Major changes in store for university grading system
By: Sumeet Patel
Issue date: 4/15/05 Section: News
Originally published: 4/15/05 at 9:06 AM EST
Last update: 4/15/05 at 10:14 AM EST
Originally published: 4/15/05 at 9:06 AM EST
Last update: 4/15/05 at 10:14 AM EST
|
The decision was announced by Director of the Doctoral Nursing Program and Chair of the SCAA Heyward Dreher who hopes to have the new grading system in place by fall 2005. Although the SCAA is united in its decision to cast aside the current standalone 'A' through 'F' grading system, the Senate's Steering Committee will debate on the "D+" and "D-" options when it meets later this month.
"After tenure policy, this is the second most important issue the Faculty Senate has had to deal with," Dreher said. "Fall and winter terms were devoted to the issue of grading scale and over 75 percent of the faculty in the College of Nursing and Health Professions alone responded positively the measure."
Faculty in the College of Media Arts & Design as well as Information Science & Technology and the Goodwin College of Professional Studies were polled and produced similar results. Dreher believes that significant forces, such as fairness in grading and grade inflation, are driving the faculty's overwhelming response.
"Faculty, especially on the University City Main Campus feel pressured into giving borderline students higher grades," Dreher told The Triangle. "For them the current grading system is unfair and the plus/minus system offers a great deal more flexibility."
At its monthly April 28 meeting, the Steering Committee, composed of all committee chairs, will vote on the quality points awarded to the grade of a 'D.' The proposal would then pass into higher levels of administration for approval. If the measure passes, Dreher assures there would be "no retroactive calculation of past grades" and there would be a 2-3 year transition period that would allow students leverage for meeting scholarship and graduation requirements.
"It's a very complicated process that we have not even begun to address at this point," Interim Provost Ali Houshmand noted. "There a number of plus/minus systems out there and we do not want to essentially reinvent the wheel."
Interestingly enough, the University already uses a plus/minus based system on the Center City Hahnemann Campus's Master's level programs. Of the 12 benchmark schools the University is comparing itself to, such as the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University, two thirds of the schools use a plus/minus system or a variation of it.
