English 080 and 090 classes will be offered for the last time ever this summer.

Jenna Wright, co-coordinator of the Hortense Parish Writing Center and English Professor Lynn Alexander explained what this meant to students.

They said that students currently taking developmental English class (ENG 080) now will need to finish (ENG 090) this summer or will have to take the new courses being offered, English 100 and English 110.

UTM has decided to drop the developmental English classes 080 and 090, and replace them with English 100 and 110, but there is a change in the classes, not just the names and numbers.

The 100 and 110 classes give students course credit toward graduation. English 080 and 090 classes do not; moreover, these new classes are 4-hour classes with an additional hour of writing lab time.

“It is more challenging, but students will come out ahead,” said Alexander, chair of the English department.

Also, students that have previously taken English 080 or 090, and would like to retake the class for a better grade will only have one more opportunity to do so this summer. Even though the developmental classes do not offer credit towards graduation, they do affect your GPA.

The new 100 and 110 courses’ extra hour of writing center lab time will vary depending on the way faculty utilize it and what the students are covering each week, but they expect activities such as peer review workshops.

Jenna Wright commented, “I am very pleased with how the program has developed.”

Both of these professors confirmed that even though UTM won’t be offering the developmental classes any longer they do not expect this to change the GPA or ACT score requirements for UTM’s potential students.

UTM is the only Tennessee school that still offers these remedial classes, including English (080,090) and Math (070,080,090). One of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission’s objectives is to, “Limit the offering of remedial and developmental education courses to community colleges, with exceptions only for universities that need to offer developmental programming to meet specific access and mission needs.”

This requires that students at other universities like UTK fulfill these remedial course requirements at community colleges. However, UTM did not have a community college close by. Therefore, UTM has been offering these remedial classes, but is now beginning to faze them out.

Even though the remedial English classes will not be offered fall 2003, the remedial math classes will be offered in fall 2003 and spring 2004.