Faculty -

Please vote No on the proposed repeat policy.

1. Our current policy serves the best interest of our students. The
proposed policy will severely punish those students who have a bad term. I
am particularly concerned with first semester freshman and those who suffer
serious personal difficulties during a single term. I have not heard of any
studies of the effect of the proposed change on retention rates.
2. Our current policy is very similar to the policy at UTK and not too
dissimilar from the policy at the University of Memphis (see the end of the
e-mail). These are the only two schools I've checked but they are the best
known public universities in the state.
3. I've been told that UTK has purchased Banner and is not changing their
policy. This is extremely irritating on the face of it. It's turning our
students into second class citizens of the UT system. Since UTK will know
what needs to be done to modify Banner, why can't they share their
expertise with us?
4. What will happen to students under previous catalogues? I assume we
can't change the policy for them. If we can handle the 8000 students
currently enrolled, why can't we handle the new students? Is Banner being
phased in?


Repeat Policy at UTK (copied from
http://ur.utenn.edu/undergrad/acad1.html#anchor21668947)

For the first three repeated lower-division courses (100-200 level), only
the last grade earned in the repeated courses will be counted in computing
the grade point average. If the same course is repeated more than once, the
additional repeats count as part of the three total. For all courses
repeated after the first three, all grades will be included when computing
the grade point average. All grades for all courses remain on the transcript.


Repeat Policy at Univ. of Memphis (copied from
http://www.people.memphis.edu/~acadafflib/bulletin/bulletin.htmlx)

The student's grade point average will be computed as follows:
                Grade(s) Included
Attempt         In Computation
1st             Original grade earned
2nd             Only grade in 2nd attempt
3rd and         Grades earned in 2nd
  subsequent      and all subsequent attempts
                  calculated in grade point
                  average.
The record will continue to reflect all grades earned in the same course.
(The policy at Memphis has some other restrictions on total number of
repeats allowed per course, etc.)

Edward Rozema
Mathematics Department/Dept 6956
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598

Office:  (423) 755-4584
Fax:     (423) 755-4586
Dept:    (423) 755-4545