Incoming and current students could receive plus/minus grades next fall, but whether they do or not is up to their professors, according to a report released Tuesday.
Plus/minus grades will range from A-plus at a 4.33 grade point to a C-plus at a 2.33 grade point, the report said. A team of faculty and students developed the report.
There will be no C-minus grade. C's, D's and E's will remain at the same grade points of 2.00, 1.00 and 0.00 respectively. The grades will not apply to the College of Law.
Academic Senate President Antonio Garcia said the new system would be an advantage to students.
"Students will have assessments that are going to be a finer distinction of academic achievement and provide more information," Garcia said. "The plus/minus grades describe the achievement for passing grades. If we were to give plus/minus grades to anything below a C, like a D-minus, that would just show a problem with the student."
Garcia said the grading system would be evaluated in 2007 to see if the system has affected the weight of grades at ASU.
"The challenge will be to see how to go about tying this [grading system] to the goals teachers have for students," he said.
Despite the attainable grade point of 4.33, ASU will continue to report grades based on a 4.0 grading scale. This means a student's cumulative grade-point average would be capped at a 4.0, even if grades given accumulated an average above 4.0. The report explained that capping GPAs would prevent other schools from discounting ASU grades.
Semester GPAs, on the other hand, will show the effect of all grades awarded, up to a GPA of 4.33. The report explained that GPAs above 4.0 earned by students could be used internally at ASU for special recognition.
Theater sophomore Jorge Delgadillo served as a student representative on the team and provided student perspective.
"Personally I'm against plus/minus," Delgadillo said, "But it's going to happen anyway, so I thought we might as well make it better for students. It's going to be a big shock at first, but after awhile it will be OK."
Where a minimum grade is used to define a requirement, such as the grade in a prerequisite course, the standard would remain the same. For example, a grade of B-minus would not meet the requirement of "B or higher."
Standards for major requirements or graduation with academic recognition would not change as a result of the new grading scale.
Music education junior Cayce Miners said he did not like plus/minus grades.
"It doesn't offer us any benefits," Miners said. "We can't do much better - just the A-plus. It's a lot easier to do worse."
As for transfer grades, the policy of accepting transfer work with a grade of C-minus or higher will not be altered, and work transferred before next fall would not be re-evaluated.
The team reported it is planning to attach a note to student transcripts to explain when the grading scale was implemented and why some grades have plus/minus and some don't.
Academic recognition for graduates would remain the same, as stated in the report. Summa cum laude will reflect a cumulative GPA of 3.80 to 4.0, magna cum laude would reflect 3.60 to 3.79 and cum laude would reflect 3.40 to 3.59.
Reach the reporter at lindsay.butler@asu.edu.
