After a year of debate, Faculty Senate will decide if professors should have the option to tack a plus or minus sign on the ends of their students’ grades.
It all comes to a head on Tuesday.
Introduced into the Faculty Senate nearly 10 months ago, the resolution calls for a grading system that would change the way student’s grade point average is calculated. The senate will vote on the resolution Tuesday after several delays and an Ad Hoc Committee report on the matter.
The report looked into several matters, beginning with looking at how peer institutions evaluate students. Out of the 18 schools that the committee deemed to be peer institutions, 13 use a plus-minus grading system.
The committee also looked at the change in GPAs after the grading system was implemented. The GPAs are virtually identical. According to the Ad Hoc Committee’s report, under the University’s current system, the average GPA is 3.05. The committee found the average GPA for a school using a plus-minus system to be 3.03.
Don Chance, finance professor and author of the resolution, has taught under both systems and collected his own data. His findings also show little to no difference in GPA on both undergraduate and graduate levels.
“When I initially went to a school that had the system I was a little slow at first to adopt the system,” Chance said. “Then I tried it, and I found that it worked well.”
Chance taught at Virginia Tech, which began using the plus-minus grading system in 1979. Other peer institutions that use the plus-minus grading system include Vanderbilt, the University of Georgia and the University of Missouri.
But not all faculty are united in their opinion. Some faculty members feel that the resolution will cause unnecessary work and more frequent grade grievances, according to Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope.
Because there are more divisions, some faculty think that students will complain more often about their grades, Cope said. For example, a B-minus will be worth 2.7 grade points. A grade of B-plus will be worth 3.3 grade points, according to the resolution. There will be no A-plus grade.
“I’m just not a fan of people having GPAs higher than 4.0,” Chance said.
Faculty Senate could be rushing into this decision without thinking about the implications, said Student Government President Taylor Cox. He said Faculty Senate is trying to make the University as challenging and respectable as other higher education institutions through suffix grading.
“People say we’re trying to be more like our peer institutions. Well, no. We’re LSU. People should be trying to be more like us,” Cox said.
On Tuesday, SG announced that they were against the bill.
Despite student opposition to the bill, Mandi Lopez, veterinary medicine professor and chair of the Ad Hoc Committee, said the Faculty Senate should approve the bill.
“I’m not convinced that it will have a significant effect,” Lopez said. “There seems to be a little bit of confusion. No professor will be required to implement it.”
She said because the current system fits within the suffix system, the current system is still an option.
Chance also advocated for the bill.
“This is the perfect time,” he said. “We are moving to a new [PAWS] system. It is best to implement plus-minus grading right as we put in the new system. Students always think they are better than their GPA, here is their chance to prove it.”
