Grading Guidelines
The Executive Council (deans & department chairs) has developed grading guidelines to:
- Provide grading guidance to instructors,
- Increase grading consistency across courses, and
- Give students clear information on academic standards in the Lundquist College.
Philosophy
Oneof the most important roles students and society expect of teachers andeducational institutions is the evaluation of student learning andachievement. Instructors in higher education must distinguish passingfrom failing and excellence from mediocrity. Failure to make theseuseful and important distinctions reduces the value of education tostudents and to society.
Implementation
Thetable below lists the guidelines developed by the Executive Council.While there is variation across classes in the ability and effort ofstudents, the standards are sufficiently broad to accommodatereasonable variation in performance.
The GPAslisted below are Class GPAs computed by multiplying the number of A,A-, B+, C, etc. grades times the GPA value of each grade. For exampleconsider a class with 40 students with the following grades: 8 A, 14 B,16 C, and 2 D. The calculation is [(8 x 4.0) + (14 x 3.0) + (16 x 2.0)+ (2 x 1.0)]/40 = (32 + 42 + 32 + 2)/40 = 2.70 GPA. Thus, a class GPAof 2.70 can result from many different distributions of grades, i.e.,all B's and C's, A's, B's C's and D's etc. There is no quota on thenumber of A's or B's. Grade distributions in the vast majority ofLundquist College classes last year fit within the grade point rangeslisted below.
Average Grade Point Ranges by Type of Classes
| Class Level | Average Grade Point Range |
| Undergraduate Pre-Business Classes | 2.3 - 2.8 |
| Undergraduate Minor Classes | 2.7 - 3.2 |
| Undergraduate Major Core Classes | 2.6 - 3.1 |
| Undergraduate Major Electives | 2.7 - 3.2 |
| Undergraduate Honors Classes | 3.2 - 3.5 |
| MBA Core Classes | 3.1 - 3.4 |
| Other Masters Classes | 3.2 - 3.5 |