While Dartmouth's several hundred member faculty has final say over students' grades, few faculty members subscribe to a single grading philosophy. Instead, they describe evaluation policies that are as idiosyncratic as professors are independent.
Several professors said they have no philosophy of grading beyond never straying from the College's standard outlined in the Organizations, Regulations and Courses guide. Other professors refused to discuss the issue, while still others indicated they have their own, individualized measure of achievement.
"I start with the premise that an A is for excellent work, not for average work," said Deb Nichols, who teaches in the anthropology department.
"There's a certain amount of material that's expected a student should have mastered by the end of the course," Robert Caldwell, who teaches in the physics department, said.
He added that there is little subjectivity allowed when determining grades in many science and math courses. For many questions, he explained, there is only one answer.
"It makes it very easy to assign a grade based on how someone has performed...because it's clear how much of the material they've understood."
For liberal arts classes, grading takes on added texture. Professors may take into account students' potential, their growth and their effort.
"I teach a performance class, so rather than grading on skill level/talent, which wouldn't be fair, I really look to see how much they've grown and how hard they worked, and grade them against themselves as opposed to against each other," Mara Sabinson, who teaches acting in the theater department, said.
English professor Ivy Schweitzer has a slightly different take. "Sometimes grading is a carrot and sometimes grading is a stick," she said. "The grade for papers is really just a message that you send."
Schweitzer said she tries to know her students and what they are capable of achieving. Thus the same grade for two different students can send two unique messages.
For a student who must work extra hard just for a B, the grade "indicates that I recognize your effort, your creativity, the risk you took, the effort you put into it. That same B can function as a stick for a student who expects to get an A," Schweitzer explained.
"Sometimes you have a good student that writes a competent paper and you know that student can do better. The grade becomes not a punishment but it's a way of saying, 'I know you can do better.'"
History professor Bruce Nelson said he doesn't consider a student's potential, but rather grades "against a standard of excellence."
"I don't know what a person's potential is. How could I measure that?" he said.
"You do take into account improvement, but you grade people against a standard based upon what your own expectations are for students. And if students don't meet those expectations then you grade accordingly."
Wohlforth says he builds certain procedures into his classes to not only make his grading as fair as possible, but to make the process of grading clear to his students.
Wohlforth gives a graded exercise early in the course so students can get a sense of how he grades. Throughout the term he makes a point to explain how he arrives at a certain grade. "I do my best to try and tell them exactly how I grade so they can see the procedure," he said.
Wohlforth said the early assignments also allow him to see how the student progresses.
"If it looks like they just took some time to figure out what the standards are in the course, and once they figured it out they did better, you're inclined to resolve any uncertainty about the grade in an upward direction," he said.
Though there are few universal trends among professors, some observers say that the upward creep of median grades has meant that some professors feel obligated to boost student transcripts.
"There's a certain amount of pressure placed on professors by students to receive high grades," Dr. Carl Thum, Director of the Academic Skills Center said.
"Professors know that there are implications. Maybe they're sympathetic in their own way...that's not to say that they're giving high grades away, but there is a certain amount of pressure that the faculty is responding to," Thum added.
