Student uproar regarding the implementation of plus-minus grading can hold its breath for a moment longer. Despite an email sent over the winter break, the resolution still lacks final approval.
The resolution passed by the Faculty Senate still has to be approved by the Office of Academic Affairs, and then the chancellor will have the final say, said Director of Academic Affairs for Student Government Thomas E. Rodgers.
The resolution is not expected to reach the chancellor until the merger of the system president and chancellor positions, said Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Stuart Bell. A Transition Advisory Team will submit its merger plan to the Board of Supervisors in July.
Rodgers is on the Ad Hoc Committee on the Implementation of Plus-Minus Grading, which looks at ways to execute the system — the effects on financial aid, the standards of academic probation and the ways technology would need to change, among other issues.
“Our entire grading system, Moodle, everything would have to change,” Rodgers said. “It would be a major reprogramming that would cost thousands of dollars.”
Bell said the University is looking at what it would take to implement the program.
“If we say we’re looking to implement the program, that would suggest we’ve made the decision,” Bell said. “We have to change policies. We’re looking at if you have to have a C or better, well, how does a C minus fit into that?”
Rodgers said using the new system would be up to the teachers, but Bell was unsure about making it optional.
“I don’t know how that would work,” Bell said.
A Student Government report prepared by Rodgers in September 2012 said an optional system would cause confusion both “inside and outside the University.”
“If two sections of a course are offered and one instructor uses the plus-minus system and the other does not, problems would arise,” the report said. “If both students receive a 91, one would get a 4.0 and the other a 3.7.”
The terms of academic probation are also a concern. Currently, students with a GPA of 2.0 or lower are on academic probation, Rodgers said.
But a 70 percent in a class would no longer be 2.0 — it would be a 1.7, Rodgers said.
“A student scraping by or on academic probation would be at a disadvantage,” Rodgers said.
Heather Schiraldi, a public relations junior who transferred to LSU from Southern Methodist University, which uses plus-minus system, said she prefers the standard grading system.
“The plus-minus system brings your GPA down for nothing,” Schiraldi said. “If you get straight A minuses, you don’t get a 4.0.”
Schiraldi said she typically makes good grades.
“I got a 4.0 last semester. If we had the plus-minus system, I wouldn’t have gotten it because my grades were around 92s,” Schiraldi said.
If she took five classes and made a 90 to 93, under the plus-minus system, Schiraldi would have made a 3.7 semester GPA.
Rodgers said there will be fewer students earning 4.0s and sending more students to the brink of academic probation.
“My biggest fear is that we’re going to see a drop in retention rates, a drop in grad rates and a drop in completion rates,” Rodgers said.
Rodgers attributes these drops to difficulty maintaining financial aid, getting into a senior college and achieving a high GPA.
Bell said administrators are looking at how other universities have implemented the system, how the University will implement it, the policies and procedures needed and what the system would look like.
“If we say we’re looking to implement the program, that would suggest we’ve made the decision.”
