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(04/16/10 4:36am)
UNC-system leaders want a robust pool of well-known candidates from every walk of life to vie for retiring President Erskine Bowles’ seat, and they want a consultant who can deliver that.During eight hours of meetings Thursday, the selection/screening committee of the system’s presidential search interviewed five different search consulting firms about what they could bring to the process.The committee — which discussed the consultants in closed session after the interviews — will not announce a selection until a contract has been finalized.
(04/15/10 4:42am)
Students could see grade distributions on their transcripts within two years if the Faculty Council approves a policy proposal at its April 23 meeting.The distributions would be part of a larger policy change designed to address what some faculty members see as a trio of related grading problems: inflation, inequality across departments and instructors, and an inability to distinguish high performance from adequate performance.The policy could put “contextual information” such as the distributions of grades, students’ class years and majors in a course on transcripts. It could also report to faculty members how their grading patterns compare to their department and the whole University.
(03/25/10 3:57am)
UNC has raised the bar for making the Dean’s List.Starting with the incoming freshman class, the University will require full-time students to get a semester grade point average of 3.5, regardless of how many hours they take, to qualify for the honor.This is a bump up from the current standard, which only requires a GPA of 3.2 for students taking 15 or more hours of graded credit.The change, implemented by the Dean’s Council, will likely drop the percentage of undergraduate students who qualify for the Dean’s List from about 40 percent to about 25 percent. It will only affect incoming students, and current students will be judged by the old metric.The change is a recognition by administrators that GPAs have increased and something might have to be done to address the trend, a contentious issue that has held the faculty’s attention for more than 10 years.“This takes seriously that the Dean’s List is slipping into meaninglessness,” said sociology professor Andrew Perrin, chairman of the educational policy committee, a faculty group that evaluates grading.The list, which 6,370 students qualified for in spring 2009, is a recognition of high-achieving students. But some students and faculty members question its relevance.“I’m interested in the Dean’s List so far as where it gets me in the future,” said Piya Kerdlap, a freshman environmental science major. Kerdlap said he’s interested in making a good GPA but is more concerned with skills, which he said would benefit him more in the long run.The Dean’s Council will re-examine the standards in five years to see if it needs to make changes.The standards were last adjusted in 1995, when UNC also raised the requirement to limit the list to about 25 percent of students.“This is an old, venerated tradition that a lot of people, including alumni, parents and students, care about,” Perrin said at a committee meeting in March. “But it’s neither fair nor valid as a current measure.”The change, administrators recognize, will do nothing to address rising GPAs and departmental disparities. GPAs nationally are rising at a rate of about 0.1 every 10 years. At UNC, they rose from 2.992 in fall 1995 to 3.213 in fall 2008.It does not address how the list affects departments differently and punishes students in those less likely to give out high grades. It is likely to contain a higher percentage of students in the education school, where the average GPA is about a 3.7, than the math department, where the average GPA is about 2.6.Administrators say addressing those issues will require larger changes, but they felt the Dean’s List was not the place for that.“We wanted to keep it simple but still have it be meaningful,” said Bruce Carney, interim executive vice chancellor and provost, who will assume the job permanently with the Board of Trustee’s approval.The educational policy committee will bring a proposal to the Faculty Council on April 23 to address grading practices. This proposal likely will be an increase in the amount of information reported with grades, Perrin said. This could include distributions on transcripts and greater information-sharing among departments, professors and the UNC community.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(03/22/10 4:23am)
Picking the next UNC-system president is not an easy job, even for the group of more than 40 people charged with the task.
(03/05/10 5:18am)
The search for UNC-system President Erskine Bowles’ successor officially launched Thursday.At a special Board of Governors meeting, Chairwoman Hannah Gage explained the procedure set out in 1997, with three committees made up mostly of board members.During the 2005 search that ended in Bowles’ selection, the system did not adhere to the guidelines in the policy manual, so the board has relatively little experience with the multi-committee procedure.Gage said the board went beyond the outlined procedure to make sure every board member got a position in the search, which she called “the most important work we will do as we serve on this board.”In the next few weeks, the search will ramp up as the committees work to hire a search consultant, figure out parameters for the new president and gather input from the state.Chancellor Holden Thorp and law professor Judith Wegner, head of the systemwide Faculty Assembly, will represent UNC-Chapel Hill on the leadership statement committee, which will solicit input and revise a statement of the search’s and system’s goals.The rest of that committee consists of seven board members, four other chancellors, nine chairmen of the various boards of trustees, two other professors, and the chairwoman of the staff assembly. It is the only committee with representation outside the Board of Governors.
