School of Medicine and Dentistry courses are structured to provide a minimum of 15 contact (lecture) hours per credit hour in addition to a sufficient amount of student work outside the classroom.

Each graduate program is responsible for making academic judgments about the credits associated with courses and programs and to ensure that sufficient consistency in the use of the school’s minimum contact hour requirement is demonstrated. Variations from the requirement are addressed by the graduate program director and the instructor, either by correction or explanation for the variance (e.g. fieldwork with the instructor), before the course schedule is published each semester.

The overall contact hour and out-of-class requirements for each course complies with the University's credit hour policy.