Academic Standards Committee Minutes
Date: Oct 10, 2011
Attendance: Gary McCall (GM), Brad Tomhave (BT), Debbie Chee (DC), Paula Wilson
(PW), Sarah Moore (SM), Ann Wilson (AW), Ben Lewin (BL), Maddi Werhane (MW),
Kali Odell (KO), Landon Wade (LW), and Duane Hulbert (DH)
Chair Ann Wilson convened the meeting and deferred the approval of minutes from
last meeting due to ongoing revisions.
Petitions Committee report from Brad Tomhave:
Petitions for the Period 09/27/2011 – 10/03/2011
The Petitions Sub-Committee held meetings on October 3, 2011 with the
following results:
1 Approved Late Adds
1 Denied Late Add
2 Approved Courses Repeats for a Second Time
4 Total Petitions
Registrar Approved: 0
Preview Team Approved: 0
Sub-Committee Approved: 3
Total Approved: 3
Sub-Committee Denied: 1
Total Petitions: 4
For the year to date, 19 petitions have been acted upon, 6 involved late
registration and 8 involved registration with a schedule conflict. Of the 19 total
petitions, 3 have been denied: 1 late add, 1 time conflict, and 1 transfer credit
evaluation.
Additionally, a student was placed on Academic Warning because she did not
complete an incomplete course and the resulting failing grade diminished her
grade point average for spring 2011 to below 2.00.
No report from Senate this week since Senate liaison Bill Barry was not in
attendance due to simultaneous meetings of the Senate and ASC.
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The remainder of the meeting returned to the discussion of the criteria for
graduating with university honors, and whether the criteria should remain as solely
dependant on cumulative GPA, and not involve any conduct-related criteria.
Since the last meeting, some ASC members initiated discussions with their
department colleagues to gauge their opinions on whether university honors should
involve criteria other than cumulative GPA. Some ASC members used last year’s
“egregious example” of a student falsifying research data as a general scenario of a
conduct violation that might be considered as an exclusion for honors eligibility,
even if the student had achieved a cumulative GPA that qualified s/he for honors.
BL- (Sociology)- Some sentiment that egregious violations are problematic, but
conversations get complicated as issue is discussed in greater depth.
GM (ExSc)- Emailed two faculty who responded they generally thought you should
not get honors if you do something like falsify data. Thought that dept should
have more decision making over honors distinction.
AW (PT) Spoke with three PT faculty who felt that substantiated violations and still
receiving honors doesn’t seem right, but this seems hard to police. The full
faculty might need to decide on the policies and courses of action for denying
honors.
PW(Bus) Didn’t think student with egregious example (falsifying data) should get
honors, but weren’t sure how policies could be implemented
We next entertained ideas the ASC had in terms of policies to disqualify a student
from graduating with honors.
BL- Could a hearing board decide, and how would that be consistent?
BT- One problem is the “what if” issue: If there is no hearing board but a student is
reprimanded at student conduct hearings for an integrity/honor code violation.
Would disqualifying them from honors at a later date for the earlier violation be
a form of double jeopardy? We could run conduct violations through both
channels when they occur: academic (hearing board) and conduct (honor court)
in an analogous way to the way criminal and civil courts operate. We need to
consider the “what if” at the time of adjudicating the offense- that is, decide if the
student would be ineligible for future honors/accolades should they
subsequently achieve them
SM- The faculty member may not want to bring the issue to a hearing board and
“ruin a student’s future” at PS and taint their experience, but might still want to
hold them accountable for their actions. Since the first egregious incident,
hearing boards have considered that some actions might carry forward as part of
the punishment
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BT- Carrying forward punishment (i.e. making ineligible for honors) might apply in
other extremes such as causing significant property damage to the university.
LW- Could a non-faculty member “press charges” as a representative of the
institution? (Does this mechanism exist?)
AW- Reminds the ASC Bill Barry thought the Senate would controversy in the issue
of how to go about setting policies for deciding what disqualifies someone for
university honors.
BT- The ASC could assign honors- as was discussed in ASC last year. The ASC is the
committee that is accustomed to making decisions about academic matters
(petitions, probations, expulsions, etc.).