(03/04/10 5:10am)
UNC-system President Erskine Bowles has had numerous North Carolinians try to tell him how to do his job since he took office in 2006.
(02/03/10 5:57am)
It was the challenge that many say epitomized how former Student Body President Eve Carson led.It was a largely unanticipated faculty issue in her first month in office — a vote on a new method of reporting grades known as the Achievement Index — that drove the Carson administration to act in a matter of days.Within a month of being inaugurated, Carson had mobilized students to attend a Friday afternoon meeting, gathered a group from inside and out of student government to research the topic and gave an impassioned speech to the Faculty Council about why students were opposed to the idea.
(01/21/10 6:23am)
Chancellor Holden Thorp’s new right-hand man is going to be a lot like him.In addition to wearing glasses, all four of the finalists for the position of executive vice chancellor and provost are white males with a science background.All four have extensive experience in academics and administration, which qualifies them to be the chief academic officer.But some say a diversity of viewpoints — including different racial, gender and academic backgrounds — could help UNC better manage budgets, create a new academic vision and recruit students.The prevalence of candidates with science backgrounds could be the result of changing priorities within academics.“It reflects the reality of the big research university,” said John McGowan, director of UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities. “Most of the research dollars come from the sciences, and the reality of financing issues is that these universities are depending more and more on this money.”Thorp’s experience in these areas was cited as a reason for his selection as chancellor.McGowan said there is a perception in the academic community that administrators must already have experience with finance and research. He said faculty members from arts and humanities fields are often seen as lacking these skills, regardless of whether it’s true.The prevalence of science backgrounds in academic leadership could also limit the number of women and minorities, since arts and humanities fields typically draw more of these demographics than the sciences.While 16 percent of UNC’s full-time faculty are minorities and 40 percent are women, the overwhelming majority of senior officials at UNC are white males.Shelton Earp, chairman of the search committee, said the group struggled to get a significant numbers of women and minorities to apply for the provost position.When the committee received few applications from these individuals, Earp said the committee reached out to potential applicants through personal correspondence but received little response.“There are a limited number of people who are qualified for a position like this, and most of the people we talked to were quite happy in the positions they were in,” he said.Members of the community said there are tangible benefits to having a diverse administration.“There’s a lot of literature that shows that corporations with a diverse workforce are more successful,” said Donna Bickford, director of the Carolina Women’s Center. “That also holds true for academic institutions.”Diverse backgrounds also create diverse skill sets, which could help Thorp in making major decisions — something the next provost will inevitably do.“Holden doesn’t want a bunch of yes people,” Bickford said.When former Chancellor James Moeser, whose academic background was in music, picked his first executive vice chancellor and provost in 1999, he said he looked for someone with skills that complemented his own. He ended up picking Robert Shelton, now the president of the University of Arizona, whose background was in physics.Others fear that too much emphasis on the sciences could hinder the core of a liberal arts education.“At UNC, we have maintained a strong liberal arts tradition, and we shouldn’t be complacent about that,” he said.The four finalists will visit campus during the next month before Thorp makes his final decision.
