The Faculty Senate discussed grade changes during its first meeting of the semester Wednesday afternoon.

David Wade, chair of the admissions policies and academic standards committee, gave a report on recent developments involving the grading scale.

APASC made a request to the college curriculum committees to respond to possible changes in the university’s grading scale. Most of the committees returned either no response or recommended to retain the current system.

Based on the committees’ recommendations, APASC decided not to change the current system to a plus/minus system.

Wade said one of the major concerns people had with changing the grading scale was an A plus would not count as a 4.5 when calculating grades. Holding an A plus at 4.0 on a plus/minus scale would harm the top 10 percent of the student body, he said.

David Wagner, a retired faculty member and a former APASC chair, also spoke at the meeting.

“So many awards depend on grade point average and it is to the student’s advantage to change the grade scale,” Wagner said.

He stressed there is no incentive for students to improve throughout a semester if there is no distinction between a low “B” and a high one.

Wagner supports a plus-only scale. With a minus scale, a C minus is not enough to graduate. He also said an A minus would be disincentive for students in the upper levels.

Some faculty members argued a plus-only scale would create grade inflation.

University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana uses a plus/minus scale. When other schools change their grading scale, Wade found the number of grade change requests doubled.

The senate also discussed the procedures and cost of the Academic Advising Center as well as the problems with faculty recruitment.