By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
With students, faculty and staff grappling with online learning, the Bowling Green State University has instituted new flexible grading for the rest of the semester.
In an announcement from President Rodney Rogers and Provost Joe Whitehead late last week, they spelled out a radical departure from previous grading policies, that will enable students to convert any course not yet completed to a Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory/No Credit grading option. Faculty will continue to use the current grading scheme – A, B, C, D and F. Once those grades are posted students will have until May 29 to file with the Office of Records and Registration to switch to the S/U/NC option.
Students will need to consult with their advisors before making the change to ensure that the switch is in their best interests.
Any course in which a student receives a C or higher may be converted to an “S” and will count toward their degree, regardless of department, college or university requirements. Those grades will not be used to recalculate the student’s GPA.
The university has also extended the deadline to withdraw from a course for the spring semester to May 8. The deadline for completing the work for a spring semester course in which a student received an incomplete will be extended to Dec. 18.
These changes are only in effect for the spring semester.
“These grading changes are aligned with the direction most universities are taking across the nation,” the announcement said.
The changes were made in consultation with the executive committee of Faculty Senate and the leadership of the Faculty Association.
“We support the decisions the University has made regarding grading,” said David Jackson, Faculty Association president, in a text message. “In these difficult times we all need to be flexible to ensure student success.”
The announcement goes on to say that the administration will be “accommodating” in how it deals with faculty and staff evaluations this year.
A couple weeks ago, as the university was announcing the end of face-to-face classes for the semester, Jackson, said, that concern about the effect of going online on faculty evaluations was one of several “longer term issues” being discussed with the administration.
The supposition was that having faculty all teach online courses, regardless of their experience in doing so, would have a negative effect on evaluations.
Jackson also expressed concerns how the cancellation of scholarly conferences where faculty were scheduled to present papers could affect tenure decisions.
