Faculty Council on Academic Standards (FCAS) Policy Relative to Program-Based Grade Requirements

1. Cumulative Grade Graduation Requirement:

   (UW requires 2.0 for all courses)

   1. Programs are permitted to have 2.0 cumulative GPA requirement for courses within the major.
   2. Programs may request cumulative GPA in the range of 2.0 to 2.5 for courses in the major and/or all UW courses. The programs must document and provide justification for the request. Provided adequate academic justification is provided, FCAS will approve such requests.
   3. Programs requesting cumulative GPA requirements greater than 2.5 for courses in the major and/or all UW courses must provide strong justification for the request. In general, except in exceptional cases and with very strong academic justification, FCAS will not approve these requests.

2. Minimum Grade Graduation Requirement in Individual Courses:

   (UW requires 0.7 in each course)

   1. Programs may request that students achieve a minimum grade in each course of a subset of the courses required for a major, every course for a major, and/or all UW courses in the range of 0.8 to 2.0. The programs must document and provide justification for the request. Provided adequate academic justification is provided, FCAS will approve such requests.
   2. Programs requesting a minimum grade in each course of a subset of the courses required for a major, every course for the major, and/or all UW courses exceeding 2.0 must provide strong documented justification for the request. In general, FCAS will not approve these requests.

3. Existing Program Graduation Requirements

   All existing program graduation requirements are grandfathered in. Should a program with graduation grade requirements exceeding these policies wish to change its requirements, the new proposal will be considered under these guidelines.

Adopted by the Faculty Council on Academic Standards on June 5, 2009.