On Monday, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) again decided to ask the faculty to exclude study abroad grades when calculating a student’s grade point average. Instead, all grades earned off-campus will count only as University credit. Almost all of the University’s peer institutions use this sort of system.
The EPC, consisting of six faculty members and two students, is responsible for overseeing matters of educational policy for undergraduates and graduates. The group first voted in favor of excluding study abroad grades from students’ GPAs on April 14, but the Committee for International Studies (CIS) urged the group to rescind it before bringing it to a May 6 faculty meeting, when it has the opportunity to become formal University policy.
“The policy we were proposing is because of the huge variation of courses that students can take abroad, and because they’re not the same as Wesleyan courses, they should not be weighted as though they were Wesleyan courses,” said Alex Halpern Levy ’08, vice-chair of the EPC. “This would allow students to really challenge themselves and actually enroll in courses at the University, and not just take courses with a bunch of Americans. [The grades] would still be on the transcript, but not weighed in the GPA.”
International universities do not use the same grading system as American universities, so grades from abroad must be turned into Wesleyan credits in order to be placed on a student’s transcript. At the moment, this conversion is done by Office of International Studies Director of the Carolyn Sorkin.
“It’s actually not that complicated a process,” she said. “Most universities abroad send us a transcript so it’s not even a case that there’s a need for transcription….You understand the educational process in different countries if you’ve done it for awhile. The only time when it gets complicated is when a country is changing its educational system, which happened recently when the European Union was reforming its system. As with most things when you’ve done it for awhile you gain a certain level of expertise.”
Levy said that Sorkin’s authority to oversee the grading process was never formally approved by faculty members.
“Study abroad in the past 15 years has become really big at the undergraduate level,” he said. “So the power of the study abroad office has changed organically without any real oversight…the decision that Carolyn Sorkin interprets your transcript and converts your grades, none of that was ever approved by the EPC.”
According to Sorkin, few students have expressed unhappiness over the current system.
“This is Wesleyan, so yes, student have questioned things, but for the most part because we tell students about how the system works, there’s not a lot of dissatisfaction about it,” she said. “People know before they go [abroad] their grades will count for their transcript. I wouldn’t tell you there’s never been anybody unhappy with it but for the most part it hasn’t been a problem.”
Sorkin said that she could only think of two students, one of whom is Levy, who had ever come to her expressing unhappiness over the way their grades had been transcribed.
“I have serious doubt on her claim that it’s only been two students,” Levy said. “[The EPC was] under impression that there was relatively pervasive discontent on the policy.”
Students seeking to appeal either a grade conversion have to submit a written appeal to the CIS. This twelve-person subcommittee advises the OIS on questions relating to academics and study abroad. Students must also file a petition with the CIS if they want to study abroad through a program not on the University’s approved list, currently consisting of 140 programs.
The faculty members who make up the CIS are selected by Vice President for Academic Affairs Joseph Bruno, after Sorkin submits recommendations to him. Sorkin also sits on the CIS but she does not vote on issues.
EPC chair and Romance Languages & Literature Professor Jeff Rider said that because the CIS is selected through the administration rather than the faculty, it was unclear whether the CIS had the authority to be dealing with matters of educational policy in the first place—including petitions to study abroad through non-University approved programs.
“It wasn’t clear with what authority the CIS was doing that,” Rider said. “It’s not a faculty committee. It wasn’t clear they had the authority to make educational policy decisions.”
Levy expressed that it was also unclear whether Sorkin’s involvement in the CIS would make it challenging for students to submit appeals.
“She’s an administrator, not a faculty member, and she’s the only person who transcribes grades,” he said. “It’s not proper…we need to reconstitute the CIS so that Carolyn wasn’t appointing the people. She nominates them, and [Vice President of Academic Affairs Joe Bruno] approves them. I think that’s bad governance.”
“The question is not so much the number of appeals, it’s a question that if you want to appeal, the committee you go to, she sits on,” he added. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
This Monday, the EPC also voted to submit a suggestion to Bruno that he appoint both a student representative and an EPC member to the CIS, although, similarly to Sorkin, neither would have the authority to vote on decisions.
When asked, Sorkin said that she did not see a conflict of interest, because if a student wanted to appeal a decision she made about grading, they would appeal to the CIS, which is a committee she only sits on.
“This committee is advisory to me, so I don’t know if what you’re suggesting is whether I shouldn’t be at the meetings, but if I wasn’t at the meetings it wouldn’t make a lot of sense,” she said.
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