UMD Extends Deadline to Choose Pass/Fail or Letter Grade Options

Senior Vice President and Provost Mary Ann Rankin sent the following message to the campus community yesterday:

As we near the completion of the Spring 2020 semester, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all, as well as our faculty and staff, for the truly extraordinary flexibility and dedication you have displayed as we worked through the many challenges presented to us by the COVID-19 pandemic.

These are certainly unprecedented times, and we should all be proud of how well we have managed to cope. Over the past several months many people have worked hard, adjusting the university’s operating systems and policies to our unexpected and evolving circumstances. We have continuously reevaluated these efforts in order to be as supportive as possible and to strengthen your academic experience.

Towards that end, in March we announced the adoption of a default pass/fail grading method in consultation with current UMD students, faculty members, deans and department chairs, as well as our peer institutions across the country. You may recall that the announcement of this interim grading policy indicated that students had a deadline of May 12, the last day of classes, to go online and elect to receive a letter grade rather than accept the pass/fail grading method.

I now understand that some students were confused or had other concerns about the process and timing required to decline the pass/fail grading option. I write today to acknowledge those concerns, and to announce an additional final period in which to choose the letter grade option.

The website for making your grading choices will open again at noon May 22, 2020, to give you another opportunity to choose to receive letter grades; it will close again at 11:59 p.m. May 31, 2020.

If you are satisfied with your current grading choices, you need not do anything. If, however, you wish to receive a letter grade for a course and have not yet successfully made that choice electronically, you will need to visit the website before the May 31 deadline and designate that choice for each course for which you have not yet indicated your wish to receive your earned letter grade. There will be no further extensions beyond that time so please make your selection carefully and in time to check and be sure that all changes were successfully made as you intended.

Please note also that extending this deadline means that availability of transcripts and diplomas will be delayed slightly after the end of the semester. We will make every effort to minimize this inconvenience.

I wish you all the very best as we finish this challenging semester and look forward to celebrating with our graduating seniors tomorrow at Maryland’s first-ever virtual commencement.

Please take care and be well,

Dr. Mary Ann Rankin
Senior Vice President and Provost