By Debra Bradley Ruder

Gazette Staff

Faculty members have revised the system for awarding summa cum laude degrees to emphasize a student's breadth of study and to give faculty more flexibility in making selections for the highest Latin honors for undergraduate degrees.

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted last week to make a number of changes that will be introduced this year.

The revisions are designed to eliminate the rigid grade point average cutoff for determining summas and to maintain the number of summas awarded each June to between 4 percent and 5 percent of the graduating class. They underscore the importance of demonstrating outstanding work across a range of fields.

David Pilbeam, Dean of Undergraduate Education, said the changes grew out of last year's Commencement-time degree meeting, when Faculty voted to award summas to an unusually high number of students -- 115, or 6.8 percent of the class. During the previous five years, the number of summas hovered around 80 per year, or about 4.7 percent of the graduating class.

Faculty asked the Educational Policy Committee and the Faculty Council to examine whether this situation represented a blip or a trend, and the two bodies put together a set of recommendations after extensive consultation and analysis.

The process for awarding summa cum laude degrees has two phases. First, a concentration makes a recommendation for highest (English) honors, and, second, the full Faculty reviews those candidates and decides who should receive (Latin) summa degrees.

Legislation approved in 1985 stated simply that a candidate for summa cum laude had to be recommended for highest honors by a division, department, or special committee, and that the candidate's record had to reflect "a very high grade point average" across a number of fields. Each June, the Administrative Board would recommend a grade point cutoff to the Faculty, which could accept or amend the recommendation. The cutoff has climbed over the years, and since 1991 it has remained at 14 on a 15-point scale.

The study found great variance in the way that concentrations make highest honors recommendations. Some rely primarily on course grades, while others consider several factors, such as theses or general exams.

The new legislation, approved unanimously, stresses that "highest honors recommendations are serious matters requiring the collective consideration of the faculty affiliated with each undergraduate concentration."

Concentrations, it states, should consider not only the student's grades in concentration courses, but also the level and rigor of those courses and at least one other indicator of the student's mastery of the field, such as performance on a substantial piece of independent work or on a written or oral general exam.

Addressing the second phase of the process, the legislation states the Faculty will look beyond a high grade point average when measuring excellence across a range of fields. For example, it will consider such evidence as "outstanding performance in upper-level courses not directly related to the concentration" in each of the broad areas of humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.

In addition, a six-person subcommittee of the Faculty Council will review the records of students recommended for highest honors and propose which of those students should graduate summa cum laude.

At the Faculty's March 11 meeting, Gary Feldman, the Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, said he supported the spirit of the proposal but suggested that the Faculty run a simulation of last year's degree candidates before making any formal changes. However, his motion to send back the legislation for further consideration failed.

Professor of English and Comparative Literature James Engell said the revamped system resembles the selection process for Phi Beta Kappa, and he warned colleagues to expect the possibility of some very close votes during the June degree meeting.

"It's a more painful way . . . but in the end, it's a more scrupulous way" to award summa degrees, he said.