Faculty propose permanently changing Trinity’s S/U grading policies, approve marine sciences major

There will soon be a new marine sciences and conservation undergraduate major, and permanent changes could be coming to satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading in the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. 

At Thursday afternoon's meeting of the Arts and Sciences Council, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences' faculty governance body, faculty approved two proposals related to Duke's environmental science majors and heard a new proposal about permanently changing Trinity's S/U rules.

A new proposal about S/U grading

The council heard a proposal from its Curriculum Committee to make two permanent changes to Trinity's satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading system. 

Cary Moskovitz, chair of the committee and professor of the practice in the Thompson Writing Program, presented the proposal, which would both change the requirements that S/U classes count toward and change the deadline for requesting to take a class using the S/U system.

Under the proposed changes, "students who receive an S will receive credit toward general education requirements, including curriculum codes, and the 34.0 course credits for graduation and continuation requirements," according to a PowerPoint presented by Moskovitz. 

Currently, students can count classes taken voluntarily as S/U toward graduation and continuation requirements, but not toward Trinity distribution requirements, which use curriculum codes. The permanent changes would continue the temporary spring 2021 system, which includes S/U classes carrying curriculum codes. 

While currently students must obtain consent of the instructor and switch to S/U grading by the end of the third week of classes, the proposed changes would move the deadline to request an S/U grade to the withdrawal deadline, which is four weeks before the last day of classes. 

At the last meeting of the Arts and Sciences Council—two weeks ago—faculty heard a proposal from faculty to make two changes to the Nicholas School of the Environment's undergraduate offerings. 

Combined, the two changes would create a new major in marine sciences and conservation, while renaming the current earth and ocean sciences major to earth and climate sciences in order to better reflect the focus of the program. 

At this week's meeting, faculty voted on the two proposals, approving both with few abstentions and no faculty opposed. 

While no faculty opposed the proposals, some questioned the overlap between majors offered by the Nicholas School to Trinity students, pointing out that in the past, restrictions have been put in place on "double-counting" of classes to satisfy multiple majors. 

"We had to limit the "double-counting" that students could actually do to make it reasonable that they would actually be two distinct majors as opposed to 1.5 majors," said Christina Williams, professor of psychology and neuroscience.

Andrew Read, Stephen A. Toth professor of marine biology and the director of the Duke Marine Lab, noted that the core classes between the new major and the earth and climate sciences major are distinct enough to avoid that issue, and said that he anticipates that more students will choose to major in one and minor in the other. 

"The core courses in the two majors are quite distinct and so students are going to have to work pretty hard to be able to do both," Read said. "That will probably entail also spending a term down here at the [Duke] Marine Lab."