By Miharu Sugie, News Staff
A new policy for graduating with honors takes effect this month, changing the requirements to earn honor cords for the January 2014 graduating class. The minimum GPA for graduation with honors will increase for cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude.
Previously, students had to meet a minimum 3.25 GPA to graduate with cum laude, 3.5 to graduate with magna cum laude and 3.75 to graduate with the highest honor, summa cum laude. Now, seniors must meet a minimum 3.5 GPA for cum laude, 3.7 for magna cum laude and a 3.85 for summa cum laude.
Susan Powers-Lee, vice provost for honors and first-year programs and a biology professor, proposed the policy change and was unanimously approved by the Faculty Senate on March 31, 2010. The Student Government Association (SGA) as well as the Senate Committee for Academic Policy were present during the vote. According to the Faculty Senate meeting minutes, the University Undergraduate Curriculum Committee recommended to the Faculty Senate the policy should take effect for January 2014 “for maximum awareness among students with the greatest number of co-ops between a spring 2010 rule change and the January 2014 graduation.”
According to the minutes, Powers-Lee explained that the new policy would align Northeastern’s standards with those of other institutions in the Boston area. In 2009, 54 percent of Northeastern’s class graduated with Latin honors. By comparison, 30 percent of Boston University seniors and 29 percent of Boston College seniors on average graduate with honors, according to the Boston University and Boston College websites. Powers-Lee was not available for comment.
After the unanimous approval, the policy change was published in the University Catalog every academic year. However, many students said they were not aware of this.
“Frankly, I feel kind of foolish because I didn’t know about it,” said Emily Izzo, a graduating senior dual-majoring in international affairs and anthropology. “If I hadn’t asked my advisor, which is something I happened to do, I wouldn’t have found out.”
Senior biology major Kelly Morin and fourth year international affairs major Brian Sanderson were also unaware of the new GPA requirements. Morin said since many students do not read the entire University Catalog, the university should have spread the word differently, to make sure students knew about the change. Even if the university had emailed him about the change, Sanderson said that the information can be buried easily without being noticed because he receives so many emails from the university everyday.
Nick Naraghi, student body president and fourth year computer science and finance dual major, said that the university needs to work on how to communicate with undergraduate students in a number of different ways. Naraghi added that some surprised graduating seniors have approached the SGA to find out when and why this policy was implemented. Many soon found out that they did not have enough time left to improve their GPAs.
“I understand they want to keep the standards high, but they’re already raising the standards significantly as far as the admissions criteria.” Izzo said. “I don’t think our prestige is about our outgoing grades, I think it’s the standards for incoming freshman and frankly, the jobs that outgoing students get, which [means,] in our case, more about co-op.”