(01/13/10 5:35am)
The business functions of the departments of geological sciences and marine sciences, and the Curriculum for the Environment and Ecology could merge within the next month.While the academic functions of the departments would remain distinct, their support staff would be merged into one unit. If successful, the change could represent the beginning of a series of similar changes throughout the college.Administrators hope centralization will increase efficiency within the college and let these units grow without having to hire new staff. But some employees have expressed apprehension about potential job losses and the inconvenience created by such change. No changes have been made yet, and administrators are still figuring out how they want to implement the recommendations.“A lot of the details have not been worked out, and that always makes people nervous,” said Brent McKee, chairman of the marine sciences department.According to recommendations from Monarch Services, a consulting firm hired by the college, the departments in question should centralize all eight office staff members into one unit that would serve all three departments.Instead of having employees engaging in a number of tasks, members of the “unified business center,” as it is named in the report, would specialize in specific tasks, such as human resources, accounting and grant assistance.“When we’re hiring a faculty member, we’re lucky if we do it once a year,” said Allen Glazner, chairman of the geological sciences department. “Rules change every year, so when we do it, we have to learn all the new rules. If that were centralized, and it became a person’s job, he or she would be up on everything.”Michael Crimmins, senior associate dean for the natural sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, said this is similar to the way large departments are organized.Crimmins said the centralization would have no effect on the academic culture of any department.He said the three departments were selected to be centralized because they were small in size. Two recent retirements mean the changes may be implemented without reducing staff size.Although recommendations suggest that the total number of positions remain the same, administrators would not say whether the same people would hold these positions after the reorganization.Crimmins said the departments should expect to see changes within the next month.Last summer Bain & Company published a report that motivated the college to increase efficiency. The report found UNC’s bureaucracy to be excessive and cumbersome, hindering the school’s ability to do everything from scheduling classrooms to purchasing. One of the report’s recommendations was to reduce redundancy among departments.Crimmins said the College will evaluate how well the unified office works with these three departments and determine how that model can be applied to the rest of the University. The dean’s office has already asked Monarch to evaluate how efficiently its office is organized.The provost’s office has also centralized the support functions for several research centers and institutes.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(12/09/09 4:42am)
This article was published in the 2009 Year in Review issue of The Daily Tar Heel.
(11/23/09 4:37am)
Seniors Libby Longino and Henry Spelman didn’t exactly hit it off when they met as freshmen in a poetry writing class.“I didn’t really notice Libby, and she thought I was pretentious,” Spelman said.Friends said Longino would come home after class and talk about a guy who the rest of the class couldn’t relate to.“His poems were filled with all these references to ancient philosophers,” Longino said. “I was like, please, write something accessible to someone else.”That was before they met up about two years later in Turkey while conducting research and before the talks over coffee about philosophy and literature. It was also before they started dating.And it was long before Saturday, when they were both selected to receive the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.They will join 30 other Americans who will have full tuition, board and living expenses covered for two or three years of study at Oxford University. The scholarship is valued at an average of $50,000 a year.Longino, a public policy and English double major, will use her scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in forced migration, an issue she has dealt with extensively during her four years at UNC.She has traveled to Taiwan, Bosnia and South Africa working with human trafficking.“She’s really had a quite deep and impressive commitment to that topic, and she has shown an extraordinary capacity for leadership,” said Pete Andrews, chairman of the public policy department and faculty adviser to the Roosevelt Institute, where Longino serves as the president.Longino was partly responsible for restructuring the organization in the last few years, a move that helped UNC’s branch win recognition as “chapter of the year” this semester.Spelman, a classics major with a minor in creative writing, will pursue a master’s degree in Greek and Latin at Oxford. He hopes to one day be a professor.“He is the consummate academic,” said senior Thomas Edwards, who has known Spelman since they were freshmen. “But beyond that he’s just a really personable guy.“He’s the kind of guy you can meet at a bar and just talk to.”Spelman’s academic work with Greek and Latin earned him two of UNC’s highest honors last year.“He has a real love, a deep profound love, of his subject,” said classics professor William Race, who has taught Spelman in three classes.Outside of the classics, Spelman has done extensive work with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. He has traveled to Tanzania twice to work with displaced people at refugee camps. He is also editor of the The Cellar Door, the campus literary magazine, and a member of Chi Psi fraternity.Spelman said this odd blend of interests and talents — a quality friends referred to as “endearingly bizarre” — helped him in the selection process.“I don’t think they get many squash-playing classics majors who do refugee work,” he said.Both Longino and Spelman are Morehead-Cain Scholars, and both said they wouldn’t be where they were if it weren’t for the scholarship, which helped bring them to UNC and funded their travels.Friends said the two complement each other well and push each other to succeed.While they went through the Rhodes selection process together, the two said they rarely talked to each other about it until the end.“You don’t have to mention the fact that it’s on your mind,” Spelman said.Longino agreed.“The time we were together was the time we didn’t have to talk about it.”Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(11/21/09 11:59pm)
Two UNC seniors, Libby Longino and Henry Spelman, were named 2010 Rhodes Scholars on Saturday.
