Students at Texas A&M are expected to follow the degree plan that is published in the Undergraduate Catalog for the year they first entered the University. The catalog number is placed in the student’s record on the Student Information Management System (SIMS). Note that the catalog number is used instead of the academic year. The student is obligated to complete the courses on the degree plan, but the Undergraduate Advisor may change the catalog in certain cases.

Prerequisites for courses are identified in the course description in the Undergraduate Catalog. Students and faculty advisors need to check the prerequisites for each course to insure these requirements have been satisfied. The Department offering the course and the instructor teaching the course enforce the prerequisites. The current catalog has the most current prerequisite requirements.

A schedule of Ocean Engineering course offerings is shown in the Table below The Ocean Engineering Program only offers the Ocean Engineering courses once a year. This is much different from the larger engineering programs that offer courses every semester. Problems in Ocean Engineering (OCEN 685) are offered every semester but students must make individual arrangements with faculty members prior to enrollment. Special Topics in Ocean Engineering (OCEN 489) is used to teach new courses and may be offered any semester.

Students may seek a double degree in Ocean Engineering and a second discipline (i.e. Civil Engineering). The rules for obtaining double degrees are contained in the current catalog. Basically the student must take a minimum of 30 credit hours beyond the requirements for the first degree. In many cases it will require more than 30 credit hours. Students wishing to obtain a double degree in Ocean Engineering must satisfy all the requirements for the BS degree. However, if they have satisfied the requirements for BS in Civil Engineering then many of the courses are the same (e.g. CVEN 205, POLS 206, MATH 151, etc) and some of the required CE courses may be used as technical electives in the OE degree. The student must complete the double degree plan and submitting it to the Registrar's Office.

The Ocean Engineering curriculum presently requires 6 credit hours of technical electives which are selected from the Approved Technical Elective List that is available in the Ocean Engineering Program office. The electives are divided into 4 groups. Group A is Engineering Design, Group B is Engineering Science and Math, Group C is Business and Other. The major requirement is that 3 credit hours of technical electives must come from the Engineering Design Group A. The last page of the technical elective list shows suggested technical electives for several areas of interest in Ocean Engineering to assist students in selecting their technical electives. Selections outside the approved list must be approved by the Undergraduate Advisor or Program Head and a petition must be submitted and approved.

Directed electives are distributed through out the curriculum in Ocean Engineering. The requirements are defined in the current Undergraduate Catalog. It is important to note that a student must be careful in their selection of humanities and social science courses because the second course must be in the same subject area if the first course was a 299 level or below. If both social science courses are 300 level or higher then they can be from a different subject area. For example, if the first course is SOCI 205 then the second course must be SOCI 300 or higher. If the first course is SOCI 315 then the second course may be PSYC 356. The same procedure is followed for the humanities courses. In catalog 121 and above, ENGR 482 (Engineering Ethics) is a required course and is combined with any other approved humanities course from the Directed Electives list in the Undergraduate Catalog located at the end of the Engineering section.

The purpose of the Degree Audit is to insure that the Ocean Engineering degree requirements are met by each student. It also serves as check for the student and advisor as to the progress of the student towards completing their degree. The first-degree audit for a student is completed automatically when the student completes 100 credit hours. The degree audit results are sent to the students department. One copy of the degree audit is placed in the student's file. Degree audits will be completed each semester the student is enrolled after they have exceeded 100 credit hours. A final degree audit is completed when the student applies for graduation. The results are available near the end of the semester. Students may see their degree audit by using BONFIRE on the Texas A&M University network (TAMUNET).

Petitions are special forms that are used to substitute courses in the student’s curriculum (degree plan). For example, a student enrolled in a Statics course at another university and transferred the credit to Texas A&M. The transfer is accepted by title "Statics" and it is up to the Ocean Engineering Program to decide whether to substitute the course for ENGR 211 (Statics). A petition is required to make this substitution. Another example is a student who transfers from AERO to OCEN and has taken the AERO 320 which is a numerical methods course similar to CVEN 302 which is required in the O.E. Program. A petition is used to substitute the AERO 320 for the CVEN 302 in the student’s curriculum (degree plan). The substitution is documented in the degree audit.