Academic Regulations Committee

Voting members present: Nancy Barbour, Kevin Boston, Rosemary Garagnani, Katrina Machorro, Dave Wing
Ex-officio member present: Rebecca Mathern (Registrar)

Academic Regulations Introduction Preamble

Kevin: The idea is to change the preamble to more specifically outline the process for any appeal, and to more specifically give students an idea of the process and timeline. Currently, the preamble is vague as to exactly where a student would find information regarding a given appeal, policy, or process. The updated preamble draft mainly changes the 4^th paragraph of the current preamble, along with a few verbiage changes. This draft has been given to the Academic Regulations Committee and it will be discussed at the next meeting.

Update on AR 13 (Withdraw from Term)

Rebecca The updated draft of AR13 that was discussed in the ARC last year has been approved and posted online. One issue has come up: Currently, if all classes are dropped after the term has started, and it is still in the drop period, then a student does not get all W’s (as is the case if all classes are dropped after the drop period has ended), but the automated email about the Withdraw Survey is still sent, this counts towards the “withdraw 4 terms” limit, and the note “Withdraw from term” is put on the students transcript. The question is if this should happen if withdrawn within the drop period. For example, a student may habitually not be able to finalize their schedule because of work or other re-occurring conflicts, and this should not affect Financial Aid, etc. After discussion, we concluded to reprogram so as to not automatically send the Survey Email, and also not have it count against the 4-term limit.

AR 20

Rebecca: AR20 (Repeated Courses). A concern has come from the Graduate School about not being able to S/U after receiving a normal grade. The main concern is that we want to discourage students from re-taking a course strictly for GPA reasons (for example, if allowed, a student gets an F the first time then S/U’s and gets an S, so that their GPA is then not affected – essentially, the F doesn’t affect anything). An acceptable reason to retake for S/U would be for improving and/or understanding. Putting discussion on this on hold until some more information can be found out about the impact, how many students affected, etc.

Update on AR 15 (Academic Dishonesty)

Kevin is working in the Academic Integrity Committee to draft an update to the procedures and policies (see meeting minutes from May 27, 2015 and January 5, 2016). The goal is to separate faculty from the student in the Academic Dishonesty process and give the student more representation. The new draft is currently in works and Kevin hopes to have a draft to the Committee for review soon; it then needs to go to Faculty Senate. They want it to go live January 1, 2017.

Next meeting: October 14 from 3:00-4:30 (meetings will be every two weeks)

Minutes prepared by Dave Wing