CUE Approves Plan to Change Honors Examination Process

The Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) voted Wednesday to recommend changing the requirements for graduating with a general honors--cum laude general studies (CLGS)--degree.

If approved by the Faculty Council, CUE's proposal would allow the hour-long senior honors exams, given in some courses during the spring term, to count as the final examination for honors candidates who are ineligible for departmental honors.

However, Sidney Verba '53, associate dean of the Faculty for undergraduate education and CUE chairman, postponed action on another motion that would require the registrar to drop a magna or cum laude candidate's two lowest half-course grades when calculating grade point averages. The "drop" rule would not apply to summa candidates.

The motion as it stands would also eliminate the present requirement that summa candidates obtain grades of A or A- in one full or two half-courses in each of the General Education areas outside his concentration.

CUE members spent over an hour debating whether the drop rule would merely complicate the present system, offer new opportunities for students to "manipulate" the system, or allow students to graduate magna or cum laude even after receiving an "E".

Members will submit alternate proposals at the committee's next meeting in February.

Under the change in the CLGS system which CUE did approve, honors candidates who pass senior honors exams and then become ineligible for departmental honors would no longer have to take the final exam in that subject in order to pass and become eligible for CLGS. At present, the senior honors exams only count as final exams for students who are candidates for departmental honors degrees.

Verba, in recommending the revised CLGS plan, argued that students often do not find out they are ineligible for departmental honors until it is too late to study for, or sometimes take, final exams in courses for which they have already taken honors exams.