By MARTY LEVINE
A proposed new policy for the awarding of posthumous degrees to students who were unable to complete all degree requirements takes a broader view of how much work was needed before such degrees should be awarded — and how those who had not gotten as far toward degree completion might be recognized.
Amanda Godley, vice provost for graduate and undergraduate studies, told the latest meeting of the University Senate’s Educational Policies committee on Nov. 17 that the question of posthumous degrees arises more often than she expected. The committee had several policy suggestions that are going to take more time to answer, she said.
The current policy, in effect since 1998 with some modifications, says that posthumous degree requests must be approved by the provost’s office, after authorization by the student’s major department chair and the school’s dean. Such degrees, the policy says, require undergraduate awardees to have been in the final term of their program prior to death, with a minimum grade-point average of 2.0, while graduate students need to have earned a 3.0. Those students working toward Ph.D.s and Ed.D.s at the time of death were required to have a finished dissertation, while allowing for a “member of the program putting the dissertation in final form,” with, of course, the need for a defense waived.
The draft new proposal retains essentially the same submission and approval requirements for posthumous degrees but says only that ‘the student must have been in ‘active’ status at the time of death …” and that they “should have made substantial progress toward the degree and be in good academic standing,” rather than specifying that the student must be in a certain semester of the degree program or attain a certain GPA. The previous requirements for finishing a dissertation are maintained for “a research doctoral degree.”
But the new policy also adds the possibility of awarding a certificate of achievement “if a student does not qualify for a posthumous degree,” on the decision of a dean or campus president, to students “in good academic standing.”
“The Office of the Provost will issue a certificate of achievement which will indicate the degree that the student was pursuing” while not awarding the degree itself, it proposes.
“We wanted to find some way to recognize what they have accomplished at the University of Pittsburgh,” Godley said of students who had been working toward a degree at the time of death but had not progressed very far. The certificate of achievement, she added, would be for “those not far enough in degrees, up to research doctorates,” even “if the student had not started their dissertation.”
Her office compared posthumous degree policies at about 25 Pitt peer institutions within the Association of American Universities and found a “huge range” in the amount of work deemed necessary for the awarding of such a degree, Godley said. Some awardees at these other institutions were required to be in the last semester of their degree program, as is Pitt’s current stipulation. Others deemed it necessary that such students have just two semesters left to finish their program, or have completed 85 percent of their program, or 90 percent, or simply the “majority” of the program, or to be “on track” to complete it within 12 months.
In the new draft policy, Godley said, “We were trying not to be one of those ‘90 percent completed’ ” universities.
The proposed new rules engendered many questions from the committee:
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How will the proposal recognize progress toward certificate programs, of which the University has many? In the College of General Studies, for instance, there are 14 certificate programs, some that stand alone and some that may be earned in conjunction with a degree.
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Should “significant progress” toward a degree be quantified specifically, or will that be up to the provost’s office?
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What does it mean for the student to have been “active?”
All of these questions will require an answer, still to come, that may affect the draft, Godley said. In general, she added concerning the last question, a student is “active” if they have been registered for a term within the last 12 months. However, given that some intense treatments for illnesses can keep a student out of class for longer than a year, and that some other universities define active as registration for a term within several years, this too will take further consideration for the new policy draft.
Pro-tem committee member Kevin Shaver, of the economics faculty, asked whether students would get more consideration for a posthumous degree if they had completed all the courses in a major and only the less-central electives remained untaken — even if if this placed the student farther than average from degree completion? And what about students who had been aiming to finish double majors but did not complete enough for a degree in either major upon death — could the University shift their credits to one major alone to make one of their posthumous degrees possible?
The answers to these questions, pointed out David Wert, committee co-chair and School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences faculty member, also will help to more easily define when a certificate of achievement might be the more appropriate recognition.
Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.
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