Could You Be a Little Nicer Perhaps?: Grading, Scrutiny, and the University Classroom (A Personal Account)

Last week Dominique Homberger, a tenured LSU biology professor, was removed from her class mid-semester for “allegedly grading too harshly.” According to one article that covered the event, “more than 90 percent of [her] students were failing or had dropped the [introductory-level biology] class.” After considering those numbers, the dean of the college felt as though he needed “to take immediate action to protect the remaining students,” so he removed Dr. Homberger from the classroom and then raised her students’ low grades. The dean further admitted that his decision to remove the professor — who has taught at LSU for nearly 30 years — had nothing to do with “state pressure on colleges to boost graduation and retention rates.”

As expected, several groups including LSU faculty and a national professors association are upset by this decision and are subsequently speaking out. Specifically,

The national American Association of University Professors group already is planning to investigate LSU for the termination last year of Ivor van Heerden, the former deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center.

The group announced the Homberger case may be added into that inquiry.

The LSU Faculty Senate also is expected to take up the issue.

Homberger, who hasn’t taught an introductory-level course in quite some time, concurs that most of her students failed their first exam, which was made up of objective multiple-choice questions. She reportedly used the poor grades, however, as a wake-up call, informing her students that they were slacking off and “need[ed] to do more.” Homberger claims that afterward, the students “became much more engaged and improved on the next test.”

Two days after this story was reported, other articles began to surface like this one from Inside Higher Ed, which begs the question Who Really Failed here? The professor? The students? The dean? (The piece was also featured in USA Today.) Whichever stance you take, there’s no doubt that this situation has definitely “set off a debate about grade inflation, due process and a professor’s right to set standards in her own course.” For example, just see the 100 or so comments below the Inside Higher Ed article, which range from outrage against the administration (e.g., “I am shocked and appalled that administration would have the audacity to remove an instructor from a course mid-semester because they were ‘too hard’”) to contempt for the professor (e.g., “Prof. Homberger and her defenders are a bunch of whiny crybabies”).

Unfortunately, this entire grading fiasco hits a bit close to home. A few years ago, my dean called me into his/her office to question my grading. Apparently, too many students in my introductory-level film course were, like Homberger’s, failing or dropping. This percentage was evidently so high that the upper administration noticed and asked the dean to confront me. After a few questions about my assignments and student evaluations, the dean asked me,

“Could you be a little nicer, perhaps? Grade a little easier?”

Honestly, I didn’t see that one coming. I listened to the dean’s side of the story and then responded with my own, ultimately notifying him/her that by the end of the day I would provide him/her with several classroom statistics, e.g., how many students never showed, how many attended class regularly, how many dropped, what their grades were at the time they dropped, how many passed with flying colors, how many took advantage of bonus-point opportunities, etc. Alongside those numbers, I would also offer several student comments that indicate a positive view of my course and teaching. In brief, I would gather as much material as necessary to explain to the dean and the upper administration that those who had dropped or who had failed the course in question did so for reasons other than my grading. In particular, they

• rarely attended or never showed,
• fared poorly on the (easy) five-point participation exercises, and
• never took advantage of extra-credit opportunities (all students could earn up to 20 bonus points over the course of the semester).

Conversely, I would point out, those who succeeded

• attended regularly,
• excelled on the participation exercises, and
• profited from the bonus points.

Moreover, the latter had appreciative and thoughtful words about the course (and my instruction).

In my mind, collecting all of this information was necessary for two reasons. First, all the dean and higher-ups had in their hands were letter grades and a few negative student evaluations; and as all instructors know, a great deal more goes into acquiring a full picture of a class than that. Second, I felt a responsibility to defend my classroom, my teaching, and my assessments — all of which I work (and have always worked) extremely hard to make lively, appropriate, and fair. Sure, when I look back on some exams/assignments from my first few years of teaching, I notice questions that could have been phrased differently or more generally; but still, several students answered those questions correctly and then went on to make grades of 102, 95, 90, 85, 81, 76, and 70. In any event, as promised, by the end of the day, I put together my evidence and sent it to the dean who, by the way, very much encouraged my data-gathering after he heard my side of the story. Here’s a sampling of my findings:

• Of the students who made a D or an F, 84% missed class more than 2 times.
• Of the students who made a D or an F, 66% missed more than 4 times (which essentially equates to missing a month since the course only meets once a week).
• Of the students who dropped, 93% missed class more than 2 times.
• Of the students who  remained in the course, 82% passed.
• The final average for those who remained in the course was above average, a 78.5/C+.
• The drop rate for my course was 11%.

I also provided the dean with several comments from students in the course. Here are a few:

I just wanted to say thank you for this semester. This was without doubt my most enjoyable class and it was nice to learn things I can actually use every day. At the beginning I was afraid more knowledge of films would ruin them for me, but I’ve found it to be quite the opposite — knowing the production process and analyzing certain aspects of each film opens a new side to it and I love them even more.

I’m really glad to have taken this class, it has taught me a lot about film that i had no idea about. Also having a teacher that is so into what she is teaching helps me a lot to get and stay involved.

I’ve attempted this class before last semester, and tried hard to get into the class intellectually, but I couldn’t catch on to how our teacher was lecturing us. However this semester I feel more confident, such as on that last test, I may not have scored super high, but I feel like I did pretty well answering the questions and essays, whereas on the tests last semester I didn’t have a clue to what to do. I enjoy your style of teaching much better and I learn a whole lot more. You talk about the films more, the readings more, and still manage to show us present films to help cater to our taste of present day movies. You ultimately make coming to this class a joy rather than a burden.

I never learned what the dean did with my results. I don’t know if s/he forwarded them to the upper administration, if s/he put them in “my file” (if there is such a thing?!), or if s/he just deleted them from his/her email altogether. In fact, nothing else was ever mentioned. (I accepted a position at another school a couple of semesters later for completely unrelated reasons.)

On one hand, I sometimes wonder what happened after I submitted my findings. Did I do all of that work for nothing? Did the dean ultimately agree with me and/or back me up to those above him/her? On the other hand, it doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is that this experience, although upsetting at the time, prepared me for my career in higher education and the potential questioning that could (will?) come with it. As well, it made me look at my classroom statistically, which I hadn’t done much prior to that situation. Finally, it reinforced what I already knew: a faceless list of final grades and a few negative student evaluations do not, nay, cannot tell the whole story.

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