Dear faculty,

First, thank you for your unwavering dedication to the well-being of each other and our students as well as for your resilience during this challenging semester. As we approach fall break, I hope that you have a moment of rest before we jump back into the final sprint of the year.

When I sent you a message in the beginning of the semester, I mentioned our incredible first-year retention rate. In pursuit of lifting that even higher, the end of the semester presents additional opportunities for you to take action that can contribute to students staying enrolled – like submitting your course grades within 72 hours of your scheduled final exam.

Federal and state financial aid programs require that a student’s academic performance be reviewed at the end of each term, and the Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships proactively notifies students of academic performance issues for them to take necessary action. Late or missing grades can result in an inaccurate notification to the student and can affect the student’s eligibility for subsequent disbursements.

I encourage you not to wait on an incomplete project or to have an academic misconduct case be decided before submitting grades for your whole class.  Our current system allows a faculty member to submit grades in batches, so you don’t need to delay submission to have them all ready at once.

We are also heading into course experience survey season and the first phase of Explorance Blue implementation. Please see my course experience survey memo for more information about that project.

I appreciate all that you do for the good of our institution and, as always, I am proud to be your provost.

 

Donna K. Arnett
EVP for Academic Affairs and Provost