A replacement of the current Grade Appeals Policy will be discussed at today’s Council on Academic Affairs meeting.

CAA and the Council on Graduate Studies held a joint forum Sept. 28 to discuss and hear comments on a proposed Policy on Review of Alleged Capricious Grades that would make revisions to the current Grade Appeals Policy.

Changing the policy was a project Chelsea Frederick, former student vice president of student affairs started during her term in office last year. As the former student vice president of student affairs, she was a member of each Departmental Grade Appeals Committee that heard grade appeals from students. Her participation brought to light some areas of the policy she thought could be improved such as the composition of the grade appeal committees and the timeline used in the process.

“I promised the student body that I would change this and that’s what I’m working to do,” Fredrick said.

She is a current member of the Grade Appeals Ad Hoc Committee that began working on the new proposal last semester.

One proposed change to the policy is the composition and organization of the grade appeal committees. Currently, each department has an individual committee made up of faculty members from that department. The proposed policy would instead include a College Grade Appeal Committee made up of faculty of that academic college. Also, there would be a University Grade Appeal Committee that would review grade appeals after the CGAC.

“It makes sure that everybody is on the same page,” Frederick said.

The shift away from departmental committees is to make the process less personal, she said. Currently, when a student appeals a grade in his major, that student speaks to a committee of faculty members who he has or might have as a professor in the future. Also, the faculty member involved is speaking to a committee of coworkers who he interacts with everyday.

“The (faculty) that are listening to the students, work with the (faculty) that the grade appeal is against,” Fredrick said.

“We thought it might help depersonalize the process,” said Christie Roszkowski, chair of CAA and member of the Grade Appeals Ad Hoc Committee. She said the departmental committee can also cause tension in the department if the appeal process takes longer than expected.

“It creates an uncomfortable environment sometimes for the student and faculty member that are involved,” Roszkowski said.

The proposal would also help to move the process of a grade appeal along quicker, Frederick said.

Currently, a student has until the end of the next semester to file an appeal. The proposal suggests that a student must file an appeal by the 10th day of the following spring or fall semester.

“It establishes a specific timeline by which each stage of review needs to be completed,” Roszkowski said.

Another proposed revision to the policy has caught the attention of some faculty members concerned with who should have the power to assign grades to students.

Currently, the grade appeal committees cannot change a grade, it can only make a recommendation to the faculty member if the grade should or should not be changed.

The proposal gives the grade appeal committees the power to change the appealed grade without the consent of the faculty member. The first level of committee could decide if the grade should be changed. If the second committee finds that all procedures were followed correctly, the chair of the committee would then file for a grade change.

“It’s not substituting someone else’s evaluation of the student’s work, it’s ensuring that the grade was assigned by a fair process,” Roszkowski said. She said the committee would review none of the work completed by a student in the course, but only review if there was capricious grading used.

Charles Delman, mathematics professor, said the change is a dangerous one.

“I think it is a really bad idea to take this authority out of the hands of the faculty member,” he said. “There are too many variables and only the faculty member who taught the course is able to understand them all and needs to be entrusted to do the job they’ve been hired to do.”

Even though he disagrees with this issue, Delman said he thinks other clarifications to the policy are good and will improve the process.

Dana Ringuette, chair of the English department and member of the Council of Chairs, sent a letter representing the Council of Chairs’ opinion on the proposal to the forum.

Members of the Council of Chairs agreed that revisions will improve the policy, however, have concerns with other issues.

Concerns stated in the letter included accurately using the title Alleged Capricious Grading for the policy, a chair’s authority to determine the strength of a students appeal, a chair’s role in the formal review and making the process “overly procedural and overly long.”

“The chairs would either like to have more authority in the process or drop the chairs out of the process completely,” Ringuette said. “For the chairs, it’s a really important issue. We would like to see some revising in the proposal.”

CAA will meet at 2 p.m., today in the Booth Library Conference Room.