 "Photo: N/A")
Vassar’s Committee on Curricular Policies (CCP) passed a proposal recently that will afford students the option to retake a course if they receive a grade of D or D+. It now has to be approved by a majority of the faculty at their next meeting in order to be implemented.
The proposal, originally submitted to CCP by Dean of Freshmen Benjamin Lotto, would allow students to “request to repeat a course in which they receive a grade of D+ or D by submitting a petition to the Committee on Leaves and Privileges.”
The proposal differs for freshmen, whose requests would “ordinarily…[be] granted automatically,” while “sophomores, juniors and seniors must provide a statement explaining the academic benefits of repeating the course; requests will be evaluated based on those statements.” The proposal also states that both the original and repeated grades will appear on transcripts, and students will not be allowed to repeat a class more than once.
The proposal complements an already existing policy allowing students who receive an F in a course to retake it. The proposal complements an already existing policy allowing students who receive an F in a course to retake it. According to Dean of the Faculty Jonathan Chenette, “about 70 out of 500 students” who failed a course from Fall 2000 to Spring 2004 opted to re-take it.
Grades for both the original and repeated version of the course appear on the transcript and are included in the student’s GPA.
Lotto said that the proposal was inspired by admissions data on the Class of 2013, which indicated that it “was the most diverse of any Vassar class so far, and diversity includes diversity of preparation.” Some curricular policies may need to be reconsidered to accommodate students with a variety of backgrounds and approaches to their educations.
“Transition to college is tough for all students,” Lotto added. “With students coming with an increasingly wide range of backgrounds, the possibility of that transition including an adverse affect on first- and second-semester grades seems higher to me.”
Lotto said that the proposal was primarily directed at students with a specific academic interest in the classes in which they have received Ds. Within that group, he noted, “a key component for success is to master the introductory material before you move on.” He said that he hoped the proposal would allow students to “receive a D in a course, retake it, and go on to do well in the field, not just to improve a grade.” He added that in this way, “the current policy puts up a barrier to success.”
Chenette concurred. “We want this to be taken advantage of in cases where the student is really committed to go on” in a certain field, Chenette said. The proposal, he added, would help “establish the likelihood that students will succeed as they move on.”
Associate Professor of Chemistry and former member of the Premedical Advising Committee Christopher Smart spoke to the benefits of the CCP’s proposal to students interested in medicine, specifically. “As a pre-med student, if you take a science class and get a D in it, then you have some explaining to do, but it makes a difference if you can show you went back and succeeded,” Smart said. The proposal, he said, would “enable students to take one more step” toward the medical profession. He added that the current policy penalizes D students as opposed to F students. “If you can fail outright and take a class over, why not make the same option available to those who don’t actually fail?” he asked.
Chenette stressed that the current policy allowing students to retake classes in which they receive an F, is applied “all over the curriculum,” in science and math as well as humanities and social science courses. Lotto added that students who take advantage of the current policy “[can] retake classes all over the curriculum, and at all levels…I see this being applied all over campus.”
The proposal, as the process for making academic policy changes at Vassar dictates, will next be read at two consecutive meetings of the faculty in May. The faculty will then have the option to amend the proposal, and then vote on it at the second meeting. If approved by the faculty, it will become the academic policy of Vassar.
“The question is: How do we enable students to achieve their maximum academic potential,” Lotto said of the proposal.
Chenette added, “We need an environment where people can make mistakes, and correct those mistakes.”
