Dear Colleagues,

This memo offers details for how we will implement the interim S/U grading option. Please review carefully and send questions to your department chair. 

This S/U option for students does not require any instructor to adjust any of your grading expectations, assignments, or, most importantly, course learning outcomes. The S/U grade will be determined based on the letter grade that you assign to a student at the end of the semester. 

This is a student opt-in process: Students may notify you at any time until May 18 at 5:00 pm that they wish to choose an S/U grading option via email (it needs to be in written form). Regardless of this request, you should grade all student work based on the letter-grade grading policy posted in your syllabus.  This will help maintain course integrity and consistency as well as accuracy in any potential grade appeal processes, etc.

Below are the posting and grading deadlines—please note that this is a bit different from our normal process, as we need to allow students to review the grades before official submission to the registrar:

Timeline and Requirements for Grading for Spring 2020

The timeline allows you the full grading period originally assigned for spring semester to complete your spring grades. We also understand that this timeline delays your completion of the semester. However, this method preserves the integrity of faculty authority over grade entry and also avoids a manual entry process after the fact which could delay student grades for several more weeks.

Additional notes:

Encouragement/communication with students: please communicate these plans to students in your classes multiple times over the remainder of the semester.  Also encourage them to talk to advisors before making a choice—there are still a number of professional organizations (e.g., law, medical, education) that have not offered a clear statement of acceptance for S/U grades for students pursuing degrees or work in those fields.

All UHD degree programs must accept grades of S/U for this period, except in cases where independent accrediting bodies for a given discipline specifically prohibit S/U grades.

Use of W grades: Students must make their own choice for a “W”—the drop date has been extended for students until the last class day (April 27). Please encourage students to cite “COVID 19” as the reason. Grades of “W” based on this reason will not count toward the state limit of six.

Use of Incompletes: The current policy describes the incomplete option as being limited to students who “have completed a significant portion of the course requirements and a documented emergency prevents the student from completing the remaining course requirements”— for spring 2020, however, we encourage you to feel free to employ the incomplete under a broader set of circumstances and timelines as you deem appropriate. All recommendations for incompletes remain within the purview of each faculty member. Any incomplete still requires a documented agreement of work to be completed, a due date for completion of work, and a consultation with the department chair. Students will seek your wisdom, of course—incompletes might under the right conditions offer an opportunity for a student to complete the learning objectives for a class that they might otherwise feel compelled to drop because of COVID-related difficulties.

Final Exams: Please prepare for all final exams to occur in an online environment, as we cannot confirm any on-campus testing services. Please follow guidelines in the schedule above for timing of exams. Faculty are encouraged to be innovative in designing assignments, assessments and exams that allow students to demonstrate course and program learning outcomes.

Respondus: If you plan to use Respondus for your finals, please know that Respondus does not work on some tablets, Chromebooks, or workplace computers. Please watch for forthcoming resources on Respondus usage and contact IT particularly if you are considering use of Respondus in the near future for assignments prior to final exams. The CTLE is also a valuable resource for test design for online environments.

We are immensely appreciative of the tenacity and flexibility that you have demonstrated during these unprecedented times. We are stronger together.