The University has made changes to its suspension policies that allow officials to suspend students after 12 credit hours of coursework if their GPA is below a 1.0.
John Ambrose, interim dean of undergraduate programs, said this would be the primary change that would serve as a wake-up call to students who were considered at-risk.
“Over the years the University has collected data which has shown that the success rate of these students is typically under 10 percent, around 7 percent,” Ambrose said. “This should serve as a wake-up call to students. These students will sit out for a semester so that when they come back it will be in a more efficient manner. This way they are not trying to work through a bad semester and rack up more and more debt in the process.”
The difference, Ambrose said, between what had been happening and the new policy is that in the past students have continued for up to a year and a half before the suspension policy caught up with them. The other change is that students can now be suspended after the fall semester.
“It really is to make the policy more uniform,” Ambrose said. “Why should spring semester be different from fall semester?”
Ambrose said having the students take a semester off will be beneficial, giving them a chance to figure out what they did wrong and providing them with a second chance.
“Students can return the next semester in a fairly easy process,” Ambrose said. “They can go to the Counseling Center where they meet once to evaluate where their first semester went wrong and most of the time it is adjusting and getting their life in balance.”
Junior Carter, a sophomore in mathematics education, said the biggest problem he faced coming to college was adjustment.
“The first semester can be difficult for most students. I know my first semester was below what I had expected and I attribute this to the transition from high school where teachers and our parents are looking over your shoulder to make sure things are getting done,” Carter said. “In college, professors more often than not couldn’t care less whether you pass a course or not.”
Ambrose said the time off also gives students the time to prioritize and recognize what being a student at the university level is about.
“It can be very hard adjustment becoming a full-time student,” Ambrose said. “College can be a whole lot of fun if you are not careful.”
Carter said it is hard to adjust to the responsibilities of becoming a full-time student.
“It becomes easy to forget about homework and classes, causing grades to suffer and with all the extracurricular activities available school can be all but forgotten,” Carter said. “It is difficult to handle all that first semester and I know for me it was all but impossible.”
Ambrose said he recommended students take advantage of the resources available to them.
“There are a lot of services and there is a lot of help available. The best way to service needs is to talk to your adviser. One of the reasons for talking to your adviser is that the University has ways to correct bad grades,” Ambrose said. “One example is that first year students who have a D or F have the opportunity to repeat that course without penalty.”
Brian Pate, a freshman in biochemistry, said he has found meetings with his adviser very helpful.
“I had a few questions about a chemistry class I was going to register for next semester,” Pate said. “He made the time to meet with me before the advising sessions officially began and it cleared a lot of things up. It even counted as my official registration meeting.”
Ambrose said he highly recommended students meet regularly with their advisers, especially if they are having trouble managing their classes.
“Their advisers are there to help them, the Counseling Center is there to help them,” Ambrose said. “They get a second or third chance at coming back. We want our students to graduate but we want them to earn that graduation too.”
