Fewer A's given for theses, JPs

The University is making progress toward its goal of awarding only 55 percent A-range grades to junior and senior independent work, due in large part to the efforts of large departments, according to a memo sent to faculty by Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel on Nov. 26.

"Most of the larger departments have rolled up their sleeves and done the hard work of setting and implementing standards for the grading of independent work," Malkiel said. "So have some of the smaller departments. We expect all departments to work toward implementing the grading standards approved by the faculty."

Malkiel declined to release statistics on the independent work grading distributions of individual departments.

Professors continue to disagree as to whether all departments, which range in size from a handful of students to more than 100 concentrators, can reasonably be expected to award comparable percentages of A-range grades.

"Departments with a tiny number of majors do not qualify for any sort of 'curve' (the pool is simply not large enough to be statistically significant)," Caryl Emerson, chair of the Slavic languages and literatures department, said in an email. The department has half a dozen majors, including just one junior.

"[T]hey are able to give their students' work a great deal of close attention and a large amount of individual feedback, which, over time and with a serious student, will raise the quality of the product," Emerson said.

She added that her department's percentage of A-grades given to independent work has decreased over the past year.

Molecular biology chair Lynn Enquist and politics chair Christopher Achen, who manage two of the largest departments on campus, said that their departments' percentages of A-range grades for independent work were within the University's 55 percent threshold.

Enquist agreed with Emerson, though, that "larger numbers of students and faculty tend to reduce extremes and smooth out fluctuations" when looking at overall percentages.

"There's room for variation to take account of the varying quality of work done by concentrators at different times," Malkiel said about these possible statistical anomalies. "That's why we are monitoring results on a three-year rolling basis."

Molecular biology professor Mark Rose, a member of the Faculty Committee on Grading, suggested that some smaller departments' grading standards may not be as clear as those for larger departments.

"It may be that larger departments, simply because of the larger number of students involved, have recognized the need to be more systematic about their approaches to grading of the independent work," Rose said. "For example, in my own department, we had instituted the senior thesis grading policy well before the University guidelines were proposed."

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"One major reason why the aggregate numbers are not far from the University-wide target of 55 percent A grades for independent work is because most of the departments with the largest number of concentrators grade their independent work in a way that is fully consistent with University policy," the memo sent to the faculty said. But what exactly is the University's policy for grading independent work?

Independent work grades are often more difficult to regulate than a department's course grades since independent work is often graded on an individual basis between students and their advisers. Malkiel and the Committee on Grading have suggested a variety of ways departments can regulate these grades, including instituting department-wide standards and always choosing to opt for the lower grade for independent work that falls on the borderline of two grades.

Daniel Marlow, a physics professor and member of the committee, said independent work grades should be determined not just by each student's faculty adviser.

"Faculty advisers naturally come to know and like their advisees and want to see them do well," Marlow said. "On balance that is obviously a good thing, but when it comes to grading, it can be useful to receive more of an 'arm's length' appraisal."

The Committee also included adding a second and perhaps a third reader for all independent work and "weight[ing] their grades equally or more heavily than the grade proposed by the adviser."

A standard grading rubric for independent work has helped the molecular biology department meet University grading guidelines, Enquist said. He added that the final evaluations of the written work and an oral exam administered by the department are collected by a faculty committee that sets the final grades as a group.

"I do think that it is very important for all departments to make a sincere effort to grade in a fair and uniform way," Rose said. "From the student's perspective, there should be no grade penalty for choosing one major over another."