The College of Arts and Sciences will allow its students to take major and minor courses on a pass/no pass grading scale. Credit: Casey Cascaldo | Former Managing Editor for Multimedia
Students in Ohio State’s largest college will have the option to take their major and minor courses pass/no pass this fall.
The College of Arts and Sciences will offer a pass/no pass option for major and minor courses for the fall semester, Gretchen Ritter, executive dean of the college and vice provost, and David Horn, the college’s associate executive dean for undergraduate education, announced in an email Friday. However, they urged students to consider possible consequences of opting in.
The decision comes after the University Senate approved a pass/no pass resolution for general education and elective courses Sept. 17. As part of the resolution, colleges are allowed to decide whether to also offer the pass/no pass option for major and minor courses.
Unlike the pass/no pass option offered spring semester, classes taken pass/no pass this fall will count toward the university’s 20 credit hour cap of pass/no pass courses a student can count toward graduation requirements.
To opt into pass/no pass, students must have a minimum 2.0 cumulative grade point average. First-year students and transfer students who do not yet have an established GPA are still able to opt in.
The email stated the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Committee felt the extension of the pass/no pass option would help students facing challenges with COVID-19-related changes to instruction.
“The committee weighed carefully the implications of this recommendation for student mental health and academic success, for the work of our colleagues in advising, and for the integrity of the undergraduate educational experience,” the email stated. “The committee felt the extension would help those in the most precarious circumstances to get through these challenging times.”
The University Senate also approved an extension of the deadline to declare pass/no pass Sept. 17, which is Nov. 20 for semester-long courses and Oct. 2 for first-term courses.
The email stated that students should consider the impact taking a course pass/no pass could have on their graduate or professional school plans since Ohio State is among the first of its peer institutions to extend the pass/no pass option into the fall.
The decision to opt into the pass/no pass option cannot be reversed once made. For that reason, Ritter said students should consider waiting to declare pass/no pass until later in the semester when they can gauge their academic performance as to not opt-in when they could have earned an A or B letter grade in a class.
