SLIG Spring Virtual 2025: BCG Certification: Understanding and Meeting Standards

Join Angela Packer McGhie, CG, FUGA and Karen Stanbary, LCSW, AM, CG, CGG in their course during SLIG Spring Virtual 2025.

In this hands-on course, students review and practice the Board for Certification of Genealogists’ requirements for credentialing. They study the Genealogical Proof Standard and Genealogy Standards to create and evaluate genealogical work using established rubrics.

Rubrics for Evaluating New Applications for BCG Certification provide the organizing framework for class discussions, hands-on activities, and at-home practice. In-class exercises build foundational skills in transcribing records, planning efficient research, analyzing records, correlating information, reporting on research results, and writing about evidence. Weekly homework assignments provide the opportunity for students to apply the skills to their own research. Students will be asked to identify and celebrate their small wins on their paths to submitting a successful portfolio.

We will dive deep into the skills necessary to achieve certification:

• Crafting a meaningful research question
• Conducting reasonably exhaustive research
• Evaluating sources as containers of information
• Developing and refining efficient and dynamic research plans
• Mining and reporting evidence
• Documenting sources
• Transcribing and abstracting information
• Correlating information
• Writing about evidence with logic and inference
• Assembling evidence and conclusions
• Parentage proofs including DNA
• Resolving conflicts
• Reporting of findings in a formal Research Report
• Writing clear proof arguments detailing evidence and reasoning to support conclusions
• Accurately reconstructing families within a Narrative Lineage
• Writing a detailed and documented life story including meaningful historical context

This course is not sponsored by the Board for Certification of Genealogists. The opinions expressed by the faculty are entirely their own. The BCG Application Guide and Genealogy Standards represent the authority in all matters relating to credentialing. Please refer to the Board for Certification of Genealogists website for more information.

This course will be held on Thursdays, 8:00 am–3:30 pm MT, 13 February through 27 March 2025.

View the complete course schedule here.

Registration for this course and other Spring Virtual 2025 courses opens at 2:00 pm MDT on Saturday, June 22, 2024.

To prepare for registration, create or login to view your account here.