Faculty Senate met via Zoom on April 14. The agenda included many items including a campus website update, university budget presentation, another presentation on enrollment numbers, department restructurings in Liberal Arts and Education and the first agenda item in new business: an update from the Provost’s Office.
This update included many items of great interest to the university community.
According to Provost D. Joanne. Wilson herself, the change to online or alternative delivery has been a challenge for students, faculty and academic staff alike. Last week was the third week of virtual classes held in the Pioneer students’ living spaces.
According to the Provost, the Provost’s Office sent out a student survey looking at specific case-by-case instances of all student of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Four points often mentioned were students’ concerns about classes, grade point averages (GPAs), financial impact and family members possibly contracting COVID-19.
To accommodate the class load stress, the Provost’s Office and the Registrar’s Office worked together to extending the drop date from the original date to April 20. The two offices also collaborated to waiving the drop fee in total.
For students that may have needed the assistance with their academic probation, the Academic Appeals process for dismissing students have become more lenient. If you are to have a grade point average greater than 0 you will have leniency from a case-by-case process and basically not be dismissed.
Some asked, “What about a pass/fail option?” Provost Wilson gave some insight on that question concerning with grades and grade point average. She has reached out to other Provosts discussing their pass/fail programs and said that if students were wanting to pursue in any graduate school options it would hurt their chances and therefore leniency would be better off.

If students are struggling, they should contact their advisor or someone else to talk things through. Our university still has resources like Academic Support Programs, TRiO (Student Support Services), University Counseling Services and more. These resources’ details can be found on Canvas, where a notification was dropped into each student’s account.
On a more personal note, some students understand that professors are in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and students can only imagine what our administration is going through during this time. Some students ache that we cannot be back on campus, learning in person, leading and participating in classroom discussions and seeing all staff on campus. We are truly all in this pandemic response together concerning our health, family, education and more; however, the expected feeling of students continuing their undergraduate school experience at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville will hopefully come true in future semesters.