Although final grades for first semester were posted online the first week of winter break, some students are still waiting to see if they made the grade.

Eastern students who repeated courses in the fall had inaccurate grade point averages reported on PAWS.

Registrar Sue Harvey said the university converted to new software in the fall that does not automatically recalculate the GPAs of students who have retaken classes.

Harvey said only students who took courses during or before summer 2007 and repeated them this fall are affected.

Harvey said she knew before grades were posted that the new program was unable to correctly calculate the GPAs of these students.

Vice President for Academic Affairs Blair Lord said the number of students affected by the PAWS glitch is small and, in most cases, the discrepancy between the incorrect and correct GPA is minor.

Lord said those working with the Banner system tried to figure out how to work around the limitations of the program, but Banner is simply not designed to handle Eastern’s particular course repeat policy.

“Those doing the implementation worked very hard to find ways to accommodate our policy fully but were not successful prior to the end of the semester.

“Ultimately, we determined that we would have to manually adjust GPAs because of this,” Lord said.

The Office of the Registrar is correcting errors in students’ GPAs as they become aware of them.

“We don’t know a specific deadline for when we will be done,” Harvey said. “But we are working as quickly as we possibly can.”

Lord said the student’s GPA is recalculated almost immediately when the Office of the Registrar is notified his or her GPA is inaccurate; however, the process could be drawn out, he added.

“Because there is no simple systematic way to identify all students who might be affected, it may take some time for us to discover all of the manual corrections which need to be made,” Lord said.

Since final grades have been posted, Harvey said her office has received several calls from students concerned by their GPAs.

Lord said students who have repeated coursework in the fall should contact the Office of the Registrar and notify them of any GPA discrepancy.

After contacting the office, Harvey said students should check PAWS frequently to see if their term grade point average, cumulative grade point average or academic standing has been updated.

Barbara Harrington can be reached at 581-7945 or at bjharrington@eiu.edu.