Fear of a possible decline in academic quality of students at Eastern has become an issue for the Faculty Senate to review.

The Faculty Senate meets at 2 p.m. Tuesday in Conference Room 4440 of Booth Library to discuss a potentially great fall in the average ACT for freshmen, which has not seen an increase since the fall semester of 1996, when the scores jumped three-tenths of a point from the previous year, according to a planning and institutional studies office report.

In 1999, the admissions office raised the minimum ACT score that prospective students need for admission to the university by one point. Now, a student in the top quarter of their graduating class needs a score of 18 and a student in the top half of their class needs a 19. The highest possible score on the test is 36.

Despite the attempt to raise quality, the scores have not increased and have actually seen a slight drop. Scores slipped by one-tenth of a point from the fall of 2000, when the average ACT score among freshmen was 22.2, to the fall of 2001, which saw a 22.1 average.

Frank Hohengarten, dean of enrollment management, said on April 11 the drop was insignificant because it is difficult to change the averages.

However, the Faculty Senate Chair Bud Fischer, associate biology professor, said Monday that it was an issue for the senate to discuss a cause of and a solution to.

“With recent numbers falling,” he said, “we’re going to take a look at all kinds of things.”