The Academic Records Committee made modifications to the Degree Progress Report (DPR) related to the Second Language Requirement (SLR) effective September 28, 2022.
No changes have been made to the Common Curriculum Second Language, the change relates to the manner the DPR reports a student has satisfied the requirement.
As a reminder, the SLR requires that a student complete a second language course in the second semester or higher. From Fall 2020 to Fall 2022, the DPR was set up such that students needed credit for both 1401 and 1402 for the SLR to show as complete. This setup caused many problems because most students at SMU do not take 1401. Rather, they start their language study in a course at the second semester or higher. Under this system, the Department of World Languages and Literatures had to manually award credit for 1401 to all of the students who began in 2nd semester or higher, in order to have the DPR show that the SLR was complete. As a result, many students who had satisfied the SLR had DPRs that showed the requirement as unsatisfied.
To correct this issue, we have reverted the DPR tracking of the SLR to the system that was in place from 2016-2020. Under this system, the DPR requires only the completion of a course in the 2nd semester or higher to show that the SLR is satisfied. This will improve DPR tracking of the SLR for the overwhelming majority of SMU students.
If you have questions about how to account for the completion of 1401 for student-athletes or other populations, please contact Jay Orenduff, the Second Language Advisor at jorenduff@smu.edu.