Incomplete grades now harder to replace
By Benjamin Baxter
The Collegian
A recent addition to the academic regulations stipulates that students are to be blocked from enrollment in a course for which they received an Incomplete Grade, Dean of Undergraduate Studies Dennis Nef announced Friday.
The changes are part of an ongoing effort to revise the campus academic regulations to be in line with the standards of the CSU system. “We found this problem and so we decided to fix it ourselves,” Dean of Student Affairs Paul Oliaro said.
The change is one of two recent revisions to the Academic guidelines reviewed by the Academic Policy and Planning Committee of the Academic Senate.
Another addition, effective spring 2006, stipulates that faculty must jointly complete an Incomplete Form with the student in question for each student earning an “I” grade.
The faculty member and the department will retain copies of the form. Another copy will be provided to the student.
The form will clear up any ambiguity of what is required to replace the I.
“The purpose of the form is to outline what is required to complete the grade,” Nef said. “As far as what is required to complete the grade, that’s between the student and the faculty.”
This had already been the procedure, but since it wasn’t an officially mandated policy, there was no way to enforce it, Nef said. “What was happening was that some students were exploiting this loophole by taking their class the following semester.”
Nef does not anticipate any negative reaction.
Some students may dislike the change. But for one student, a previous experience with an Incomplete Grade and grade substitution was positive.
“I got an incomplete once, but I was able to use grade substitution to get rid of it,” Benjamin Holton, a senior civil engineering major, said. “The grade substitution helped my GPA substantially.”
The new policy would make his reaction different.
“I would be mad,” Holton said. “I would be angry.”
According to the 2006-2007 catalog, an Incomplete grade indicates that a portion of required coursework wasn’t “completed and evaluated in the prescribed time period.”
A student can earn an incomplete as a result of an “unforeseen but fully justified reasons” as long as there is still “a possibility of earning credit.”
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