(11/17/09 5:12am)
John Grisham — the author of popular dramatic tales of courtroom mystery and intrigue — has been selected as the May 2010 commencement speaker.Grisham is the author of 23 novels, many of which hold a firm place on the international best sellers list. Several of his works, including “The Pelican Brief,” “The Rainmaker” and “The Runaway Jury,” have been made into major motion pictures.“Everybody knows who John Grisham is,” said Student Body Vice President David Bevevino, a member of the speaker selection committee.While a group of students and faculty members compiled a short list of preferred speakers, Chancellor Holden Thorp was the last juror on who would speak. He issued an official summons earlier this semester.Unlike other universities, UNC does not pay its commencement speakers.The May commencement speaker is usually a well-known individual who has made significant contributions to the world. The commencement ceremony will take place May 9 at 9:30 a.m.While Grisham’s name is well known, he is not as flashy a pick as last year’s speaker, Desmond Tutu. But seniors said they are excited about Grisham’s selection, adding that his widespread recognition contributes to his appeal as a speaker.“He’ll probably be really inspiring,” said Chizzy Ohanyerenwa, a senior English major. “It’s not easy to be a writer, and I’m sure he has faced a lot of rejection in his life. And I’m sure as graduating seniors, we’re going to be facing a lot of rejection.”Members of the selection committee said Grisham’s selection was a testament to his deep ties to the University. His daughter graduated from UNC in 2008 and helped broker fundraising deals for the senior class last year. His wife, Renee, is listed as a junior English major who could graduate in May. The two bought a condo in Chapel Hill in 2008.Grisham spoke on campus with his author brethren in September during the N.C. Literary Festival, a partnership between libraries at the four Triangle universities. It was his second festival appearance.The Mississippi native began his professional career as a small-town street lawyer. He wrote his first novel, “A Time to Kill,” in his free time. In 1983, he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives and served in the chamber until 1990.While his writing career took off, Grisham took a five-year hiatus from the courtroom. He returned in 1996, representing the family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two cars. Successfully arguing his client’s case, Grisham earned a jury award of $683,500, the largest of his life.“What really appealed to us about John Grisham is that he has had full career in his life,” said senior class president Meggie Staffiera, who said one of her favorite Grisham books is “The Innocent Man.” The December Commencement speaker is Dr. Lisa Carey, an associate professor in the School of Medicine and medical director at the UNC Breast Center.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(11/16/09 8:01pm)
Author John Grisham has been selected as the May 2010 commencement speaker.
(10/28/09 5:33am)
UNC-system President Erskine Bowles leads the board of directors of the company that was chosen to develop University Square through a closed process.But University representatives said his relationship with Cousins Properties did not have any effect on the decision to hire the company to develop the 12-acre space acquired last year by the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation.A company’s board of directors is responsible for representing shareholders and ensuring the company’s executives are leading the firm to success.“He has recused himself from any involvement in any doings related to the University,” said Joni Worthington, vice president for communications for the UNC system. “He will have no impact and no involvement.”Real Estate Holdings, an arm of the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation, purchased the space — which includes Granville Towers — in June 2008 for $45.75 million.The foundation is a private group associated with UNC-Chapel Hill. It manages properties and other assets for the University.Cousins Properties, a urban, retail, office and residential development company based in Atlanta, has not done much work in North Carolina outside of Charlotte — where Bowles worked as an investment banker before becoming system president.The company plans to tear down much of the existing development and add office space, triple the retail space and build multi-level parking decks. Cousins Properties recently hired an architect and is holding public forums to gather input on what should go in the area.Since the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation is not technically part of the University, the decision to bring in Cousins Properties was not a public one. The company’s contract has not been released, so it is unknown how much the foundation is paying.
(10/28/09 5:33am)
UNC-system President Erskine Bowles leads the board of directors of the company that was chosen to develop University Square through a closed process.But University representatives said his relationship with Cousins Properties did not have any effect on the decision to hire the company to develop the 12-acre space acquired last year by the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation.A company’s board of directors is responsible for representing shareholders and ensuring the company’s executives are leading the firm to success.“He has recused himself from any involvement in any doings related to the University,” said Joni Worthington, vice president for communications for the UNC system. “He will have no impact and no involvement.”Real Estate Holdings, an arm of the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation, purchased the space — which includes Granville Towers — in June 2008 for $45.75 million.The foundation is a private group associated with UNC-Chapel Hill. It manages properties and other assets for the University.Cousins Properties, a urban, retail, office and residential development company based in Atlanta, has not done much work in North Carolina outside of Charlotte — where Bowles worked as an investment banker before becoming system president.The company plans to tear down much of the existing development and add office space, triple the retail space and build multi-level parking decks. Cousins Properties recently hired an architect and is holding public forums to gather input on what should go in the area.Since the UNC-Chapel Hill Foundation is not technically part of the University, the decision to bring in Cousins Properties was not a public one. The company’s contract has not been released, so it is unknown how much the foundation is paying.
