Approving mid-year graduates (#1436)

Topics/tags: Grinnell

Yesterday, we received the agenda for this coming Tuesday’s faculty meeting [1]. On that agenda was the list of mid-year graduates. Why? Because the faculty need to approve the list of graduates and send it to the Trustees for final approval [2]. And the Trustees will be meeting before the next faculty meeting. If I recall correctly, the Dean makes a motion like,

I move to approve the list of [mid-year] graduates to receive degrees, provided they have met the requirements.

That doesn’t sound quite right. But it’s close. I’m sure Elaine knows the precise words.

Why do we have mid-year graduates? There are three primary reasons. Some were unable to complete their degree in the normal eight semesters and needed to stay for a ninth semester. That’s nothing to be embarrassed about; things happen that get in the way of education. Some took a semester off, perhaps for a personal reason, perhaps to pursue an opportunity during the academic year. And some are graduating in seven semesters.

If I recall correctly, there’s a dinner for the mid-year graduates which the President and Dean attend [3]. Mid-year graduates are also invited to attend the prior spring graduation (most typically for the first two categories) or the following.

The arrival of the list got me thinking about something Dean Feingold said at their convocation about Academic Affairs: One of her goals is to get us to streamline processes. And early graduation is a process we’ve recently changed. Let’s start with the old process.

The student meets with their advisor, preferably at least one semester in advance of the semester in which they want to graduate. The two of them check over the seven-semester plan (or six-semester plan) to make sure the student will meet all the requirements of the major as well as the broader College requirements. Ideally, the advisor and the student also discuss the disadvantages of early graduation, particularly that the student is losing an opportunity to broaden their education.

The College also imposed an additional requirement for early graduates: To graduate early, students needed at least twelve credits in each of our three divisions. It’s not the most sensible requirement; as one of my colleagues suggests, divisions are political units, not intellectual or curricular [4]. For example, at many institutions, History is considered a Humanistic discipline. And for the counting, there’s also a question of how to treat an interdisciplinary subject, such as Linguistics or Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies.

In any case, after having a careful discussion, the student writes [5] an essay that explains their rationale and defends their liberal education. The advisor then writes a letter of support.

After that? Next, it goes to the Registrar’s office, which verifies that the student has met all requirements. Or at least they verify as best they can; since there are issues related to counting interdisciplinary courses, some of the counting is left to the next step. And yes, there is a step after the Registrar’s office.

That’s right! A committee! We love committees. In this case, it’s the Committee on Academic Standing, or CAS, as we like to call it. The folks on CAS read through the essay and letter of support, review the curriculum, and decide whether or not to approve the early graduation. In case you weren’t aware, CAS is also responsible for academic integrity cases, so their schedule is packed [6,7].

Last spring and over the summer, we changed the process. I’m not sure who we is. Was it the Registrar’s Office? The Dean? The Committee on Academic Standing? All of the above? In any case, the process is much simpler.

Sometime after they register for courses for their final semester (or, more precisely, what they’d like to be their final semester) and no later than September 15 (for Fall early graduates) or February 15 (for Spring early graduates), they must submit a form. The form asks for their name, student ID, original semester of graduation, requested semester of graduation, major (or majors), concentration (or concentrations) [8,10], and courses for their final semester. That’s it. No breadth requirements. No carefully crafted essay. Just a bunch of info.

The Registrar handles the details. There’s no need for CAS review. There’s no need for a conversation with the advisor. Just a bunch of facts.

I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I appreciate that this cuts down significantly on faculty workload. On the other, we’ve lost two important opportunities for the student to reflect on their liberal education, one in the conversation with their advisor and one in writing the letter. Perhaps it doesn’t matter; not all conversations are deep, and I’m fairly sure that everyone (or almost everyone) got approved.

I’ll admit that my conversations were less deep than I would have liked. I usually don’t have a good counter to my family will struggle with the $40K for one more semester or I have an offer for a job that starts in January; it may not be there in June. A response of Think of the opportunity to broaden and deepen your knowledge doesn’t cut it. And, if their Tutorial advisor and I have been doing our jobs, they should have already explored broadly and deeply.

