Academic Limitations for Courses/Grades
for Students Entering On or After FALL 2005

The College of Engineering has established the following policies with regard to grades, the use of the Substitute Repeat option, and the useful life-time of courses. Below is a statement of each policy to be considered for implementation followed by comments concerning exceptions.

Limit on the use of Substitute Repeat Option

Since the institution of the punitive F in May of 1991, the University has implemented the use of the Substitute Repeat Option whereby the new repeated course grade will be used in the computation of the GPA and the student will receive degree credit only once.

The College of Engineering endorses the use of the Substitute Repeat Option as a means to improve a student's GPA but limits its use to a maximum of five (5) instances.

Limit on the number of W, UW, and WA grades a student can receive in all courses

Students are allowed to earn a maximum of five (5) grades of W and a maximum of three (3) grades of UW and/or WA.

Limit on the number of times a required named course in the student's program can be taken

The College of Engineering limits the times that a student can repeat any given named required course in their program to three (3) times. This is measured by the number of times the student is officially registered for the course at close of late registration (i.e., the number of times the course appears on the student's transcript).

Limit on the number of grades of F which can appear on a student's transcript

Students are allowed to earn a maximum of five (5) grades of F during their engineering program. Grades of F which are subsequently replaced by the use of the Substitute Repeat Option count toward this total. Thus, a maximum of five (5) F's can appear on the student's transcript (whether or not they enter into the calculation of the GPA).

Statute of Limitation on College of Engineering Courses

Due to the rapidly developing nature of all engineering disciplines, the technical content of an engineering course has a finite life-time after which the material may become outdated and no longer serve as a foundation for a current engineering degree nor as an appropriate prerequisite for follow-on courses. With this in mind, the College of Engineering places a statute of limitations of no more than eight (8) years on all College of Engineering courses. In many cases, it may be deemed by the appropriate department that certain courses have lifetimes well below the eight year maximum.

The implication of this statute of limitations for engineering courses is for students who have been out of school for an extended period of time and wish to reapply to Marquette to finish their degree program and for students who have been studying under a part-time basis and whose program has extended over many years.

Exceptions and/or Allowances

As with all policies and procedures the aim is to help provide the structure needed by some students to complete their engineering degree programs in a timely manner and to maintain the quality of our programs by awarding degrees to only those students whom we would be proud to proclaim that they are Marquette Engineering graduates.

Policies such as those presented above are instituted to cover most of the cases where a guideline is needed to help keep students on-track. However, there are always extenuating circumstances which may affect a student and which cannot easily be incorporated into a given policy. For these cases, and for all the above policies, students may request special consideration through the use of the Curriculum Substitution and/or Allowance form.