Dodge City ? Authorities have discovered the grades of more than a dozen Dodge City Community College students were altered, and a former secretary has been charged.

A preliminary hearing had been scheduled for Thursday in Ford County District Court for Noel Dawn Kortz, 31, but it was continued until June 9. Kortz was charged last month with 13 felony counts of forgery, 17 felony counts of making false information and one misdemeanor count of attempted theft of under $1,000 in the matter.

Her attorney, Linda Eckelman of Dodge City, said she recently was appointed to represent Kortz and has not yet met with her client. Kortz didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

Kortz, who also studied at the college and now lives in Hendersonville, Tenn., is accused of altering the grades and other records while working in the community college’s nontraditional studies program. Students involved in the program can’t attend classes at their scheduled times, so they arrange with professors to meet informally and complete the course requirements.

College president Richard K. Burke said the problems were discovered after Kortz left the school in February 2004 to move to Tennessee. Her replacement was reviewing student files as part of her training and noticed some information was missing. When the replacement obtained the missing information from the registrar’s office, she found that grades Kortz had reported to the registrar were different in some cases from the grades reported by instructors.

Burke said top school officials were alerted to the problem and spent several days reviewing files before bringing their concerns to the six-member board of trustees. The initial investigation revealed that some grades had been raised and others lowered and it also appeared that the signatures of professors were forged in some files.

Upon Burke’s recommendation, the board appointed an external task force with board attorney Glenn Kerbs as its leader to evaluate the apparent grade altering.

With the help of the Ford County Sheriff’s Department and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, thousands of files were reviewed from the period when Kortz was secretary in the nontraditional studies program.

Kerbs said 31 questionable files were identified, 18 of which led to charges.

The students whose grades allegedly were altered ran the gamut, said Byron Hill, who oversees the nontraditional program as associate dean of instruction.

“Irregularities occurred with nonathletes as well as athletes, with 18-year-olds as well as older students,” he said. “It did occur in a variety of circumstances.”

Kerbs said it was unclear why the grades were altered.

“I think a lot of those answers will come forward as the criminal case progresses,” he said.

While the investigation was under way, the school added procedures to prevent a recurrence, Burke said. Among other things, instructors must review a final list of their students’ grades prepared by the registrar’s office before the marks become official.

Burke also said the university plans to conduct its own investigation when it receives the files from the KBI and make sure the grades it has on record are accurate. Students whose grades were altered might go before the student disciplinary committee, which could result in sanctions, Burke said.

“It’s very upsetting,” Burke said, “because the trust was broken.”