The University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA) is looking into helping students who have issues with their grades from study abroad programs.

At last week's meeting, the assembly voted to work on creating study abroad arbitration boards to review credits and grades earned by Penn State students taking courses in different locales.

"Right now if you study abroad, it directly turns into grades that affect your transcript," UPUA Academic Affairs Committee Chairman Matt Smith said. "One of the problems with that is that grading standards at foreign universities could potentially negatively impact you for the same quality of work you would do here, based on their grading scales."

Smith was one of the forces behind the move to examine study abroad credits. He explained the idea started when the problem was discussed at the Administrative Council on Undergraduate Education (ACUE) during the summer. ACUE advises senior administrators on policies that pertain to undergraduate education at Penn State.

"We don't want anyone to be discouraged from studying abroad because of GPA concerns," UPUA representative Sam Loewner said.

Loewner was responsible for writing the legislation that was presented to the assembly.

Smith added there currently is no clear-cut method to sort out problems with study abroad credit and grades, and the solution he envisioned is a board within each specific college where a student could go to clarify his or her grades.

Now, the focus of Loewner and Smith's efforts turns to creating a sample board of study abroad arbitration to demonstrate to faculty and administrators.

"My goal is to have it seated in a college that would be willing to take this up by integrating with their academic integrity board," Smith said.

Loewner added if the test board is successful, it would push to have boards created across the universities' various academic colleges.