ANNUAL REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON GRADE CHANGES

SPRING 2001

To: The Representative Assembly of the Davis Division of the Academic Senate

The Grade Change Committee (GCC in the tables below) met monthly throughout the academic year. During the summer months, urgent grade change petitions were evaluated by three members of the GCC who remained on campus. If there was not unanimous support for the petition among the three members, action on the petition was deferred to the full Committee for consideration in Fall Quarter.

As a result of distributing guidelines to the Deans’ Offices and Advising Units on the Committee’s decision-making criteria for the evaluation of grade change petitions, the total number of petitions that the Grade Change Committee received decreased from previous years by almost 50%. However, the Committee has received an increased number of petitions from faculty to increase a student’s grade after grades had been submitted to the Registrar’s Office. Many of these petitions appeared to be either TA errors in grading of the final examinations or possible reevaluation of a student’s final examination by the faculty member. Reevaluation of a student’s work after submission of grades is in violation of Senate Regulations unless there is a clear error. Therefore, we amended the instructions to faculty who request an increase in a student’s grade to specifically identify the source of the grading error. If there is an indication that a grading error might affect the entire class, we ask how all students in the class were informed to bring their examinations back for regrading, and the timeframe for resolving the error. The GCC is very concerned that there is equity among students in evaluation and scoring of final examinations.

A major concern of the Grade Change Committee is the number of petitions for retroactive adds received and processed by the Registrar’s Office, and the potential abuse by students of the retroactive add process to protect or improve their GPA. This past year (Spring 00 through Winter 01) the Registrar’s Office received 455 petitions for retroactive adds for courses. All but approximately 6 of these petitions were acted on and approved by the Registrar’s Office. In all cases where the Registrar’s Office approved the retroactive add, the faculty members teaching these courses verified that the petitioning students did complete the work. Many of the retroactive adds for letter graded courses are for courses in which students earn As or Bs.

The Grade Change Committee has adopted the following guidelines in determining if the Registrar’s Office or the full Grade Change Committee makes the decision on retroactive adds. The Registrar’s Office can approve retroactive adds without evaluation by the full Grade Change Committee for PHE6 courses, MUS courses for Orchestra or Choir, tutoring courses such as 97T and 197T, and for students on the waitlist for a course. For all these situations, there must be documentation from the faculty member that the student did complete all the required work. All other retroadds are forwarded to the full Grade Change Committee for evaluation.

A copy of Guidelines for Grade Changes Decisions by the Grade Change Deputy in the Registrar’s Office and those that must be evaluated by the Grade Change Committee is attached. If the Grade Change Deputy has any concerns or reservations about making a decision on a petition, that petition is brought before the Grade Change Committee.

The breakdown of petitions received and acted upon by the GCC is given below.

Table 1:

PETITIONS RECEIVED AND SOURCE OF GRADE CHANGE RESOLUTION

	OFFICE OF THE REGISTRAR	GCC	TOTAL
SPRING 2000	1254	179	1433
SUMMER 2000	605	32	637
FALL 2000	517	165	682
WINTER 2001	864	157	1021
TOTALS	3240 (86%)	533 (14%)	3773

Table 2:

ACTIONS COMPLETED BY THE REGISTRAR’S OFFICE

WITHOUT REFERRAL TO THE GCC

	SPRING 00	SUMMER 00	FALL 00	WINTER 01
GRADE CHANGES	1000	451	420	750
RETRO-DROPS	17	13	12	11
RETRO-ADDS	204	97	73	81
RETRO-WITHDRAWALS	2	4	0	2
RETRO-PF/SU	0	0	0	0
UNIT CHANGES	31	40	11	20
CORRECTIONS	0	0	1	0
TOTALS	1254	605	517	864

Table 3:

ACTIONS COMPLETED BY THE GCC

	SPRING 00		SUMMER 00
	Approved	Denied	Approved	Denied
GRADE CHANGES	34	19	1	1
RETRO-DROPS	11	31	2	12
RETRO-ADDS	1	0	4	0
RETRO-WITHDRAWALS	38	26	6	0
RETRO-PF/SU	1	18	0	0
UNIT CHANGES	0	0	1	5
CORRECTIONS	0	0	0	0
TOTALS		94	14	18
	FALL 00		WINTER 01
	Approved	Denied	Approved	Denied
GRADE CHANGES	29	11	30	7
RETRO-DROPS	18	21	35	19
RETRO-ADDS	0	0	10	0
RETRO-WITHDRAWALS	38	33	25	5
RETRO-PF/SU	0	14	4	20
UNIT CHANGES	1	0	1	0
CORRECTIONS	0	0	0	1
TOTALS	86	79	105	52

Table 4:

SUMMARY OF GCC DECISIONS

FOR THE PERIOD SPRING 2000 THROUGH WINTER 2001

	APPROVED	DENIED	TOTAL
GRADE CHANGES	94	38	132
RETRO-DROPS	66	83	149
RETRO-ADDS	15	0	15
RETRO-WITHDRAWALS	107	64	171
RETRO-PF/SU	5	52	57
UNIT CHANGES	3	5	8
CORRECTIONS	0	1	1
TOTALS	290 (54%)	243 (46%)	533

Respectfully submitted,

Jack Goldberg, Chair

Winona DeBree

Anne Fleischmann

Gary Ford

Richard Sexton

Joe Zinkl

Aelisa Carr, Undergraduate Representative

Michael Klug, Undergraduate Representative