Word: grading
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Department also made other changes this year. Specifically, it required the graders to write signed comments. In past years, the criticism has been for Department-eyes only, and Bullitt says this system allowed readers to give a very high or very low grade without providing a coherent critique...
Bullitt argued that there is nothing wrong with changing one's mind, but according to the sources, the grade-changing was not of the type that Bullitt described. The sources said the alterations came after the meeting with Heimert, and usually the graduate student was the reader who lowered the grade...
Graduate students feel pressure in thesis grading, primarily because in most departments, the other reader is a senior Faculty member, and a grad student's future depends on senior Faculty in the department. Bullitt says that Heimert attended the meetings to protect the grad students from pressure, but he scoffed at the possibility that Heimert's presence--that of a third senior Faculty member and chairman of the department--would add more pressure, not less. "If a graduate student can't stand by his grade," Bullitt said, "he doesn't deserve to read theses...
...English this year, one student's thesis was graded summa minus by a graduate student and no distinction by a Faculty member. The professor awarded no distinction because of what he considered an incorrect citation. After the graduate student was told of the possible error, the sources said, she changed her grade to no distinction, thus removing any hope that an honors grade might be salvaged...
...another English Department case, a thesis received a magna plus from one reader and a cum from the other. After the two readers met with the third reader and Heimert, the sources said, the magna plus was lowered to a cum plus, and then a final grade was hammered out. In other departments, the three grades are usually averaged, but Bullitt says that numerical averages are too arbitrary, so the English Department decided to hold meetings instead...