(10/12/09 5:10am)
Professor Robert Porter understands grading.“I know how to grade,” Porter, a professor in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies, told the Faculty Council on Friday. “And I think all of you know how to grade too.” But how Porter grades might be different from how a chemistry professor grades. It might even be different from how members of his own department grade.And that disconnect frustrated the council as it tried to reach a consensus about what to do about address grade inflation at UNC, even after about an hour of deliberation.“People come in bringing in the perspective of where they’re from,” said Chancellor Holden Thorp. “The natural sciences don’t want grades to be inflated. The humanities don’t want to be told how to grade.”In fact, despite a comprehensive report that illustrated dramatic grading trends at UNC — including the fact that 82 percent of all grades given out at UNC are A’s or B’s — many members of the council weren’t even sure that anything should be done.Faculty members at UNC have been having these talks for years with little agreement. Committees have been discussing the trend since at least 1976.Friday’s discussion and the lack of a clear policy direction illustrated a problem that has been apparent from the start — the lack of consensus about what grades should represent.Even within different departments, faculty members said there wasn’t a consistent standard for what to do.“There was never any department chair who took me in and said, ‘This is how we grade,’” said Laurie Maffly-Kipp, a religious studies professor. “When I asked, I couldn’t get a straight answer from anybody.“When new faculty get here, they get a tour of campus and learn about all these things. It seems to me obvious that we would do the same thing when it came to grading.”Throughout the talk, professors’ focus remained on students culpability in receiving grades, not professors’ responsibility in assigning them, which frustrated student leaders.Professors also brought up the idea that the quality of students attending UNC has increased over time, and that could correspond to the increase in grade.Members of the council also brought in numerous other factors that could affect grading. They discussed graduate student grading, an erosion of standards at UNC and the decision to push back the date to drop classes.At the end of the meeting, the council approved a resolution to have the educational policy commission bring a specific policy proposal back before the council in April.But they passed the resolution without a consensus for which direction to send the committee in, something the committee will have to determine on its own. A few things became clear during Friday’s discussion. Faculty members don’t want to go the way of Princeton University and implement a quota on how many of each letter grade can be given out.They also said they don’t want to follow the law school’s method and rank students.What they want, many stressed, is more talking. They want a broader understanding of what grades mean and how each department distributes grades. Faculty members also want to begin having a broader talk with other universities so UNC’s actions don’t work against its students.And that, the meeting showed, could be difficult. Grades are used as an assessment of student understanding, a measure of comparison between students and a method of feedback for how students can improve. And faculty members said it is difficult — maybe impossible — for all three of these goals to be represented by the same mark.“How can we be having this conversation without understanding the step before that,” said Steve Reznick, a psychology professor. “What do grades represent at UNC?”After the meeting, Thorp said talks are going to continue for a while and will remain a faculty issue for now.“I’m not any time soon about to mandate a method of grading,” he said. “We’ll watch and see what happens at Princeton.”Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(10/12/09 5:02am)
On this day 216 years ago, UNC laid the cornerstone for a model of public education.
Rooted in state support, the University was to become a place where students would learn to apply knowledge to the people of North Carolina, paying back dividends on the state’s investment.
The model spread across the country, building up some of the best public university systems in the country — Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan and Virginia, among others.
But with tighter budgets and dwindling public support, cracks in the model are showing, leading the way for a growing discussion about the role of the state in higher education.
“The public model is increasingly coming under pressure and being questioned,” said Dwayne Pinkney, UNC’s liaison with the state government. “But here in North Carolina, the model still appears to be strong.”
How long that support lasts, and how long UNC can simultaneously maintain its quality and model, is still an open question. And it largely relies on the willingness of politicians and the state to believe that the University can continue to benefit the state.
“We’re going to defend it as long as the legislature and governor hang in there with us,” said Chancellor Holden Thorp.
