To fulfill PACE requirements and advance to a Professional certificate, current PACE participants must successfully complete three college courses from the lists of courses approved by the South Carolina Department of Education. Courses identified for individual teachers should be based on the educator’s certification area, experience, knowledge, and skills as well as his or her professional growth and development needs. Participants should complete all courses while an active participant in PACE or within the three years prior to issuance of the first alternative-route certificate. Approved courses taken four or more years prior to issuance of the first alternative-route certificate must be revalidated by the college that issued the course credit for use in PACE.

The three required courses must be pre-approved before completion and should be completed for credit and an assigned grade of B or better. For the purposes of PACE, participants may complete the R2S Content Area Reading and Writing requirement through approved professional development (via Virtual SC or their districts). In addition to R2S, one other professional development graduate course may be used to fulfill a PACE course requirement. In order for a PD graduate course to be used for PACE, the course must correspond directly to one of the three required PACE course categories, must be approved by the Office of Educator Services prior to enrollment, and must be taken for three semester hours of graduate PD credit. Only the PD course may be completed as pass/fail.

Participants have access to a list of pre-approved courses, available on SCPACE Moodle. These courses do not require a course approval evaluation request. If participants want to take one of the required courses that is not on the pre-approved course list, they must submit a PACE Course Evaluation request through My SC Educator Portal and a copy of the course description or syllabus for approval. Courses must be evaluated and approved by the Office of Educator Services before completion.