The UTD Mercury

SG's A+ Letter

Before the end of the semester, UTD instructors will receive a letter reminding them to remember the pluses when grading top students.

Student Government president Steven Rosson and Dean of Undergraduate Education Michael Coleman collaborated on a letter about honorary A+ grades.

A 4.0 is the highest grade point average (GPA) a UTD student can earn, but some post-graduate programs, including law and medical schools, retally student GPAs with an A+ to equal 4.33.

Undeclared sophomore Dina Shahrokhi said helping students understand the grading scale at UTD was a top priority when she became SG academic affairs chair. She said the academic affairs committee researched the University of Texas System and top 20 university grading scales.

The idea for a letter developed when Coleman explained the long-lasting impact the highest grade can have when students are in competitive application pools, she said.

"If professors aren't giving the A+ because they don't think it really influences a student's relative position on campus, it's important to remember there is life beyond campus," Coleman said. "For some students, if they deserve it, an A+ can be very useful."

Rosson said he sent several revisions of the letter to Coleman before they settled on a final version. The letter's tone was a major consideration.

"I was very concerned it might come across as an attempt to tell professors what to do in their classrooms", Rosson said. "The goal is to remind instructors that a student they believe has earned an a A+ doesn't see a boost to their GPA at UTD, but those grades could be important down the line."

UTD's grading system changed to the tiered scale currently used in fall 2000.

Coleman said he doesn't think the letter will change the percentage of A+ grades awarded, which has been stable for seven years.

He said he did believe the number of instructors who award A+ grades part of the time would continue to expand.

Since the change in grading scale, he said some faculty use the A+ as a rare honorific, some rescale their grading scales so a certain percentage of the class receives an A+, and others continue to use a whole grading system with no pluses or minuses.

"The university has a grading scale, but the faculty doesn't have a mandate to use it," Coleman said.

Of the 40,374 grades posted in 2007, instructors in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics awarded 11.2 percent A+ - the highest percentage of A+ grades - in 2007, which Coleman attributed to the large number of 1-hour science labs.

General Studies posted the lowest percentage at 5.8 percent.

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