A model not broken, but abandoned
Universities have begun to move away from UNC’s model in the past decade, a trend that could be accelerating as states face hard economic realities.
The University of Michigan-Ann Arbor began operating with high tuition and almost independently of its state after declining state revenues compromised its funding.
The University of Virginia started pulling away in 2004. The school, faced with a dire state budget situation, was not willing to compromise its quality and sought other means of support.
A law passed in 2005 gave the school almost complete control over its finances and operations.
It now functions with little state control — a trade-off that means less state support and higher tuition.
State funding makes up only 6.9 percent of its budget. Almost a quarter of UNC’s budget is state appropriations.
Now the University of California-Berkeley, the golden child of public higher education that is consistently the highest-ranked public university in the country, is looking to move away from UNC’s model.
The state of California, facing a budget deficit larger than North Carolina’s entire budget, slashed $637 million from the 10-school University of California system.
“The model isn’t broken, but it’s being abandoned,” said Peter King, spokesman for the University of California system.
The California system hasn’t said it’s going the same way as Virginia, but leaders are looking for new ways to fund higher education.
UC-Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau recently proposed the option of federal tax dollars going to core expenses at some of the country’s largest research universities.
UC-system President Mark Yudof echoed the importance of public higher education in a speech to California legislators.
“We need to retain our public character,” he said. “I do not want to be a private university. I do not want to privatize the University. That’s not the University of California.”
Showing cracks
N.C. politicians, who in the past have shown strong support for higher education, are only willing to support the UNC system so long as the state’s population does.
The N.C. constitution states that higher education should “as far as practicable, be extended to the people of the State free of expense.”
The public still generally supports the University. The last higher education bond in 2000, which called for $3.1 billion to support growth — the largest education bond in U.S. history at the time — passed in every county.
“Every town and county and hamlet is impacted by the University in some aspect virtually every day,” said N.C. Sen. Richard Stevens, R-Wake, co-chairman of the Senate’s two education committees.
Stevens, previously a member and chairman of the UNC Board of Trustees, said the state legislators generally highly value the University’s contributions and provided accordant support.
But in recent years, the UNC system has seen some bad publicity that could threaten its relationship with the state.
“Some of the things that have happened in the past year make it very obvious that the university system has wasted millions and millions of dollars,” said N.C. Rep. George Cleveland, R-Onslow.
Administrators at N.C. State University — the largest school in the UNC system — orchestrated a faculty position for former Gov. Mike Easley’s wife at an exorbitant salary.
The report by consulting firm Bain & Company, which found that administrative growth at UNC outpaced growth in academic costs, became a rallying cry for those looking to pull money from the system.
Most recently was the revelation that a UNC-Chapel Hill research program designed to work with soldiers squandered $10 million in federal money.
“We’ve had a hard time getting our good news in the press,” Thorp said.
He said moving away from the original model is something the school doesn’t want to do.
UNC would have a high hill to climb if it did. If the state cut its support of the University, it would have to make up the money through some combination of higher tuition, more federal dollars and even more private giving.
Stevens said the University would need the equivalent of a $11.4 billion endowment to sustain itself. UNC’s endowment is currently about $2.36 billion.
But Thorp said the University must maintain its quality and accessibility, even if state support begins to erode.
“We’re going to determine if the model William R. Davie invented is enough to sustain higher education in the future,” Thorp said.
