While future generations of students may have to watch that their final averages don’t slip to the lower end of each letter grade’s range if the senate approves plus-minus grading, the measure would not affect any currently enrolled students. Students who enroll for the fall 2006 semester would be the first group affected.

While professors have had the option to assign pluses and minuses to students’ grades since the fall 2001 semester, they do not factor into GPAs, but the University Senate could vote to change that at its Dec. 12 meeting.

John Newhagen, a journalism professor and chairman of the committee charged with drafting the proposal, said the decision to not subject current students to “blended” GPAs was one of the major issues the committee grappled with.

“It seemed to me fairer,” he said. “From my own college experience – just from life – I don’t like the rules changed halfway through. Students should graduate under the system they started on.”

University President Dan Mote and Provost Bill Destler said that while they have not yet seen the proposal in its finalized form, they support factoring pluses and minuses when calculating students’ GPAs.

If the senate passes the proposal, Mote will have to approve it before the university can implement it.

“If you go to the trouble of differentiating pluses and minuses, the purpose of the numerical score is a way of quantifying the grade, so if you’re distinguishing grades, it should be reflected in GPAs,” he said.

The proposal also would bring this university in line with its five designated peer institutions, all which use weighted plus-minus systems, officials said.

Committee members also decided to assign 4.3 points to an A+ because, Newhagen said, they wanted to reward exceptional students whose GPAs slipped below 4.0 the chance to regain a perfect average.

Under the current system, it is impossible for a student to regain a 4.0 average once his or her GPA decreases.

The committee decided to cap overall GPAs at 4.0 to reduce the prospect of grade inflation.

Another contentious issue the committee decided on was the value of a C-. The proposal assigns a C- the value of 1.7 – below the university’s 2.0 GPA limit for graduation.

A C- reflects a level of scholarship that is not acceptable, Newhagen said, and it should not be lumped together with higher marks.

“If the University of Maryland at College Park is going to be the flagship institution of this system, there should be standard of excellence,” he said.

Many academic programs within the university already set their own grade thresholds for certain courses, Newhagen said. In the journalism school where he teaches, students must achieve a grade of C or better in a few lower and mid-level classes before they can enroll in more advanced courses.

“We’ve had to let people with C minuses through and I think it weakens the degree, frankly,” he said.

Newhagen said the committee wanted to give students teetering on the edge of poor academic performances the incentive to work harder. As a student who initially encountered academic failure in college and then found success, he said he understands students’ fears of losing the grade cushion provided by an unweighted C range.

“I’m not a distant college professor guy who’s been on the honor roll since kindergarten,” he said. “I think I can put myself in most anyone’s shoes. I’ve been a C- guy, I’ve been an A+ guy, I’ve been a B guy. At an individual level, I can see why C- guys aren’t going to like this system, but it should motivate them to be C guys or B guys.”

During the upcoming full-body senate meeting, senators may submit amendments to the proposal that the body would vote on immediately. If too many amendments are proposed, a senator could suggest the proposal be sent back to the committee for revision.

If the senate approves the system, professors could opt to assign all students regular letter grades.

In 2003, the registrar’s office conducted a study to determine how implementing a weighted grade system would affect students’ academic performance. The study examined six semesters’ worth of grades starting when plusses and minuses were first assigned in 2001 and found that while the overall distributions did not change drastically, the number of students receiving academic honors and sanctions increased by roughly equal amounts.

Contact reporter Kate Campbell at campbelldbk@gmail.com.