Southeast Missouri State University students will see a rise in the requirements to obtain recognition on the Dean's Honor List and a change to the terms from which students will be selected.

The Dean's Honor List is comprised of students who have met grade point average and course hour requirements.

The current requirements needed to be selected to the Dean's Honor List, according to the university website, are: "Students who have completed at least 12 semester hours in one semester at Southeast Missouri State University with a grade point average (GPA) of 3.5 or above and with no grade below a "C" are placed on the Dean's Honor List. Pass/Fail courses, credit only courses and developmental courses do not count towards the 12 hours needed."

The semesters that are currently taken into account for selection are the fall semester, spring semester and summer session.

The changes, which will be taking effect during the fall 2015 semester, will be a rise in the grade point average from 3.5 or above to 3.75 or above, students may have no grade less than a "B" and no failing grades in credit only courses and pass/fail courses. The summer Dean's Honor List will also be removed.

This change will now make Southeast's GPA requirement one of the highest in the region compared to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Murray State University and Missouri State University all of which only require a 3.5 grade point average.

During the 2013-2014 school year 5,087 students were named to the Dean's Honor List, with 2,583 students named in the fall of 2013 and 2,504 students in the spring of 2014. According to Provost Dr. Bill Eddleman, some colleges have about 20 percent of the students being named to the Dean's Honor List. That amount will likely be on the decline once the changes are implemented.

"There will probably be some change, and when you consider in some colleges that over 10 percent of students in a given semester were getting a 4.0, I'm not sure if it will have a whole lot of affect, but I know it will have some effect."

Eddleman also went on to say that the Council of Deans, which is comprised of the provost, vice provost, and all of the deans, made the decision to raise these requirements.

Much of the decision was made in response to concerns regarding grade inflation by faculty members and the desire to make the honor more prestigious.

"I think all of this falls under the category of the side effects of grade inflation, and as I have often said, those that can do something about it, grade inflation, are the faculty," Eddleman said. "Students have nothing to do with it directly and faculty need to stick to their guns and stick to standards."

Dr. Gerald McDougall, dean of the College of Business, attributes the council's changes to not seeing the summer session as a sufficient academic experience and to wanting to make the Dean's Honor List more distinctive.

"There were an increasing number of students that were being eligible for that list and in that manner it became less and less distinctive," McDougall said. "And we, as deans, really wanted to highlight our brightest and best students for that particular term, fall or spring, and we looked at the criteria and decided they weren't quite what we wanted, so we proposed the changes."