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[Emeriti-faculty] Chemical Physics grade requirements



Friends,

 

You may recall that a couple of years ago we worked with the Chemistry department on the requirements for the undergraduate Chemical Physics major (not to be confused with the graduate Chemical Physics program that we also approved at about the same time) to ensure that the requirements were the same in the two departments.  It turns out we didn’t quite achieve that goal.

 

The Chemistry department has a policy regarding minimum grades for all majors in the department, specifically a minimum GPA of 2.0 (C) in major courses and no more than one grade below C- in courses applied to the major requirements.  We have no such requirements in physics-astronomy.  In principle a student could complete any of our undergraduate majors with nothing but D’s, but in practice it’s rarely if ever been an issue. (It’s not common in Chemistry either – their Chair tells me the policy was adopted in response to the case of one particular student who got through the major with extremely weak grades reflecting correspondingly weak skills and understanding.)  Quite a few other departments accept only grades of C- or better in courses applied to major requirements.

 

The difference between the two departments means there’s a residual inconsistency between the requirements for the Chem. Phys. Major as listed in the two departments’ information, and the registrar would like to see it resolved. Unfortunately this came to my attention only this morning.

 

As I see it, we have three short-term options:

 

1)      Do nothing for now; live with the inconsistency for another year, and think about the issue next academic year;

2)      Decide to adopt the Chem. Department’s rule for the Chem. Phys. Major only, for now, leaving open the possibility of discussing it in more detail next year. Note that this would mean applying a requirement to that major that is not applicable to any of the other majors in our department;

3)      Decide to adopt the Chem. Department’s rules for all our majors. That is, on the one hand, a rather large decision to make without serious discussion, but on the other hand one with few practical consequences, since in practice our students tend to get high grades.

 

We could also adopt some other rule for all our majors, but that doesn’t solve the inconsistency problem, and gets us into the issue of exactly what rule to adopt, and I don’t think we can or should do that over email.

 

Please let me know via email if you have a preference about how to proceed.  

 

Thanks,

Roger

 

 

Roger Tobin

Professor and Chair

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Tufts University

617-627-5461

http://rtobin.phy.tufts.edu/