Minutes December 1, 2009

The Senate met to continue discussion on the Cum Laude Proposal. We were joined by Mr. Gillespie who very helpfully brought a set of data to the meeting to illustrate the complexities of the process. Sorting and resorting the data by different categories provided some fascinating results. While we had limited time to edit the proposal after Mr. Gillespie's presentation, but two changes seemed recommended.
1) The committee should be charged with performing the same kind of data analysis we were doing, identifying top students for each of the categories, not just sorting by GPA.
2) The current language on Honors classes needs to be emended to read "50% of Honors and/or AP classes" available to the student.

For me, personally, the discussion clarified my thinking about the final step in the process. Because of the complexities analysis of the data reveals, and Mr. Gillespie's own support for the committee making the final decision on those students at the margin, I see that final step as an important one. Look forward to seeing what others are thinking.

Minutes of 11.19

On Thursday, the Senate tackled a draft of a Cum Laude proposal, copied below. While there seemed to be fairly broad agreement about the prescreening of candidates, the last steps in the process remain more controversial, with some senators favoring a faculty vote on the screened list, and others favoring a faculty discussion with the comittee finalizing the list. At issue is what to do at "the margin" where in some years it is difficult to distinguish between the kids who are near the cut-off. Please share your thoughts on that remaining issue, either through comment, new posting or the poll in the sidebar.

The draft resolution reads: Cum Laude Selection Process Proposal
November 19 Draft

The Senate resolves that a Cum Laude committee be established. The committee will be responsible for prescreening the candidates for Cum Laude induction, presenting the slate of candidates for review and feedback, and making the final decision on those candidates at the margin where faculty feedback might make the difference.

In accordance with the Cum Laude Society Manual, the committee shall remain a “small minority of faculty” which we interpret as approximately 10% of the faculty. The Cum Laude society defines “Legitimate criteria for electing faculty members” as “election to Phi Beta Kappa as a student in college or university, membership in CLS as a student or faculty member in another school, distinctive contribution to the cause of scholarship in the school, or completion of distinguished scholarly work.” We recommend soliciting volunteers who meet those criteria, with the Upper School Director picking five or six from that list.

The process for selection begins with the top one-third of the senior class and one-fifth of the junior class, according to a ranking by un-weighted GPA. The committee will review the records of these candidates and remove those with documented, serious violations of school rules—especially those involving lapses of integrity—after the freshmen year. This pre-screened list shall be presented to the faculty with reminders of criteria for membership in the society.

Each student selected for induction (a) should have taken a rigorous course of study, incorporating at least 50% of the honors courses available to the student; (b) must have demonstrated academic integrity and good character throughout their Upper School years; and (c) should have attended school an average of at least 94% of all days in which school is in session each year. (Attending school functions such as field trips and special programs counts as attendance at school.)

Society guidelines permit us to elect up to 20% of the senior class and 10% of the junior class. Students inducted as juniors may be removed as seniors if they no longer satisfy the criteria for induction as a senior. Students are not eligible for induction during their first year of attendance at Hawken. Inductees are recognized in a special program in April.

Where students at the margin (or near the cutoff for inclusion) have very similar records, the committee shall make the final selection, guided by the feedback faculty offer. The decision of the committee shall be final, and not subject to public review.

Deans List Proposal as of October 26

The Senate Meeting today centered around the following proposal, which after much debate seems ready for public review. We will address suggested changes and call for a vote at our next meeting, unless significant objections are raised.

In order to provide more frequent and timely positive feedback and recognition, the Senate resolves that a Deans List program shall be implemented beginning Fall of 2009. Class Deans will review grades, comments, notes of praise and nominations by faculty, and select up to 10% of each class to be recognized through a formal letter for noteworthy achievement, effort, improvement, and intellectual curiosity each grading period. While students may find themselves recognized multiple times throughout their academic careers, such recognition should not become an expectation. Deans list designation will not appear on transcripts, though will be shared with faculty, advisors, and the college office.

This proposal is a seperate proposal from suggested changes to our Cum Laude discussion, but may help give clarity to that process as well.

Provisional Minutes October 6, 2009

Fellow senators,

I wasn't officially appointed to take minutes, but at about 10:24 today I looked around and realized that no one else was taking notes, so I decided to take it upon myself to do so.

