The Grade Replacement Opportunity, normally reserved for undergraduates, became available to graduate students who want to boost their GPA this year.

Graduate students can now retake a course in which they received a grade of C or lower after getting approval from the instructor, major professor and department head.

"It will give the students, the administration and the faculty advisors an additional option when a student does poorly in a class," said Gary Pivo, the dean of the Graduate College.

"A student can take the class again, and learn the material they need to know."

In the past, if a graduate student did badly, they could appeal to the instructor, the department head and the dean of the college in order to remove the grade from their transcript.

With the GRO option, students have the choice of adding a better grade to the old grade on the transcript to improve their GPA.

"We can overcome the problem of a low GPA without eliminating the record of the prior lower grade from the transcript," said Pivo. "It will ensure that when the students graduate, they know the things they are supposed to know."

The idea of the GRO option for graduate students was previously thought to weaken the accountability of the program, but Rudy Troike, the director of the English language/linguistics program decided to propose the idea to the Graduate Council last March.

"I was surprised to discover that graduate students were not allowed to retake any reason. This created problems when a student did not receive a satisfactory grade in a course, and needed to re-take it, or when the content of a course had changed significantly because of the march of scientific theory," Troike said.

Some graduate students across the UA campus are also supportive of this change in policy.

"I support it 100 percent," said Pete Morris, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Council. "I think it supports flexibility and diversity."

Another student thinks the change will help him be more competitive in the workforce.

"I think it is much better. It gives us more of an opportunity to improve our GPAs, so when we get out in the business world, it looks more impressive," said Jim Meirhofer, a second year Management Information Systems graduate student.

In a survey done by the Graduate College of UA's 16 peer institutions, the UA remains one of only five schools to offer the GRO option to improve students' GPAs.

Similar policies are also upheld at Michigan State University, the University of Utah, Florida State University and the University of California at Berkley.

"It is pretty unique to our institution," said Pivo. "It is evidence of our graduate council being student-centered and willing to ignore tradition if it is in the student's academic interest."