The Council on Academic Affairs said Thursday that interim President Lou Hencken has accepted the council’s recommendation to increase exceptionality from six to 12 credit hours beginning with spring 2002 commencement.

Exceptionality now allows students within 12 credit hours of graduating to walk through spring commencement ceremonies before completing those credit hours. Since summer commencement has not been reinstated, the CAA made the recommendation in order for students taking summer internships or who are student teaching to participate in commencement before they leave Eastern’s campus.

Last semester, the Commencement Committee recommended eliminating exceptionality to revive the summer ceremony, but the idea was met with opposition from students and faculty. The Faculty and Student senates each submitted recommendations to the CAA, which approved them in its last meeting of the semester.

The council also announced that applications are available for the 2003 Technology-Enhanced-and-Delivered Education Grants. The grants allow instructors to apply for funding in order to develop new online courses available through Eastern or modify existing courses.

In other business, the council approved proposed revisions to the family and consumer science and psychology majors.

The family and consumer science major will add four new courses; FCS 1000, FCS 2000, FCS 3000 and FCS 4000. These courses will replace five courses which have been eliminated; FCS 4400, FCS 3920, FCS 3307, FCS 4274 and FCS 3926.

Two courses, FCS 2244 and FCS 3820, have been revised to become three-credit-hour courses as opposed to two-credit-hour courses. Two other courses, FCS 2800 and FCS 4926, have been revised in order to become more in-depth in the subjects that they cover.

Revisions were also approved to the admissions requirements in the major of psychology. Psychology majors will now be admitted by attaining a C or higher in MAT 1271 or receiving a 26 or higher on the math portion of the ACT test. Students are currently required to take MAT 1271 to enter into the major.

Once admitted to the major, psychology students still must take a math course, but they can now choose to take a MAT 1271 or any math course number higher than 1271.

The council also accepted the proposal to remove psychology limitations for undeclared majors.