Dear Students,
I hope that your first week of remote classes is going well. There are clearly challenges in changing our instructional approach so quickly, but I appreciate the efforts and patience of you and your instructors in adjusting to this very atypical situation.
As I have been talking with some of you, I know that there is some confusion around the newly announced grading policy. In case you are not aware, the university is allowing students, for this semester, to have S (successfully completed) or NC (no credit) on their transcript in place of a letter grade. Let me see if I can spell out some of the details, so that you will understand this and make informed decisions about this:
- This is fully voluntary. You do not have to use the S/NC option, and you can make the decision for each class that you are taking.
- You do not have to make a decision about whether you want to utilize the S/NC option until after the semester is over and your letter grade is assigned. Therefore, you and your instructor do not need to do anything differently now -- just continue with your classes and getting grades on your assignments as usual.
- S/NC grades do not affect your GPA.
- A course that receives an S counts towards graduation/requirements. A course that receives an NC does not (but it does not affect your GPA)
- Once you see your grades, you can decide if you want to keep your letter grade or if you want to switch to an S/NC.
- For Social Work, an S will represent a grade that would keep you in good academic standing or that is required for graduation/progress/prerequisite
- This means that, for the BASW program, a grade of C- or higher would translate to an S (a D or F would be graded as NC)
- For MSW required courses, a grade of B- or higher would translate to an S; for general electives, a grade of C- or higher would translate to an S
- For PhD courses, a grade of B- or higher would translate to an S
- For Social Work, an S will represent a grade that would keep you in good academic standing or that is required for graduation/progress/prerequisite
- If you decide that you want to convert any of your grades to S/NC, you will contact the program director of your program to request this change
- I have been in contact with other deans of schools of social work around the country. We are all in agreement that using the S/NC option will not affect your competitiveness or eligibility for graduate programs in social work nationally.
Other grade-related modifications based on COVID-19:
- We understand that this has been a challenging and unusual semester, therefore:
- No students will be placed on academic probation based on grades this semester
- If you are currently on academic probation, we will give you another semester to achieve the GPA needed to get off academic probation
I hope that this helps to clarify the provost's note. If you have questions about any of this, I recommend talking with your program director (Dr. Keith Caldwell for BASW students; Dr. Yodit Betru for MSW students; Dr. Katie Greeno for PhD students).
Please take care and have a good rest of the semester!
Betsy