Just for the sake of trying something new, I tried to take as accurate a running transcript as I could. I don't know if everyone is comfortable with their names showing up along with the comments that they made, and I'll be eager to hear your thoughts. I was typing fast, so I may have completely misattributed certain remarks...if so, keep me honest!
Best,
J. Griffin
---
Cum Laude conversation continued (minutes pick up halfway through the conversation)

Attendance: Feldman Griffin Maurer Marabito Todaro Moeller Weiskopf Hermann Mintzer Kerman Murray Gacka Harris Thompson

Where the minutes pick up, we were considering the idea of creating a Dean's List proposal. Under this system, in any given "quarter," approximately 20% of students would be recognized for outstanding academic achievement, improvement, and citizenship.

Nate: Then why not just create a benchmark GPA? Everyone with a GPA above that number makes the Dean's List...we could set it at the beginning of the year and then each quarter, anyone above that GPA would be on the Dean's List.

Doc M: The Dean's list is designed to take into account more characteristics than academic achievement alone in terms of GPA.

Harris: And there's also the problem we ran into with the old Honor Roll system, which by the end included about 70 or 75% of all students. We set the bar too low. If you're going to set the GPA bar in order to include 20%, why not just specify the percentage?

Kerman: But then how would we determine what the expectations were other than academic achievement?

Harris: You could set it up such that it's not expected that the same students get the Dean's List all the time. Each student has 16 opportunities to get on the Dean's List in their time at Hawken.The characteristics would include high academic performance, for you, but also that you were involved in good things around school.

Maurer: I'd like to see a rule where if you'd been on the Dean's List say twice in a row, then you couldn't be on it the next quarter, so the Dean was encouraged to dig a little deeper on the list.

Gacka: But then would it look bad on a college transcript if you were Dean's List for two quarters but not the other two?

Harris: I'd like to get to the point where this was an honor and a nice thing to get in the mail, but not an expectation. Like, Cum Laude becomes that kind of an expectation for a student. So, "Why didn't I make cum Laude?" It's easier to answer it with the numbers than by saying "you didn't have enough intellectual curiosity." Maybe we should keep it off the transcript and you would just say it in your resume.

Murray: I like this idea of a recognition that's mostly academic but not entirely…but I think it brings us back to the same -- cum Laude…are we looking at - not just good character, but intellectual curiosity and motivation to learn, or just straight academic achievement. Because I like the dean's list proposal and I think it's a good idea and takes the pressure off of cum laude, but then what happens to cum laude? Harris: I'm repeating myself from last week, but the minimum that we need is to establish a clear process by which we can address integrity violations and issues. So if all we do is establish a pre-screening committee that sends a list out to the faculty, then we will have done what we were charged to do.

Senkfor: Is the Dean's List in addition to Cum Laude?

Harris: If we pass the Dean's List idea, then yes, it takes the pressure off the cum laude discussion by recognizing student work in another way.

Feldman: But if Dean's List isn't on transcript, then the only publicly recognized academic honor is still cum laude.

Gacka: Some students get a lot of recognition, but some students work hard very quietly. Maybe a role for advisors in communicating with the deans about student accomplishments.

Harris: Right. Maybe advisors to deans, or all faculty to deans. We could do a nomination process -- maybe like HIC nominations, or maybe less formally though an email from the deans.

Kerman: I agree with Cecile that extracurricular success is good, but the dean's list should be mostly focused on academic performance/perf. In classroom.

And the conversation will continue next time...

More thoughts on Cum Laude

Hi everyone,

I appreciate the thoughtful comments that have been made in response to my blog about Cum Laude. They raise a number of points, some of which I agree with. As just one example, like Chip I am leery of too much reliance on character as a qualification, regardless of whether we are talking about Cum Laude or some successor honor system. I suspect we can agree that a recent verified plagiarism or cheating episode ought to disqualify someone from an award for academic excellence, but the further we get from such clear-cut standards, the more it begins to look like a popularity contest and the less I like it. I was not specifically advocating the use of character or "love of learning" criteria but just mentioned them since they have come up in our discussions.

