The Committee on Instruction did not receive any responses by its deadline from those asked to comment on a proposal to change the format of student transcripts.
The proposal, which was sent to the Student Assembly, the Dean of the College, associate deans and Divisional Councils of the faculty last February, outlined a new transcript format that would list the average grade and the course enrollment along with a student's grade in a class.
The COI asked recipients to respond with "comments and suggestions" about the proposal by Monday, April 4.
The proposed changes are designed to address grade inflation and discrepancies between the grading levels in different academic departments.
The overall grade point average increased from 3.06 in 1976-77 to 3.23 in 1992-93. Average grades in the humanities division in 1992-93 were 3.36 compared to 3.09 in the sciences, according to the COI.
Gary Johnson, Chair of the COI, said he expects to receive responses within the next couple of weeks after the Divisional Councils meet for the first time this term.
"So many things were happening at the last divisional council meeting that they didn't get around to it," Johnson said.
Associate Dean of Faculty of the Sciences Karen Wetterhahn said her group was going to discuss the proposal at their first Divisional Council meeting of the term. She said her division did not have enough time to consider the proposal last term.
Wetterhahn said the process takes time because the division has to distribute the information to many different groups.
"It's fully normal. It just takes time," she said.
Johnson said the COI will submit its proposal to the general faculty meeting later this term.
"We wanted to make sure we had input back from everyone by the first week of the Spring term to have general faculty action by the end of the term."
In an interview last term, Johnson said he hoped the faculty would implement the changes "within a year or two."
Johnson said executing the proposal would require little more than rewriting the computer program that compiles student transcripts.
Johnson said he has received positive responses to the proposal through informal discussions.
Wetterhahn said she favors the proposal.
"The strength is that it really puts a measure of what a grade means by having the average listed," she said. "It enhances the information available to the person reading the transcript."
She said she will be interested to see students' reactions.
"The few students I've talked to have said they thought it was a good idea, but it needs further discussion," Wetterhahn said.
In the fall of 1990, a Registrar's Report on Grades prompted discussion within the Executive Committee of the Faculty about grade inflation and began the process that led to the recent proposal.
Johnson said last term that the COI was not making a judgment on the reasons behind grade inflation but instead was trying to use the median grade to better compare students' performances in a class.
"The COI did not look at grade inflation and try to understand what a given grade for a given year meant," Johnson said in an interview last term.
He said the proposed grading changes might not apply to classes with fewer than 10 people.