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(10/09/09 4:42am)
There’s no question that grades mean a lot to students.They signify achievement and understanding, and they can substantially influence a student’s future.They also mean a lot to universities. They are the fundamental mark of education that gets to the heart of learning, the role of a university and how to judge student effort.And that’s why there is a lot at stake in today’s Faculty Council discussion.In the wake of a report released in April that found that grades at UNC have been increasing, the faculty will address two fundamental questions: Is there a problem with the way UNC faculty members grade? And, if it is a problem, is there something that can be done to address it?“It’s time we put this front-and-center in faculty members’ minds,” said Andrew Perrin, a sociology professor and chairman of the committee that wrote the grading report.At the end of the meeting, faculty members will vote on whether to investigate policy options to address grading, a decision that could have profound implications for students, faculty members and the University’s future.Grading practices at UNCThe numbers are striking. So striking that many people don’t believe them.Within two waves — one occurring in the 1970s and one occurring now — the average GPA at UNC has risen almost a full point. In 1967, the average GPA was a 2.49. Last fall, it was a 3.21.That trend has made it difficult to distinguish between students’ abilities. The grade most frequently given out at UNC is an A, and 82 percent of all grades are either A’s or B’s.The increase has not occurred across the board either. The average GPA in the math department last fall was a 2.62. The average GPA in the School of Education was a 3.72.Natural science and math classes give out lower grades on average than the fine arts and humanities. Most professional schools award higher grades than the College of Arts and Sciences.Professors have expressed concern that this imbalance has driven students to take courses and majors that give out high grades more frequently.There is also the issue of whether students are getting smarter, something the report was not able to address. The average incoming SAT score has risen from 1090 in 1976 to 1302 this fall.But some have said that even an increase in student intelligence is not a reason for grades to go up.“The point is to teach stuff. It’s not about reaching a fixed bar,” Perrin said. “It’s not at all obvious that the right decision would be to raise grades as higher quality students come in.”‘The power tools’If the Council determines that there is a problem with grading at UNC, faculty members could move to change policy.“This is not a hopeless situation,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a retired Duke University professor who follows grading trends closely. “Overcoming grade inflation can be done, has been done and should be done nationwide.”UNC professors and students seem opposed to any system that rations grades, including quotas like those implemented at Princeton University and mandatory departmental averages like at Wellesley College.“My old boss called these the power tools. It’s amputation for a small injury,” Perrin said. “But it does have the advantage that it is very transparent, and it’s easy to explain to the outside community.”A quota system or curve would also go against UNC’s stated grading policy, which rewards an individual student’s mastery of a subject regardless of his or her peers.The other path is for the school to retain current grading practices and attempt to use other methods to mitigate grade inflation. These methods include adding more information like grade distributions to transcripts or using a statistical model to factor out variables.The University already had that talk two years ago, when the Faculty Council rejected the Achievement Index by a close vote of 31-34.The Index, a “strength of schedule” analysis, measures student performance against their classmates’ grades in other courses.Students and faculty members objected then, saying the system was too complicated and would encourage competition.But some in academia who have followed grade inflation talks closely said faculty can’t make the change on their own.“From the top down, leadership has to send a clear signal that they are concerned about education. They need to do this by telling faculty that they want to make an A meaningful again,” Rojstaczer said.“If the leadership makes this clear, the faculty tend to respond and to recalibrate their grades. We cannot expect the faculty to reinvigorate the classroom on their own.”Staff writer Courtney Tye contributed reporting.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
(10/08/09 4:36am)
Like Western civilization itself, the tale of Youth for Western Civilization is a rocky one.Three speeches, two protests, one broken window, seven arrests, two near-elimination experiences, four advisers, and $3,000 later, YWC is ready for a fresh start.When YWC hosts former U.S. Treasurer Bay Buchanan tonight in the Student Union auditorium, campus will have a chance to learn from last year’s experiences.YWC will get another chance to host a speaker, Buchanan will get another chance to be heard, and students will have another chance to protest.Tonight’s speech will be the fourth hosted by the controversial student group, which saw two of its speakers last spring protested to the point of police intervention.Since its inception last year, the group has had four different advisers and several controversies.Administrators will have the opportunity to adequately prepare for a protest, something they said they did poorly last year.Randy Young, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said DPS will monitor the event.“We are aware of the event and fully expect a civil discourse,” he said. Due to the group’s newfound notoriety, Buchanan will speak to what will likely be a larger audience than that of her first campus appearance last March.Her speech occurred before former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., came to lecture in April and was protested to the point of not being able to talk. Another protest later that month also required police intervention.In September, Chancellor Holden Thorp offered to reimburse YWC $3,000 for the cost of hosting Tancredo, an amount that YWC president Nikhil Patel said will fully fund tonight’s speech.Buchanan said she was asked to talk about free speech and immigration because of the debate incited by last year’s protest.“They’ve asked me specifically to discuss the issue of freedom of speech on campus, so I will definitely go there,” she said. Protestors, including senior Haley Koch, who was arrested last year for protesting Tancredo’s speech, plant to gather outside the Student Union auditorium in a performance addressing free speech.“It will critique and question free speech and the marketplace of ideas,” Koch said. The group will also touch on the assimilation of immigrants, but Koch said she would not reveal the performance’s details.Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.