On the other hand, I disagree with those who cited the flexibility of Cum Laude (other than the rigid 10%/20% rule) to argue against the need to consider alternatives. Here, I would point out that, while Cum Laude does allow us the freedom to include or reject any of our better students based on standards of our own choosing (currently, attendance and course rigor), we in fact have NO standard with respect to grade point average. According to Mr. Gillespie, he cannot recall that we have ever admitted fewer than the maximum allowed number, except for the rare occasion or two where the cutoff fell between two students whose records were indistinguishable. When that happened, we took neither rather than make an impossible choice.

So, other than those rare exceptions, our de facto admission standard is, "as many as will fit". Does this produce a fair result? For some data with which to address this question, I asked Mr. Gillespie to provide me with the junior and senior GPA cutoff each year for the last nine years (i.e., the lowest GPA of anyone admitted each year).

For seniors, the cutoff was different each year, but for the last six years it has fallen in a narrow range of 3.91 ± 0.07 (it was slightly lower, in a narrow range around 3.75, in the three years before that) These numbers refer to a quirky scale in which A+ = 4.7, A = 4.3, A- = 4.0, so this cutoff represents a high B+, I think.

For juniors, the cutoff in seven of the nine years was also in a narrow window of 4.05 ± .05. But in the other two years, the cutoff was markedly higher – 4.17 in one year, and 4.21 in the other. In those two years, according to Mr. Gillespie, there were 6 and 8 juniors, respectively, whose GPA was 4.05 or above but they were not admitted to Cum Laude as juniors even though their GPA was as good as those admitted in other years. They couldn't be considered because the quota was filled. These two years starkly illustrate a fairness problem that a quota system can never address no matter how we tweak our process (the problem can affect seniors as well, but we've been lucky so far and the number of seniors affected has been small, most likely). On the other hand, a system based on admitting qualified students, regardless of their number (or percent of a class), strikes me as much fairer. If a particular class happens to have an exceptional number of exceptional students, bestowing honor on all of them does not dilute the honor accorded each one individually. They all will have met a tough standard.

A system based on admitting qualified students does not have to mean admitting more students or admitting ones of marginal quality. Mr. Harris's point that the ranks of the qualified thins our pretty quickly below the 20% line I think is arguable at best. That has rarely been my impression when we look at the list of students ordered by GPA and see who is in and who is out. Whatever one thinks, a system based on a standard will force us (faculty, with Senate guidance) to decide what IS the standard for receiving this honor; then it would be up to the faculty (or a smaller screening committee, as we have been discussing) to uphold the standard.

From Doc. M

As one who was absent for this discussion, I want to say thank you, first, for the degree of detail in these minutes. This is a real service.

One aspect of the Cum Laude business that seems to be tying us in knots is the strict limit on the numbers that can be admitted, i.e., the 10%/20% rule. It is obvious from the minutes that we are struggling how to define that top group in a way that is simultaneously objective, subjective, fair, and precise. Did I mention transparent? Some of the apparent difficulty of the task might be eased if we had more flexibility in the numbers. That thought leads me to question the assumption that Hawken will continue with Cum Laude.

Are the feelings about the Cum Laude tradition that strong?

Does Cum Laude mean anything beyond graduation?

What are the alternatives in terms of other honor societies with which Hawken could affiliate? What are their rules?

Could Hawken perhaps go it alone, either with its own honor society or simply not have this sort of thing? I am not advocating the latter, but just put it out as an extreme option.

As an example of how different a home-grown model could look, we could say that eligibility for HHS (Hawken Honor Society) requires a minimum GPA of (pick a number) as well as evidence of good character (list possible criteria) and love of learning...or whatever...(list possible criteria). Everyone who qualifies is in.

Among other advantages:
1. Students are competing against a standard, rather than against one another.
2. The standard is known in a way that allows students to assess where they stand.
3. We could make a flexible standard that encourages students to risk taking more challenging courses.
4. We could make a standard that more heavily weights more recent courses so that a student's chances are not necessarily ruined by a bad grade early on.
5. We could set up something for which underclassmen are eligible (a junior honor society, perhaps) so that academic achievement can be recognized at all levels.

Your thoughts?

Doc M.

