdraw / Drop: The administrative procedure of dropping out of a course or dropping out of an institution.