Forms, Policies and Other Documents
Interpretations and applications of Entrance Scholarships
(Policy ED 9-0)
1) Academic Standing:
Regarding Regulation V. ACADEMIC STANDING: While recognizing that the summer semester is normally excluded as a funded period, the “period covered by the award” noted in V.b. is deemed to be September – August annually. Therefore, the measurement of the “academic standing requirement” will include all Fall, Winter, and Summer courses graded within the period, regardless of which periods are funded. Therefore, at the start of each September, continuing scholars must have maintained a 3.00 GPA and must have not failed any courses over the prior 12 months. (Motion passed 2015/09)
Therefore, Student Awards will only measure eligibility once per year in August, meaning students may use the summer to bring up their academic year GPA if necessary, but also may potentially lose their scholarship over the summer even if the Fall and Winter terms were satisfactory. In addition, “courses graded within the period” would include any Open Learning course graded during the academic year in question.
As of September 2015.
Interpretations and applications of Academic Achievement Awards
(Policy ED 9-1)
1) The adjudication set:
The graduates eligible for a medal are those who applied to graduate between April 1st of the preceding year and March 31st of the current year. (Motion passed 2012/11)
As per ED 9-1, Reg.I.2., only graduates eligible to convocate at the June or prior October convocation are considered. Policy ED 17-0 dictates that students must apply to graduate/convocate by March 31 in order to be eligible for June’s convocation. NOTE: When or whether a graduate chooses to convocate is irrelevant to medal consideration, but the deadline to apply for graduation/convocation does dictate the medal eligibility window. In some cases, graduates may have finished all of their degree requirements and wait (intentionally or not) a year or more before applying to graduate, and be considered for that year’s medal.
2) Assessment Period - Credits:
Students who are deemed to have met the residency requirement of their Division and degree will be considered to have an assessment period of sufficient credits. (Motion passed 2012/11)
As per ED 9-1, Reg II.1.f., graduates must have at least 24 graded TRU instructed credits. If the graduate has fewer than 60 graded and non-graded TRU credits on their transcript, this will not in and of itself disqualify them from medal consideration.
Courses which are in progress or otherwise incomplete at the time of adjudication which are determined not to be required for the candidate’s degree will be excluded from medal adjudication. (Motion passed 2013/05)
Therefore for example, if two students whose degree requirements are already satisfied both take the same additional OL or Campus course for interest or toward a further credential and one student completes the course just prior to adjudication while the other does not, the course will be included for one student’s adjudication and excluded for the other, even though they were in the same class.
Reg II, 1., c. “…only the highest-graded credits…will be assessed…” will be taken to mean that among upper/lower credits, graded credits will always be used ahead of transcript notations (such as COM - Complete) which do not impact the GPA. (Motion passed 2013/05)
Where, for example, a student’s six most recent semesters total 54 credits, the seventh semester will be included,” using upper level credits first”. If the seventh semester contains 3 graded upper level credits and 9 COM upper level credits, the graded credits will be used first, both for the purposes of GPA calculation and for the purposes of satisfying the 24 credit medal residency requirement.
For the purposes of calculating the medal GPA, the “most recent 60 credits” will be deemed to only include institutional credit. (Motion passed 2013/05)
Therefore, regardless of when the transfer credit was completed and regardless of whether letter grades were assigned (i.e. OL), transfer credit will not be considered part of the assessment period. This is for GPA purposes only and does not impact the course density calculation.
The Awards & Honours Committee unanimously recognized that Policy ED 9-1 directs that where a student has delayed in completing their thesis course (regardless of the reason), or they have chosen to take a full-term field school course in their final semester which constituted a required component of their degree, or have otherwise failed to receive a final grade for a required component of their degree, they may in so doing remove themselves from medal consideration. (Minutes 2013/11)
Courses which span two academic terms and are graded out in the second term will be considered split between the two terms for medal adjudication purposes, with half of the credits and the associated grade assigned to each term. (Motion passed 2014/05, GD/JM)
Therefore even though the transcript assigns all of the credit to the latter term, for adjudication purposes the credits and GPA of both terms will be adjusted in the adjudication process to balance the credits and associated grades between the terms.
Students with a transcript notation of ‘NCG’ in a competency based course will not have the course included in the assessment period, including course density, as the transcript does not include the credits as attempted. (Motion passed 2015/09)
Therefore courses with an ‘NCG’ grade are effectively treated as if they were never begun.
3) Assessment Period - Configuration:
The assessment period (“the most recent 60 credits”) must contain at least 24 graded TRU instructed credits, or graduates are deemed ineligible for medal consideration. (Motion passed 2012/11)
The residency requirement in ED 9-1, Reg II.1.f. ensures that every medal is based on at least 24 graded TRU credits. The clear inference and only way for this to occur is if the 24 credits are completed within the 60-credit assessment period.
4) Assessment Period - Course Density:
Where the transcript does not allocate transfer credit to the actual semester(s) in which they were completed, they will be averaged over the period indicated by the accompanying transcript notation. (Motion passed 2012/11)
Where, for example, 44 transfer credits are allocated to “2010 – 2012” on the transcript, they will be treated as 11 credits completed over each of the Fall and Winter semesters of 2010-11 and 2011-12.
PLAR credits will count in the semester in which they are assigned, to a maximum of 15 credits per semester. (Motion passed 2012/11)
Where, for example, 35 PLAR credits are awarded in Fall 2011, for the purposes of measuring course density (60 credits completed within 8 semesters), 15 credits will be deemed to have been completed in Fall 2011, and the remaining 20 PLAR credits will not factor into the course density calculation. This balances the work completed for the PLAR portfolio, while maintaining the intent of the course density requirement and recognizing that 35 credits could not normally have been completed in a single term.
As of September 2015.
