APC     #9 

                                               Senate  #11

                                               Approved 12/29/86







                                   APC DOCUMENT #9

                                  December 11, 1986





           _ ________ __ ______ ___ _________ ___ ________

           A Proposal to Change the Mechanism for Awarding

           ________ ______

           Academic Honors



                       ____ _______ _______

           DELETE from UNCA Catalog 1986-87, pg. 50, first sentence

           of the third paragraph under "Academic Honors:"



           "The honors of cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude

           are automatically awarded to those students whose GPA on all

           transcript work attempted here and elsewhere for graduation

           would place them in the top 9%, 4%, and 1% of the most recent

           three years' combined graduating classes.





                  ____ _______ _______

           ADD to UNCA Catalog 1986-87, pg. 50, third paragraph under

           "Academic Honors":



           Graduation with university-wide honors is granted automatically

           based on grade point average.  Only UNCA grades count toward the

           GPA used for the determination of honors, and a student must

           have earned at least 60 semester hours at UNCA to be eligible

           for university-wide honors.  Students ranking in the top 1%

           graduate summa cum laude; the top 4%, magna cum laude; and the

           top 9%, cum laude.  The base for computing these percentiles is

           the combined UNCA GPA of the last three years' graduates.



           ---------------------------------------------------------------



           Rationale:



           These changes make honors dependent only on grades earned at

           UNCA.  Honors at graduation from UNCA should reflect the

           judgments of the UNCA faculty rather than the faculty at other

           institutions.  Grading conventions at other institutions also

           may or may not be comparable to those at UNCA, and combining

           grades from other institutions with UNCA grades leads to a GPA

           derived from internally inconsistent data.  UNC Chapel Hill,

           Duke, Wake Forest, NC State, University of the South, Amherst

           and Columbia rely only upon their own grades for the purpose of

           awarding honors.



           This issue is particularly significant since 71% of last year's

           graduating class were transfer students.  This figure has been

           typical of past experience and is expected to remain typical in

           the foreseeable future.