Provisional Minutes of September 29 meeting

Attendance:
Faculty: Mr. Dade, Ms. Griffin, Mr. Harris, Mrs. Gacka, Mrs. Thompson, Mr. Weiskopf, Ms. Agar
Student: Cecile Murray, Hannah, Hunter, Paui Sankfor, Sam Mintzer, Michael Marabito, Nate Baker, Chip Herman

Discussion:
Reminding the senate of the new blog and the ability to write as authors.
Motion to work out a concrete proposal reflecting our discussion.
*Mr. Peters bursts through the door with a concerned expression upon his face*
Mr. Walton not aware of PE potential revisions.
To be worked out later.

Ideas for revision of Cum Laude
Larger initial pool of candidates
Determined by the initial committee
Then goes to faculty meeting to vote on the final choices.
Faculty might look at top 25% of class
Would raise objections if necessary
Then go to the cum laude committee for final review.
Nominations
Begin with class list and nominate those who the faculty think are good candidates.
Then confirm that they are in the top percentage of the class.
Some reservations throughout the senate about nominations
Teachers choosing their favorite students.
May not necessarily reflect academic achievements.
Possibly email list of top percentage to faculty initially.
This way the faculty would have time to reflect upon the candidates and send any response indicating concern.
Discussion leaning towards a smaller committee that would make the final decision
Would have access to all information without fear of too much breach of confidentiality.

Current System
Junior Year
Committee  20% to faculty evaluation  10% are inducted
Senior Year
10% already inducted
Committee  next 20% to faculty evaluation  10% are inducted

Problems:
Distinctions between straight GPA get down to the thousandths. GPA becomes almost arbitrary.
Problems with ranking. Too subjective teacher by teacher.
Some teachers simply don’t know the top candidates well enough to feel comfortable ranking them.

Proposed systems:
25-30%  Committee which can rank those students
Must be able to make a final decision because of the confidentiality aspect.
Problems:
Comfortability issue being bumped from above the cutoff point because someone else, who didn’t make the initial cut, had to be moved up.

Committee  top next 20% of senior class  faculty nominations  committee for final review.

Minutes compiled by Senator Herman

Provisional Minutes, 9/22/09

In Attendance: B. Dade; S. Gacka; A. Thompson; R. Maurer; J. Griffin; I.Todaro; H. Moeller; J. Agar; B. Senkfor; S. Mintzer; M. Marabito; C. Hermann; N. Baker; H. Kerman; S. Feldman; C. Murray; C. Harris.

1.PE Requirement Updates

Senator Hermann reports that the Ohio State Requirements for Physical Education is only 3600 minutes of physical education.

After these 3600 minutes, the department’s philosophy of remaining physically active is the only factor.

Senators Marabito & Mintzer report that they checked with Coach Walton, who was under the impression that the state still required PE classes through 10th grade. Coach McClintock is reported to also support the idea of PE electives, provided that they are sufficiently demanding.

Since Hawken’s requirements are higher than the state requirements in other academic areas, it was noted that it makes sense that we would hold students to a higher standard than the state requirement in this area as well.

Proposal: Sen. Kerman & Sen. Baker will write a proposal to eliminate the PE requirement in the sophomore year, and to recommend the diversification of PE electives.


2. Cum Laude Selection Process

Senate Chair Harris opened by noting that in our student culture, there seems to be a resistance to recognizing student achievement even by the students who are recognized. This seems like a larger problem than the Cum Laude selection process.

Sen. Murray pointed out that this also taps into a broader cultural phenomenon where it’s not cool to be really smart – or, it is, as long as you don’t really care. Being singled out for Cum Laude proves that you’re smart and you care.

We discussed the shortcomings of the current selection process, which amounts to 'rubber-stamping' of the numerical list of students with the highest GPAs. We also began to consider other possible selection models, such as the one suggested by Mr. Peters, wherein a small committee pre-screens candidates and presents a short list to the full faculty.

A lively discussion ensued, but sadly, this conversation had to be tabled for our next session.

Faculty Senators for 09-10

Julie Agar
Russ Maurer
Sue Gacka
Steve Weiskopf
Julia Griffin
Anne Thompson
Tracy Stockard
Brendan Dade
Sue Berlin

Cris Harris, Chair