Dear Editor,
I just wanted to clear up one mistake in your article entitled ‘Grading Outside the Alphabet’ that is a common misconception among people outside of our school: UC Santa Cruz still uses narrative evaluations. As a recent graduate myself, I can promise you that in addition to my grades, I received evaluations for every class I took during my undergraduate career except one (that’s 45 classes and evaluations). In fact, my department, literature, uses the evaluations as a way to bestow honors to graduates, as I myself achieved. This misconception about UCSC’s grading system continues to affect the greater public as well as our alumni. Many people who do not know that we offer both grades and evaluations sometimes write the school off as a party school with no grades. Other alumni are still infuriated, because they believe evaluations were completely done away with in lieu of grades.
As more of a personal comment, I believe evaluations are a wonderful way to ‘grade’ students. They reward the students with the most genuine intention of learning, not those that can merely perform well on tests or dominate discussion. They are well-rounded and can be as clear as grades in letting students know their level of achievement. In fact, specific language allows students to know how they have succeeded or failed, even if no grade was present. Words like ‘excellent’ and ‘amazing’ would clearly represent what we may know as an ‘A.’ Other phrases or words like ‘above average’ (‘B’) ‘average’ (‘C’) ‘dismal’ (‘D’) and so forth should give any intelligent UC student enough insight to understand how their performance was marked.
When it comes to larger classes, writing many evaluations can be extremely difficult. However, the UC system’s use of TAs makes it somewhat easier to manage for professors ‘mdash; TAs that lead section or grade work can take on partial responsibility for writing the evaluations, especially since they may interact more with students than professors themselves. While many professors and TAs spend the time to creatively write each evaluation, others follow a sort of formula, using performance-specific language in conjunction with a description of coursework (that has already been graded over the course of the quarter) to easily compose specific yet simple evaluations. Evaluations reward success much better than a letter grade ever could. You may spend only one quarter with a professor, but if they are impressed by you, a brief evaluation serves as a mini recommendation letter that may come in handy in future professional and academic use.
Thank you for bringing the subject up to UCSD students, staff and faculty, as I think it is something that could greatly benefit students.