College will offer academic amnesty

Starting Fall, students with poor past semesters can apply for improved GPA

By: Addie Shrodes

Posted: 4/27/09

Maybe a student had an overwhelming job, a medical distraction, was in the wrong program, or just didn't grasp the importance of the grade point average (GPA).

Starting Fall 2009, if Washtenaw Community College students had one or two poor semesters three years back but then illustrated academic improvement, they can apply to have those early classes academically forgiven by procedure.

"That means no courses or grades are ever removed from the transcript, but it's noted that those courses that are academically forgiven have been academically forgiven, and the grades received from those courses are no longer accumulated to the GPA," Linda Blakey, associate vice president of Student Services, said of the academic forgiveness procedure.

The procedure was developed because most schools, both two-year and four-year, have some sort of academic forgiveness procedure, and, for a while now, numerous students applying for transfer were told to use WCC's procedure to raise their GPA to acceptance level.

"Well, we have not had a procedure in the past for students to use, so that is what we are trying to address," Blakey said.

The procedure was also developed with WCC graduation requirements in mind.

"Let's say someone got off to a bad start and then switched programs," said Registrar Larry Aeilts, who drafted the procedure. "They didn't do so well on their first program and now those grades are creating a problem in trying to graduate from the second program. We are trying to offer students some relief for that as well."

The procedure's format was drawn from examples of other Michigan community colleges and from the student situations handled by Aeilts in Registrar Services. Aeilts wanted to make the procedure as flexible as possible.

The Curriculum Committee and the deans then reviewed the procedure, and it was taken to a department chair meeting and a general faculty meeting. In addition, Vice President of Instruction Roger Palay and Blakey have
influenced the draft.

"All of these created discussions," Aeilts said. "We've incorporated many of the things that different areas wanted to see."

Although there was concern the procedure would get less flexible after input from faculty, it turned out quite the opposite.

"We thought we would get more push-back from the faculty, but we didn't," Blakey said. "There was overwhelming support at the general faculty meeting."

"Most schools have a lot of criteria, and I'm not saying ours' doesn't have some, but it definitely had less than when we started," Aeilts said. "It will probably be an easier process to navigate and it will probably benefit more students."

Based on his research of other community colleges, Aeilts expects that about two-dozen students a year will apply, although some schools have as many as 100 students that apply each year.

There are certain rules and criteria to the procedure, however.

"There will be a two-semester limit, and the poor performing semesters have to be at least three years ago," Blakey said. "Also, students can only apply once, and they have to demonstrate that they've completed a certain number of credits with a certain GPA, so, basically, show that they've turned things around."

In addition, "classes that are used toward a degree are definitely not going to be academically forgiven," Aeilts said.

Although Aeilts suspects most students will apply to academically forgive classes they did not pass, students or alumni can also apply to forgive C or B classes to further
improve their GPA.

"Say somebody doesn't need those B or C classes because they were just elective courses and they never really used them for transfer credit," Aeilts said. "If later, they decided to go to a graduate school or law school that has a 4.0 GPA requirement
for undergrad credits, the student could apply to have those classes academically forgiven and not included in the GPA."

It is up to the other schools to interpret the transcript, however.

"Most schools will accept the transcript, but not the forgiven credits, because in order for the credits to be accepted as transfer, they have to be C or better," Aeilts said.

And the decision of whether to honor the altered GPA is still up to the school.

"But the majority of schools, four-year and two-year, have some type of forgiveness procedure or practice, so I would assume most of them will honor it," Aeilts said.