The new process comes to mind, in part, because I have an advisee who went through it. They stopped by to chat with me, even though it wasn’t required, and I’ll be the first to admit that our conversation was not particularly deep. They’re giving up a concentration (or at least I think they are), but it wasn’t necessary to their education.

The advisee also comes to mind because their proposal was approved on September 10, but their name doesn’t appear on the list dated September 11. As you might expect, that discrepancy brought up a new question: How do we handle the approval process for students who apply for early graduation after the faculty vote or whose approval comes after the faculty vote? Our meeting is on the 15th. The deadline is the 15th. There’s a mismatch there.

Worse yet, they are permitted to apply after the 15th. The form reads,

If a student submits this form (Notification of Intent to Graduate in fewer than 8 semesters) after the stated deadline, they may not be invited to walk at Commencement, their name may not be listed in the Commencement program, and they may miss important communication regarding Commencement, even if they are eligible to graduate by the end of the semester.

There’s no worry about Commencement for Fall graduates. Perhaps some are waiting. Students are not always responsible. What happens if they request early graduation after the Trustee meeting?

I guess I’ll need to ask at Tuesday’s meeting [11].

Postscript: The second half of the musing also reminded me of one of my frustrations about Grinnell: Information is scattered. To figure out this new policy, I needed to check (a) an email from the Registrar we received in August, (b) the policy as it is presented in the catalog, and (c) Notification of Intent to Graduate in Fewer than 8 Semesters (Early Graduation) form [12]. Why can’t we have it all in the catalog?

I’m also frustrated that I can’t identify who changed the process. I’d like to be able to assume it’s CAS, but the CAS report for 2025–26 is not yet available [15], and none of the documents I mentioned tell us.

Ah! I found it. It was discussed by Executive Council at their meeting of 1 April 2026 and follows earlier recommendations from Curriculum Committee [16]. It also appears that there are compliance issues regarding the College’s imposition of different graduation requirements on early graduates, so it was important to unify things. I would have preferred that every graduate be required to write an essay explaining how they had achieved a strong liberal education. I suppose that doesn’t streamline processes, but I’m not sure I care.

[1] For the first twenty-nine years of my career, we primarily had faculty meetings at 4:00 p.m. on Mondays. At first, they ran from 4:00 until we were done with business. Then we decided that it was important to include faculty who may have to care for their children, and voted that no votes would happen after 5:30 p.m. After that, we decided they should end by 5:00 p.m., which is a more reasonable time for people who have to get children from, say, daycare or a babysitter. However, afternoons exclude our Physical Education faculty, who are often running practices at that time. This year, with the change in the timetable, we moved them to 11:00 a.m. on the first and third Tuesday of each month.

[2] Students and parents: Don’t worry! In my thirty years, we’ve never voted against a student receiving their diploma. We have, however, asked to correct the list once or twice because a name seemed to be incorrectly spelled.

[3] A colleague tells me that we discontinued the dinner a few years ago. That’s sad.

[4] The traditional liberal arts were segmented into seven areas. I tend to look for six broad areas: Arts, Humanities, Language, Experimental Science, Mathematical Science, and Social Science.

[5] More accurately, the student wrote. The process has changed.

[6] Thanks GenAI!

[7] We’re also changing the academic integrity process. Perhaps I’ll report on that in another musing.

[8] Concentrations are Grinnell’s approach to minors. They are almost exclusively interdisciplinary, at least if we rely on traditional assessment of disciplinarity [9].

[9] Interdisciplinarity is a complicated thing. For example, is Environmental Studies just something that draws upon natural science, humanities, and social sciences, or is it a discipline itself, one that still draws on other disciplines? And don’t most disciplines draw on other disciplines, at least a bit?

[10] Concentrations and majors are also in the queue of musings.

[11] Yes, I’ve warned Dean Feingold. Evidence suggests that they also read (or at least know about) my musings.

[12] Like too much at Grinnell, the form is hidden behind a password wall on Sharepointless [14].

[14] GrinCo.

[15] Hmmm. CAS may not always prepare an annual report. As I review the Faculty Handbook, I see that they are not explicitly required to report to the faculty.

[16] Excerpts from the EC meeting of April 1 can be found in the faculty meeting agenda for 4 May 2026.

Version 1.0 released 2026-09-12.

Version 1.1 of 2026-09-13.