By Long Beach State officials will immediately discontinue the Graduation Writing Assessment Requirement Placement Exam for students, according to an April 4 memorandum.
Karyn Scissum Gunn, CSULB provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, said Long Beach State’s GWAR policy needed “modification” to better adhere to the California State University-wide policy.
“All CSULB campus policies must be aligned with CSU CO (Office of the Chancellor) policies,” Gunn wrote in the memorandum.
In the memorandum, she said students cannot be charged a fee for a “campus-provided placement test.”
Despite being postponed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, GWAR testing was reinstated during the summer and fall of 2021, a decision that sparked mixed reactions among students.
CSU policy states these tests should be free to students. In addition, GWAR Portfolio courses will no longer be required starting in the summer of 2025.
GWAR Portfolio courses are for students who scored from an eight to a 10 on the GWAR Placement Exam and require the submission of a passing portfolio.
The change in CSULB’s GWAR policy follows a letter sent to Pei-Fang Hung, CSULB interim vice provost of academic programs, on March 28. Brent M. Foster, CSU assistant vice chancellor from the CSU Office of the Chancellor, notified Hung of the university’s divergence from CSU-wide policy.
The letter from the office noted three areas needing review:
- Exceeding the unit limit for GWAR: According to the CSU’s Office of the Chancellor, the GWAR Placement Exam at CSULB could place students in a multiple-course sequence that would exceed the three-unit limitation for this type of course.
- Use of placement testing: The use of tests is not explicitly prohibited, but “requiring a test that results in students being placed into a multi-course GWAR sequence is incongruent with systemwide practices.”
- Assessing placement test fees: Campus placement tests should not be charged to students.
Gunn said the changes outlined in the memorandum will apply to all students until Long Beach State completes revisions to the university’s GWAR policy to match the Chancellor’s Office’s GWAR policy.