SM- Hearing boards may be consistent in one sense, but the composition of people
changes and so dies the application of sanctions. So, this isn’t the best
mechanism to decide on punishments.
DC- One point is that hearing boards are often considering more severe
punishments such as expulsions, so it wouldn’t usually be very relevant to
consider if someone would be declared ineligible for honors.
SM- Maybe this “over the top” (falsifying data) example isn’t happening so often and
we only have such an egregious example every few years.
DC- What is the ASC had another petition like the recent egregious one?
BT- They would want to know the precedence for the violation scenario before
them. The hearing board didn’t support the faculty petition to deny honors for
the recent egregious violation because they were not sure if behavior was a
criteria for honors. The faculty needs to decide: 1) If honors means more than a
certain cumulative GPA; 2) If yes, then the process is another issue- it needs to
be fair and equitable.
LW- Wouldn’t the ASC send any suggestions for policy (on ineligibility for honors) to
the faculty?
BT & AW- The faculty should agree it’s a problem first. Should we say (to the Senate)
that we’ve discussed this issue and we need faculty input to see if there is
anything to fix with the honor criteria?
SM- Do the ASC faculty members even agree whether honors should be connected to
criteria other than GPA?
LW- Are there levels of Integrity Code sanctions for violations?
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DC- Yes, but the conduct violations that get sanctioned are the most severe, and
these aren’t students that will be eligible for honors.
GM- We should find solutions for egregious problems we don’t like even if they
don’t occur very often.
BL- Is the primary issue more a matter of how to get the violation addressed (by an
adjudication channel/process) in the first place?
SM- Some faculty may not want to connect honor in behavior with university
graduation honors for achievement of a high cumulative GPA
BL- But, we need to consider how the honors language is used in the greater
academic environment outside our institution. Most places (our NW peers) just
interpret honors as a high GPA achievement and don’t attach a behavioral value.
We can define honors however we want, but the outside communication may be
lost.
ASC members are each asked whether honors should include more than just a GPA
criteria
MW-(student) I wouldn’t want a “dishonorable” person having the same designation
as her (honors for high GPA)
KO (student)- Agrees with MW, wants honors to mean more than just a GPA criteria.
DC- Generally agrees with the students
LW- Honors is connected to behavior for him too, but the level violation to become
ineligible is still difficult to judge
GM- Agrees with MW, KO, DC, & LW. We can define our own honor standard and if
we have clear policies then outsiders could see our values.
BT- Spoke with Whitman’s registrar, and student can’t get “suma” designation if
they received an “F”. The faculty also vote as to whether student can graduategraduation is “upon election by the faculty”. This is a precedent for judgment in
terms of graduation itself.
PW- “honors” means more than GPA
DH- We need to set the threshold level of egregious behavior. Prefers to stick with
the current system of GPA-based eligibility and let individual cases be petitioned
through ASC.
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BT- Procedural issues are a complicating factor
SM- No language exists to entertain certain violations- like falsifying research data
DH- Do students know the honors criteria/policy?
STUDENTS- Not so much, not even some seniors. Surprised to learn it was only GPAbased. The perception of the criteria varies among students.
SM- We’re in agreement that some behavioral component could have bearing on
honors.
GM- Would the dept level faculty approval be a failsafe to declare someone
ineligible, or is there too much chance for abuse of authority.
BT- Reminds us the point is to disqualify those that have otherwise qualified based
on current GPA criteria; we’re not deciding who qualifies.
SM- We could inform the Senate of our sense of the issue and see if they agree or
not.
GM- We need to be prepared for the possibility that the Senate will spend a few
minutes on the issue and say we shouldn’t pursue it after we have spent about
two hours discussing it already.
BT- Maybe we should amend the hearing board guidelines to articulate the
authority to declare ineligibility for honors. This is an authority they are already
granted- deciding on academic punishments-and is much more severe than
expulsion.
SM- A hearing board could still get caught up in trying to decide the egregious
threshold.
DH- Like the hearing board having this authority more clearly articulated because it
gives a mechanism for adjudication.
AW & BT- Let’s examine the current language in policies with the intent of
suggesting to the Senate a phrase that recognizes the hearing board’s authority
to stipulate a student be ineligible for university honors upon graduation as a
punishment for violation of academic integrity and/or the honor code.
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