Congratulations on your acceptance into courses in our UW Professional & Continuing Education (PCE) certificate programs. While you will occasionally receive form communications from PCE, all of the essentials will be available here for your review.
About Certificates
PCE certificates are non-degree academic credentials awarded by the University of Washington upon the completion of a course sequence meeting at least 90 hours of class time. Although you will receive numeric grades on UW’s 4.0 scale, there is no class rank and GPA is not a factor in earning the certificate beyond meeting the minimum requirement. Students who achieve an overall grade of 2.0 in each required course (equivalent to a US-standard C-, or approximately 73%) will earn the certificate.
The few certificate students who (1) have GNM status, (2) want to transfer the academic credit to UW or another university, and (3) wish to avoid grades that may adversely affect their GPA may elect the S/NS (satisfactory/not satisfactory) grading option. This is not applicable to most certificate students.
UW undergraduates who complete the Quantitative Fundamentals Certificate should request their certificate by emailing compfin@uw.edu with your name and student number after completing all four required courses. Matriculated UW students may not receive a certificate if you do not request it. PCE certificates do not appear on your UW transcript. Matriculated UW students are not eligible to earn the certificates in Computational Finance, or Financial Data Analytics.
It is appropriate to list your certificate in the education section of your resume. PCE Registration Services can confirm its award to employers as needed (you may need to sign an information release).
Registration
You will receive an email welcoming you into the PCE certificate program and providing information on how to confirm your spot in the certificate. PCE students are not enrolled until all fees for the first quarter are paid to PCE Registration Services (c2reg@uw.edu; 206.543.2310).
PCE will distribute course registration forms each quarter. You can return the completed form with a check or written credit card payment information via postal mail, or you can contact Registration Services by phone to make payment. If you are in the Seattle area, payment is also accepted in person at their office.
UW NetID
Your UW NetID is your official University of Washington computing account. It provides you with an email forwarding alias and becomes your user ID and password combination for UW services. These services include your Canvas course website, access to lecture videos, UW library resources, and other tools.
New students are eligible to create a NetID upon registration (including full payment) for at least one course. The NetID creation process can take several days to complete and activate, so do not delay in establishing a NetID if classes begin soon. UW PCE will send you your personal access code (PAC) via the email address you provide in your application. The PAC is required to create your NetID.
Online Platforms
General information on the online tools and approach used by CFRM is available here. Please note that troubleshooting and technical support is dependent on the particular tool in use. UW’s main Information Technology group does not provide support to certificate students except for Canvas.
Using Canvas
Canvas is the “virtual classroom”–a website dedicated to your course, available from https://canvas.uw.edu. All essential information will be found there, including links to lectures, the course syllabus, assignments and file submissions, discussion forums, and contact information for your instructor and TA.
Access to the course Canvas site is limited to registered students via their UW NetID. It can take several days to establish your NetID and for your enrollment to update in Canvas, so it is important that you move quickly upon acceptance to register and begin the NetID creation process.
Lecture Videos
Most CFRM courses are delivered using the Panopto lecture capture platform. You will be able to watch a live webcast of class or view a streaming version on demand immediately following the end of class. Most classes are also downloadable for offline viewing but you must wait at least four hours after the end of class before attempting to do so. Trying to download lectures early may corrupt the download link for yourself and for other students.
More information is available from UW-IT. You can troubleshoot viewing issues if you have problems accessing Panopto lectures.
Support for Panopto problems is provided via UW-IT. Available 24/7, you can contact UW-IT via the methods listed here.