MINUTES
ACADEMIC STANDARDS COMMITTEE
October 19, 2006
Present: Chris Kline, Ken Clark, Melissa Bass, Gary McCall, Debbie Chee, Kevin
David, Seth Weinberger, Brad Tomhave, Danya Clevenger, John Finney, Wade Hands,
Robert Taylor, Greta Austin, Jack Roundy
1. Minutes: The minutes of the October 5 meeting were approved as written.
2. Announcements: Finney circulated a News Tribune photo of the 1940
groundbreaking of Kittredge Hall featuring Norton Clapp, early in his 60-year trustee
career. Finney also publicly celebrated Tomhave’s birthday with the gift of a Far Side
calendar from 1990, a gift Petitions Subcommittee members will best appreciate.
3. Petitions Committee (PC) Actions: Tomhave provided the following report of PC
actions since our last meeting.
Date
10/5/06
10/12/06
Approved
5 (3 PPT)
1
Year-to-date
57 (11 R + 7 PPT)
Denied
1
2
13
No Action
0
0
0
Total
6
3
70
4. Review of Withdrawal Grade Policy: Kline began by thanking Finney for
circulating the Martin Jackson memo recommending a review of our new policy.
Finney and Roundy explained that the policy revision approved in 2005-2006 was
prompted by inconsistency in the implementation of our long-standing former W/WF
policy. Specifically, in a majority of cases, even late in term, faculty awarded W grades
under pressure from students who were not passing their classes but who had stories
of distress—practice in these cases was not consistent with policy, and the ASC review
was intended to achieve both fairness and consistency.
Weinberger asked what the logic was under our former policy for awarding late W
grades, rather than incompletes, assuming that late in term students will have
completed most of the coursework in any case. David gave an example from one of his
courses in which a W made sense and an incomplete did not, but concurred that late
W grades were rarely appropriate. Kline added that there are situations in which a
student will not be able to make up incomplete work even by the deadline in the
following semester (e.g., cases of serious illness). Finney said he thought faculty
awarded late W grades because they didn’t want to assign F grades to students who
weren’t doing well in their courses, wanted to bail out, and pleaded special
circumstances to justify the less punitive grade. Hands argued that the W has often
been the right grade in his experience. He gave an example from his Math Economics
class, from which students have sometimes withdrawn after discovering that the
material was not congenial, and that the workload affected their performance in other
classes; because these students were passing the course at the time of withdrawal,
Hands awarded the W. Hands argued that he favored keeping the W option in the
hands of the faculty, in part because having more grading options is a good thing,
rather than a bad thing. David replied that he favored parsimony, rather than putting
more options on the table than we need. He spoke in favor of Martin Jackson’s idea of
permitting withdrawal only by petition after the 8th week, arguing that a student
should know by then whether they can successfully manage the course.
Kline asked us to consider whether we wanted to pursue immediate changes to the
new policy or to discuss revisions after observing the new policy at work. Weinberger
wanted to know why we were charged to review our new policy now. Finney explained
that former chair Jackson’s memo recommending changes had spurred a conversation
on the topic with Faculty Senate liaison David Sousa, who had in turn taken the
matter to the Senate. The Senate’s charge, then, had in some sense originated with
the ASC. Finney added that we could fulfill the charge either by saying that we want
to see how the new policy works for a while before tinkering with it, or by making
changes right away. Kline suggested that we could also review options for change
without implementing those changes immediately. David suggested that we take our
review beyond the committee to the campus community to see how the new policy is
received. Bass concurred, saying that we need data from the actual results of the new
policy before assessing it.
Austin endorsed the use of Petitions Subcommittee to assess the appropriateness of W
grades after the automatic W period. Hands, saying that he preferred our former
withdrawal policy (as many of his Economics department colleagues also did), argued
for giving the new policy some time, to see how it works. Kline asked Hands to share
his department’s view. Hands declined to be spokesman for all of his colleagues, but
said he thought that in general they were not worried about inconsistency in how W
grades were awarded under the former policy. He said he was not troubled that
faculty embraced differing standards in their grading decisions. He added that he saw
grading as his sole responsibility as a member of the faculty, and said he wanted that
responsibility, since he was in the best position to evaluate student participation and
performance in his classes. Nonetheless, he argued for seeing how the new
withdrawal policy worked before revising it yet again. David replied that he “absolutely
appreciated faculty prerogative” in grading, but repeated that as a member of last
year’s withdrawal policy subcommittee he was appalled by the number of W grades
awarded in the last week of classes. Weinberger concurred, saying that he didn’t have
confidence in his own accountability for a good decision when he had a student in his
office crying about suffering with depression or some other personal woe and
pressuring him to award a W late in term.
Finney supported Weinberger in pursuing the question of whether the W should be
permitted late in term, as opposed to an incomplete. Finney said he favored
inculcating a culture of greater student responsibility for the content of their courses,
suggesting that we eliminate the option of withdrawal except in the case of emergency
after a certain reasonable period. Clark reminded us that another important new
element in our revised policy is the move of the automatic W deadline to the 6th week—
this is another reason to let this new policy run for a while before tinkering with it.
Austin and McCall supported Finney’s concern about student culture, arguing for
reinforcing student commitment to their courses and resisting their inclination to “bail
out” when they are not getting the high grades to which they may feel entitled. Kline
argued that our campus culture makes possible faculty support for students when
they are having academic difficulty, which in turn should enable better
communication about withdrawal policy. David pointed out that Puget Sound
emphasizes student independence, but we actually cater to students in a way that
reinforces a sometimes troubling sense of entitlement. He argued that we need
policies that foster independence and accountability, institution-wide. Austin
concurred, saying that this generation seems to demand more hand-holding than she
recalled from her student days. Bass argued that we could use the fact of how well we
support students during term to justify stricter policies at the end of term. Addressing
Hands’ concern about faculty grading prerogatives, McCall pointed out that this
prerogative remains in the assignment of letter grades. Hands made the point that
this generation of students has adult problems, and their strategies for managing
them lead to “picking at the rules,” or learning to manipulate options. Weinberger
wondered what the ratio of W’s to incompletes is at the end of term. David and
Tomhave replied that W grades outnumber incompletes by a wide margin. Finney
thought the disparity resulted in part from a much more conservative incomplete
policy than is found at other institutions.
Kline recommended that the committee return to this discussion in the spring, when
we can review data from the first semester of the new policy. Weinberger suggested
that we may want to review both incomplete policy and withdrawal policy at the time,
since the issues involved may be connected. Kline asked if Clevenger wished to add a
student perspective on our withdrawal policy. Clevenger said that under the former
policy, the student view was that “if I work hard enough on my instructor, I can get a
W when I withdraw.” She noted “a lack of responsibility” among students in this
respect. David reiterated his view that the chief issue at stake is drawing an
appropriate line between student independence and institutional support.
5. Should drop codes continue to be used during the drop-without-record period:
Kline raised the issue of required drop codes for withdrawal from classes within the
drop-without-record period. Tomhave briefly explained why this issue arose. When
students wish to add courses within the add period, they may be delayed by the need
to get drop codes from classes that must be dropped before the adds can go through.
He argued, and Roundy supported, the notion that faculty would actually get a better
and timelier sense of who was in their classes if students could drop classes without
codes, and it would save the Petitions Subcommittee unnecessary late add petitions.
David favored this change, arguing that it would save faculty time, and offered the
view that he didn’t really need a student’s story about why he or she was dropping..
We deferred full discussion of the issue to the next meeting, and adjourned at 8:54.
Respectfully submitted by the ASC amanuensis,
Jack Roundy