Students may want to consider some new policy changes before choosing their classes for the fall semester.

According to a new class audit policy passed by the Faculty Senate last November, students will now only have the first 10 days of the semester to decide to audit a course.

Auditing changes will take effect for the Fall 2001 semester, Registrar Kathy Jones said. Students currently have until the last “drop” day to audit a class, or as long as they can obtain an instructor’s permission.

Several other changes also are being made to the audit policy. Previous to this decision, students had the option of auditing a class within the first five days of the semester without the instructors’ approval. Beginning this fall, all audits will require an instructor’s approval.

“The reality of the way students are using audits was not the original intent,” Jones said.

Students would drop a class they were not doing well in and knew they would have to repeat, Jones said, then re-add the class as an audit.

“Instructors were reporting that some of these students would stop attending class,” she said.

The intended purpose of the audit was to be able to continue learning the material but not suffer from a bad grade, Jones said. With the new policy change, instructors’ approval of all audit requests may prevent students from skipping audited classes.

After the policy change takes effect, audited classes will no longer count toward a student’s full-time status evaluation, Jones said.

“My main worry is students who are still under their parents’ medical coverage,” she said. “If a student were involved in a major medical event and had fallen below full-time status, it could affect their coverage.”

Jones said students need to be aware that the consequences of auditing a class will be different this fall, and they need to consider things such as insurance, which are not currently affected.

International students and students with financial aid need to be particularly careful and need to know how it will affect them if they audit a class and fall below full-time status, Jones said.

Pat Walsh, academic adviser for human development and family studies, said the change in the audit policy will require more planning on the part of advisers and students.

“Students will need to be more proactive and aware of their planning and what the consequences of actions are,” she said.

Walsh also said one responsibility of an adviser is to make students aware of the changes, and that auditing may no longer be an option.

Jones said some students may feel they don’t have any choice but to audit, and with the new changes, this will become more difficult. She said one option colleges are looking at is adding more second-half semester courses.

“Students need an alternative if they are not doing well and need to drop a class, to be able to remain in full-time status,” she said.