Transcript Motivation to Examine Grading at Rice

Motivation to Examine Grading at
Rice
• 2009
Comments from faculty in final plenary
meeting discussion leads to formation of first
senate WG on grade inflation
– Findings: pattern of GPA increases over the years and
differences among schools
– Eventually result in redistribution of Latin Honors
among schools
• 2012
Discussions about how cutoff for
summa cum laude remains >4.0 in many schools
leads to second WG on grade inflation
Committee and Charge
Co-Chairs: Jane Grande-Allen (Engineering) and
Evan Siemann (Natural Sciences)
Members: Richard Stoll (Social Sciences)
Peter Loewen (Shepherd School of Music)
Rebecca Goetz (Humanities) – Spring 2013
Julie Fette (Humanities) – Fall 2013
Joshua Eyler, ex officio (Center for Teaching Excellence) – Fall 2013
David Tenney, ex officio (Registrar)
Chynna Foucek (Student Association)
Staff Assistant: Sharon Mathews
• Charge: enumerate possible changes in policies and
procedures that would work against grade inflation, and to
evaluate the potential costs and benefits of such changes
Latin Honors Cutoffs
• Prior to 2012:
• http://registrar.rice.edu/students/latin_honor
s_old/
• 2012-2013:
• http://registrar.rice.edu/students/aca_honors/
% of expected (i.e. 100 = double expected)
Excess or deficit of summa honors
Majors differ in the proportion of the Latin honors
awarded that are summa cum laude
200
2005-2013 degree awards
(with top 5% GPA for summa cum laude and 30% for all Latin honors combined,
this metric is bounded from -100% [no summa] to +500% [all summa])
150
100
Expected:
Summa ~ 1/6
Magna ~ 1/3
Cum ~ 1/2
50
0
-50
ARCH
ENGI
HUMA
MUSI
Division
NSCI
SSCI
What are other schools doing?
Yale’s Recent Experience
“Approved by the faculty with no controversy:
1. Encourage discussion about grading policies in
each department by requiring chairs to report to
the Yale College annually about those policies.”
(dept chairs supposed to discuss cases of grading
extremes with instructors)
2. “Distribute data to the faculty every year on the
average grades in every department.”
Yale Alumni Magazine, Sept 2013
Tabled at Yale
3. Convert from letter grades to 0-100 numerical
scale (passing is 60 and above)
4. Establish non-mandatory guidelines for
departments to follow, i.e., a grade collar/
distribution system.
35% 90-100
40% 80-89
20% 70-79
4-5% 60-69
0-1% failing
Awarding of A+ Among Rice’s Peers
A+ > 4.0
• Rice
• Barnard
• Columbia
• Cornell
• Oberlin
• Williams
A+ = 4.0
• Amherst
• Dartmouth
• Duke
• Johns Hopkins
• Princeton
• Swarthmore
• Penn
• Washington Univ
• Wesleyan
No A+
• Bryn Mawr
• Carleton
• Georgetown
• Harvard
• MIT*
• Mount Holyoke
• Northwestern
• Pomona*
• Smith
• Trinity
• U Chicago
• U Rochester
• Wellesley
• Yale
Working Group Activities
• Spring 2013
• May 2013
Met with all Deans
Interim report to Senate
– Emailed preliminary recommendations to all faculty via sen-fac
at the end of the Spring 2013 semester. Data analysis in wiki.
• Fall 2013
• Dec 2013
Presentations to faculty
Chairs (Engi, NS, Music)
Town Halls (all schools)*
*Most poorly attended
Presentation to Student Association
Report to Senate