/ SPORTS / THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
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FALL 2010 FINALS GUIDE
POLICY
Incomplete offers alternative to failing grade
BY NOOPUR GOEL editor@kansan.com
--would receive an "F" at graduation.
In Spring 2009, Uzma Fardeen, a senior from Lenexa, was struck by the devastating news that her father had passed away.
"He died of a heart attack," Fardeen said. "He was in the hospital for about three weeks, and came home for four days, then passed away. So it was pretty sudden."
After missing three days of school to mourn her loss, Fardeen returned less than two weeks before her final exams. Ill-prepared and unmotivated, she was willing to risk the grade and take her finals anyway. As a last resort she e-mailed her Biology 152 professor, Tara Marriage.
To Fardeen's surprise, her professor offered several alternatives to simply failing the course. The most fitting seemed to be an incomplete.
"I would've failed my finals if I didn't take incompletes." Farden said.
This would allow her to receive an "I," rather than a letter grade, until she retook the course. The retake had to be within a year of the original incomplete, but could have set the deadline closer than that. If another grade was never recorded to replace the incomplete, then she
Fardeen was lucky enough to be granted an incomplete for her special circumstance, but many students may not be offered the same option.
"A student not passing a class is not grounds for an incomplete," said Kim McNeley, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences assistant dean for student academic services. "It's not to be used as an avoidance of a failing grade. It should be something that prevented the student from meeting the expectations of the course."
If a professor does not believe that a student is deserving of any lenience, the student would have only two options: drop or fail the course
Fortunately, the University takes into account the fact that students make mistakes.
"We realize that adjusting to the rigor of academics is sometimes a challenge." McNeley said.
Such was the case with Amanda Peters, a sophomore from Wamego.
"I never had to study in high school, so I didn't study on the tests, and it definitely showed." Peters said.
Peters, referring to her freshman year psychology class, feels that it was her own lack of
preparation that led to her less than desirable grade. Both because a passing grade in that course is required for admission into the School of Education (where she will be pursuing an exercise science degree), and because it dropped her GPA significantly, she decided to retake the class this semester.
"Transitioning to a large university like KU sometimes presents some challenge, and we wanted to have a policy that encourages students to build a strong foundation, even if they've struggled with it the first time through," McNeley said.
This policy allows a student to replace a "D" or an "F" with a passing grade if they retake the class. This must be a course taken originally before the fall of 2001, and be at the 100 or 200 level. There is a five time limit on these replacements.
"If they wanted to they could apply it over, and over, and over to the same course until they completed it, or five different courses," McNeley said.
The initial letter grade will still appear on the transcript, but will not be calculated into the GPA. Some feel that this is not the best approach.
"I think it should be on your cumulative GPA," graduate teaching assistant Jennifer Hackett said. "For your graduating GPA I guess if you failed a class you'd have to retake it, but it should be on your cumulative because if you failed the class, it should say it on there."
Some graduate schools may feel that way, and end up recalculating GPAs adding in the failing grades.
"Graduate schools get to set their own weight to evaluate GPA," McNeley said. "Typically graduate schools are looking at an overall GPA, and, in my experience, more specialized junior/senior coursework. If it's an extremely competitive program they may look more closely at a student's earlier point in their career, they may recalculate the GPA putting all those courses in. It's at their discretion."
The alternative to having a failing grade on a transcript is to withdraw from the course altogether. This must be done by the deadline, which is generally sometime in mid-November. Although these Ws do not calculate into the GPA, they may also have some bearing on how a graduate school views a student.
Edited by David Cawthon
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