The updated CUNY Uniform Grade Glossary, Policies, and Guidelines

October 18, 2021

Dear Faculty Colleagues,

On May 22, 2021, the University’s Executive Registrar, Vivek Upadhyay, sent the attached memorandum, entitled “CUNY Uniform Grade Glossary, Policies, and Guidelines,” to CUNY’s provosts. Although the end of this fall’s 14-week semester lies a couple of months off, the grading period for the fall 2021 seven-week I mini-term ends this week, so circulating this now is hardly premature. With this email, would like to inform all members of the faculty of the existence of the memo and draw attention to a clarification and a change related to the WU grade. Following are the two paragraphs that related to the WU. The first paragraph (from p. 7 of the memo) clarifies its use and the distinction between F and WU; the second (p. 10), especially the underlined sentences, spells out the change.

p.7 of the memo:

Guidance on WU/F/INC Grades
Audit reviews by internal as well as both the State and the Federal government have required the need to emphasize the definition of following grades:

• WU: A grade of “WU” is to be assigned to students who participated in an academically related activity at least once, completely stopped attending at any time before the culminating academic experience of the course, i.e., final exam, final paper, etc., and did not officially withdraw.
• A WU grade should never be given in place of an ‘F’ grade.
• The ‘F’ grade is an earned grade based on poor performance and the student not meeting the learning objectives/outcomes of the course throughout the entire academic term/session. If the student has participated in an academically related activity at least once or if there is documented evidence of the student’s participation in a course, and they have ceased participating in the course, at the end of the term, the unofficial withdrawal grade reported must be a “WU”. When a student does not officially withdraw from a course and fails to complete the course requirements, the instructor assigns the “WU” grade on the final grade roster.

10 of the memo:

Academic Penalty Removal for WU grade Effective Fall 2021

• A withdrawal after the financial aid certification date or program adjustment period is assigned the grade of “WD” (Dropped) or “WN” (Never Participated), or “W” (Withdrew) or “WU” (Withdrew Unofficially). Currently WD, W, WN are not academically punitive grade i.e., these grades do not impact student GPA. For Title IV purpose University uses our Grading policy (this document) for compliance with R2T4 regulations. Effective Fall 2021, WU grade will not have punitive impact on student’s GPA. WU grade will continue to be used to denote Unofficial Withdrawal. This Policy shall supersede and override all undergraduate and graduate program-level grading change policies currently in effect at CUNY colleges and schools.

Best wishes,

Dennis Slavin, PhD
Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning
Assistant Vice President
Baruch College, CUNY
646-660-6504 (phone); 646-660-6531 (fax)
http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/provost/teaching_learning.htm