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Wednesday, August 14, 2013

administration

University to tighten grade exclusion policy Incoming freshmen get new exclusion policy. By David Kline The Shorthorn staff

Incoming freshmen will fall under UTA’s grade forgiveness policy starting this fall, but transfer students will not be eligible. Grade forgiveness is a combination of UTA’s grade replacement and grade exclusion policies. The policy allows students to use two grade replacements or one replacement and one grade exclusion. Only grades of D or F may be considered and the student must be in a freshman or sophomore level class. Dolores Aguilar, chairwoman of the Undergraduate Academic Standards Committee, said she met with former UTA President James Spaniolo last year and both agreed grade exclusion should be limited to one opportunity and students must change their major to exclude the grade. If they want to keep their major, students must retake the class and replace the grade. “Our rationale for limiting grade replacement or exclusion to lower division courses and the intent of this policy was to help freshmen transition to the university academic environment,” Aguilar said in an email. “Transfer students have already had opportunities to adjust to post high school academ-

replacement, but does not have to with grade exclusion. The number of grade exclusions has increased for the last three years from 3,531 in 2011 to more than 5,500 in 2013, according to the Office of Registration and Records. UTA spokeswoman Kristin Sullivan said the increase also had an impact on the policy change decision. “UT Arlington’s Undergraduate Academic Standards Committee became concerned that the university’s grade exclusion policy was too permissive,” Sullivan said. “General stats from the previous three years show a significant increase in exclusions granted over the past three years.” Eric Bolsterli, Liberal Arts assistant dean, said the grade exclusion policy is an oddity and while he isn’t sure if that was the deciding factor for changing the policy, he said that he guesses that it’s close. “If we’re going to be a Tier One school, we can’t do stuff like that, that’s weird,” Bolsterli said. “I mean, think about it. Does Stanford and Berkeley and Harvard let students just erase Fs out of their GPA? Just pretend like they don’t exist? Which is what kind of happens here.” Grade exclusion applications will open for the fall on Sept. 10.

online Grade exclusion applications will be accepted starting Sept. 10. To submit a grade exclusion request, go to http://bit.ly/19oLLMO

What is the new grade forgiveness policy? - The policy allows students to use two grade replacements or one replacement and one grade exclusion. Only grades of D or F may be considered and the student must be in a freshman or sophomore level classes. - Incoming freshmen will fall under UTA’s grade forgiveness policy starting this fall, but transfer students will not be eligible.

ics.” Jennifer Fox, 2012 student congress president and current assistant director for the university events department, said students did not like the new policy when it was presented to the Undergraduate Assembly in February 2012. “A lot of times, it’s your 3000 level or 4000 level class that you need to either grade replace or grade exclude,” Fox said. “We have way more transfer students than we do freshmen. If you’re transferring from a community college, your learning curve coming into UTA is still very large.” A key difference between grade replacement and grade exclusion is a student must retake the course if he or she uses

@DavidShorthorn david.kline@mavs.uta.edu

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