GRADUATION: The Year-end Awards & Grading
[Most of the information below is for M.S. students only. M.A. students are eligible for a separate award, the Arthur Harris Prize for best Master’s Thesis.]
We received the following question from a student:
Good question. Here’s the answer, from the Grades section of Academic Dean’s letter about the Fall 2005 curriculum.Today in RW1 we had a guest speaker whose bio mentioned that she received the “Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, won for graduating first in her class…”
Since we don’t receive grades, I’m wondering how this designation of “first in class” is decided.
The Journalism School has a Pass-Fail system of formal grading. It aims at encouraging students to perform as well as they can, without competing with classmates. In most courses (some electives excepted), students receive written evaluations of their work from the instructors. Copies of these evaluations are kept in the DOS Office.In RWI, written evaluations are issued at midterm and at the end of the semester. These preliminary evaluations indicate students’ early progress and, if necessary, serve as a warning if any students are in danger of failing. Students who are not doing passing work are placed on probation. If a student’s work is passing at midterm but deteriorates after the midterm evaluation, the instructor will give written notice of possible failure and inform the faculty.
RWI is the most important fall course. The decision to pass or fail a student in that course is determined solely by the instructor(s.) No grades of incomplete are allowed in RWI. Other required courses-such as Journalism, the Law and Society-are important, too. Inattention can result in failure. Students also should note that the “Skills” mini-courses are meant to be taken very seriously. The faculty reserves the right to dismiss a student who fails the same course twice or two courses, regardless of the credit points of the courses.
Deadlines for the Master’s Project drafts are strictly enforced. The Faculty retains the right to fail or place on probation a student who fails to meet deadlines for the Master’s Project.
No student is permitted to graduate while still on probation.
At graduation, the honors list is announced, recognizing approximately 15 percent of the students for superior performance in multiple courses; the faculty determines the honors list by comparing and discussing each student’s complete record. The faculty also awards more than a dozen special prizes at graduation, including five Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships for overall performance during the academic year. These decisions are based in part on an informal system of grading, which permits each instructor to designate one or two students as having completed a course “with honors.” Students are informed of the honors designation.
That designation, in the individual classes, is “honors in class,” and you will see it - if you get it - in the written evaluations you receive. If you receive two or more “honors in class” in our six-credit courses (RW1, Master’s Project, seminar, workshop) AND one or more in three-credit elective, you are likely to “graduate with honors.”
Except for a few prizes for which students can submit stories to be judged, the rest of the prizes are decided by faculty, without input from the students.
We hold briefing sessions close to Graduation to explain the procedures.
Part-time students are eligible for the awards and are tracked during their entire academic career here (though the prizes are typically given out the year they graduate).
Please direct all questions to Deans Sreenivasan and Huff.
