SIU’s poor retention and graduation rates have faculty and administration changing the way undergraduate grade point averages are determined, SIUC officials say.

Effective the summer of 1996, the GPA for undergraduate students repeating a class will only reflect the last recorded letter grade. Presently, the undergraduate GPA is calculated on the basis of all grades earned when repeating a course.

The change is not retroactive. Grades received before the summer of 1996 will not be changed according to the new program.

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Kyle Perkins, associate vice president of Academic Affairs, said the change could enhance SIU’s overall rates of undergraduate retention and graduation and lessen the time it takes students to get their degrees.

Perkins said the GPA change will help graduation rates because students must have a 2.0 to graduate. He said if failing grades are not computed, then it should raise GPAs of students and therefore help them graduate earlier and not drop out.

Perkins said students need to be aware that although the change is to help the GPA of students who repeat a class, if they do while repeating a class, the last grade will still be computed in the GPA.

James Allen, chair of the Undergraduate Education Policy Committee of the Faculty Senate, said SIU faculty and the Illinois Board of Higher Education were concerned that only 40 percent of students at SIU graduated after six years of instruction.

Allen said the faculty wanted to improve SIU’s graduation rate without punishing students, but warns that the change does not mean failing grades will be removed from the student’s transcript.

Transcripts will continue to reflect all the courses taken, Allen said. The GPA only reflects the basis of the last grade.

Allen said 6 percent to 7 percent of SIU students fail a course every semester. He said these students may think about registering for the class again because they have an opportunity to do better with the GPA calculation change.

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Albert Kent, president of the Faculty Senate, said the change helps students and does not penalize them for repeating a course.

It can help show accurately what the student has done, Kent said. This is for students who think carefully about classes, and it gives them a chance to do better.

Kent said SIU is following IBHE’s goals of improving graduation and retention by changing the GPA calculating procedures but the Faculty Senate also wanted to revise the procedures to help students stay in school.

Roland Keim, director of Admissions and Records, said if the change improves a student’s GPA, the student will be less likely to be on probation or be suspended.

Keim said the change is a plus-plus situation because it will not only help students who fail a class, it also will help students who repeat a class to get a better grade for admission into graduate, law or medical school.

However, associate director of Graduate Admissions and Records, Barbara Meier, said SIUC’s graduate school counts all grades, and repeating a course just to get a higher grade will not raise the student’s overall GPA when applying for SIUC’s graduate school.

Meier said if a student does repeat a course and gets a higher grade, it may make a difference in the department of the graduate school the student is looking at.