Ohio University Faculty Senate will vote on a resolution Monday that would clarify the course retake policy for graduate students.
Currently, the OU catalog policy is that graduate students may not retake a course in an attempt to boost their cumulative GPA. However, the Registrar’s office still counts all attempts of non-repeatable courses, conflicting with the policy.
The policy is based off of a similar policy in OU’s undergraduate catalog. If the resolution were to pass, the policy would be changed, but only in the graduate student catalog.
The resolution would formally amend the Academic Policies and Procedures section in the graduate catalog to reflect the proposed changes. Those changes would include only one attempt of a course counting and graduate students being unable to retake a course if it already satisfies a degree requirement.
Senators will also read two additional resolutions. One resolution would change the wording for a fee in the undergraduate catalog.
Currently, OU students pay a Career and Experiential Learning fee of $6 for per every credit hour they take with a maximum of 12 credit hours being charged. That fee is used to cover the cost of certain internships, career services and other costs associated with experiential learning. However, in the catalog, the terms experiential learning and portfolio-based assessment are used interchangeably.
The resolution would change the catalog’s wording. Experiential learning would no longer be used. Prior learning assessment would be used in all references to portfolio-based assessments.
The final resolution for first reading would change how the university hires personnel. The resolution requests that the university hire tenure track employees whenever possible. It says that reliance on part-time, fixed contract employees should be rare. Mechanisms for creating lines of work for tenure-track employees would be made and tenured employees would be more greatly emphasized if the resolution passed.
