Motion from the AP Committee
January 24, 2007
Motion:
Disallow undergraduate students to elect to take courses on S/NC basis if they wish to use them
to satisfy the requirements of a minor or certificate. (Currently the S/NC option applies to
electives outside the major field.) A portion of page 35 of the GMU catalog will be changed,
as indicated below with the altered portion shown in italics, to state this policy.
Entire courses normally graded as satisfactory/no credit (S/NC) are annotated in the catalog,
but students may elect to take credit without grade points. Undergraduates may take up to 6 credits
to be graded S/NC; this option applies only to electives outside the field of the major, minor or certificate
program.
Rationale:
The Academic Procedures Advisory Committee (APAC), a
group of Assistant/Associate Deans and administrators chaired by Susan Jones (Registrar),
suggested this catalog change. When the current rule was written years ago,
minor and certificate programs were not nearly as popular and it was perhaps an oversight to
not refer to them explicitly. There is currently confusion about this rule, with some believing that
the option may be used for courses used for a minor or certificate program, and others thinking that
the option may only be used for completely free electives.