The Council on Academic Affairs recommended Tuesday that the President’s Council expand exceptionality.

The CAA recommended that students within 12 credit hours of completing their degrees or those completing internships or student teaching would be able to participate in spring commencement. Currently, exceptionality policy allows students within six credit hours of graduating to participate in commencement ceremonies.

The CAA made the recommendation under the assumption that both the Student Senate and the Faculty Senate will not support reinstating summer commencement. If there is a decision to bring back summer commencement, the CAA will have to reword its decision to reject exceptionality, CAA Chair Andrew Methven, biological sciences professor, said.

Methven said that he “felt that the general consensus of the students and faculty was that they did not want summer commencements, so we made our proposal based on that.”

The CAA members also finalized a proposal to establish uniformed effective dates for curriculum changes.

The proposal states that new proposed program changes within a major or minor, changes in the general education program or university policy would not take place until the subsequent fall semester.

Mary Herrington-Perry, assistant vice president for academic affairs and ex officio member of the CAA, said that the proposal was developed to alleviate any student confusion.

The immediate changes caused confusion with students because differences in requirements done mid-year would not be reflected in the university catalog. However, departments will still be allowed to make revisions to individual courses or add classes, she said.

In other business, the CAA approved a name change for the mathematics department, which will now be called the mathematics and computer science department.