Recommendations:

1. That a student who is ineligible to receive credit in English 102 because of completing a higher level English course for which 102 is a prerequisite may take English 102 to achieve the C grade needed to satisfy the English Composition competency requirement.
   
   
2. That the L&S Faculty transmit this recommendation to the campus APCC for consideration.
   
   
3. That, in the event the APCC does not support this policy, the policy will apply to the L&S degree requirements if, in the future, the campus requirement changes while the L&S requirement remains the same.

Rationale:

Students must earn a grade of C or better in English 102 to complete the competency requirement. If prerequisites are being enforced, students should not be able to enroll in English 205 (or other such courses) here without having completed 102, but the enforcement of course prerequisites is rarely done. Therefore, students may enroll in 205 without having completed 102.

If such a student manages to remain in 205 without being dropped, that student will complete English competency if s/he earns a C or better. If the student earns a grade below C, s/he has not met the competency requirement. A question then arises: can that student go back to English 102, complete the course with a C or better, and be awarded competency?

Prerequisite policies indicate that a student may not earn credit in a course that is a prerequisite for a higher level course that the student has completed. So, in the above example, the student cannot earn credits for English 102.

If the department meant to prohibit students from taking 102 in the situation described above, it would have used an "enrollment restriction" (ER) statement: "No credit for students with credit in a higher level composition course (ER)." The inclusion of "(ER)" in this statement means that the student cannot enroll in 102. The same statement without the ER means that a student CAN enroll in 102, but s/he will not earn credits; the grade, however, will show on the student's record. If a student is permitted to enroll in 102, and if s/he completes 102 with a grade of C or better, s/he has demonstrated the appropriate level of competency, whether or not s/he gets credits for the course. There are many examples of students "going back" to lower level courses to repeat them for a higher grade even though that course is prerequisite to higher level courses that they have taken. That higher grade is counted in the student's GPA.

Because the L&S requirement currently is the same as the competency requirement that is part of the University-wide GERs, applying the policy to L&S requirements is meaningless if it does not also apply to the GERs. However, if in the future the APCC should adopt a less stringent requirement than the C grade in English 102, applying this policy to the L&S requirement would become meaningful.

 

AP&CC/DegreeReqImplSubcom/EnglishCompPolicy