2008 Woodie Awards
Academic changes affect students' honors
Ariel White
Issue date: 2/1/07 Section: News
- Page 1 of 3 next >
This semester, Emerson students are finding themselves with a new set of academic policies to hurdle when it comes to receiving honors for their transcripts and degrees.
The department of Academic Affairs asked teh Academic Policy Committee, whose voting members are all faculty, to look into the standards that Emerson formerly had in place for Latin Honors and the Dean's List. After a review of the current policies, the Committee decided to make the standards more rigorous for both sets of academic awards.
Janet Kolodzy, last year's head of the Academic Policy Committee, said that the issue had been brewing since last fall. The issue was looked at by the APC for two months starting in March and was brought to the faculty in April.
"It may seem as if it wasn't deliberate because it wasn't on students' radar," said Kolodzy, "but it was on the faculty's."
The decision to enact the changes occurred after a committee of faculty members led by Registrar William DeWolf compared Emerson's policies on the two types of elevated honors to those of typical competitors, schools such as Boston University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
The new requirements as cited in the 2007 handbook for being on the Dean's List are a 3.7 grade point average (GPA) with no letter grades lower than a C-. Students had to meet these requirements starting last semester in order to get on the Dean's List.
The former requirements for Dean's List, which had been in place since the last 1980s, were a 3.45 GPA and no grade lower than a C-.
The requirements for Latin Honors will go into effect for the Class of 2010, allowing current students to retain their Honors status according to old rules.
"There are students who have been here for three years," said DeWolf. "We were not going to change on them midstream."
The former requirements for Latin Honors, which will still be in place for the next three years, are a bit more complex.
The department of Academic Affairs asked teh Academic Policy Committee, whose voting members are all faculty, to look into the standards that Emerson formerly had in place for Latin Honors and the Dean's List. After a review of the current policies, the Committee decided to make the standards more rigorous for both sets of academic awards.
Janet Kolodzy, last year's head of the Academic Policy Committee, said that the issue had been brewing since last fall. The issue was looked at by the APC for two months starting in March and was brought to the faculty in April.
"It may seem as if it wasn't deliberate because it wasn't on students' radar," said Kolodzy, "but it was on the faculty's."
The decision to enact the changes occurred after a committee of faculty members led by Registrar William DeWolf compared Emerson's policies on the two types of elevated honors to those of typical competitors, schools such as Boston University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
The new requirements as cited in the 2007 handbook for being on the Dean's List are a 3.7 grade point average (GPA) with no letter grades lower than a C-. Students had to meet these requirements starting last semester in order to get on the Dean's List.
The former requirements for Dean's List, which had been in place since the last 1980s, were a 3.45 GPA and no grade lower than a C-.
The requirements for Latin Honors will go into effect for the Class of 2010, allowing current students to retain their Honors status according to old rules.
"There are students who have been here for three years," said DeWolf. "We were not going to change on them midstream."
The former requirements for Latin Honors, which will still be in place for the next three years, are a bit more complex.
Be the first to comment on this story