We have a prof that definitely bullies other profs in this department and also apparently yells at her students and calls them stupid.
She is very adamant on this rule we got rid of (thankfully because its a dumb rule) and wants it implemented again even though there is no evidence that it helps anyone. Essentially, it involves failing more students because it causes their final exam to be a larger part of the grade (but not really). Essentially, students were only able to get 1 full letter grade higher than their final exam grade before, regardless of how the scores added up. There are many issues with this policy and I have pointed out to faculty before. Well she AGAIN started arguing about it by email wanting it back. I will say when I had to grade with her last fall, she even tried to make the curve even stricter than typical because we had dropped the "1 letter grade rule" and I argued that it wasn't a "compromise" where we drop it and had to make up for it in other ways. Other faculty agreed with me but were afraid to speak up at the time. I know this because the course coordinator who agreed with me kept waffling instead of making a decision because he didn't want to upset her. I ended up cursing at her because she insisted "that it doesn't happen" that someone knows the material but may not do well on the exams. (basically I was like "So people who have a family member die or a disability, fuck them I guess??!" and then stormed out to cool down)
Anyway, this was my email back to her and all the faculty today because I am FED UP. She is NOT trying to have a conversation. She is trying to bully people to get her way with no evidence to back her up. She essentially does not want to teach students who may be struggling. She has said as much. She said that if we pass students who aren't doing well (Not those who fail, but just aren't doing well) in calc 1 then she will have to deal with them in calc 2 and she doesn't want to do that. She doesn't care about teaching and thinks it should be you know it or you don't. She doesn't want a productive convo and it is wild to try to pretend like this will result in one.
So he is my email today where I basically mic dropped and walked away.
I cannot attend, but I will give my thoughts, some of which I have given before. I have been in other departments with a departmental exam. They do not have a 1 grade letter rule and I feel that this rule was actively detrimental to both students and faculty in this department. Those courses in other schools and departments have much more cohesive departmental courses. They all take the same exam midterms at the same exact times. They are all given the same exact notes, which they may modify a bit, but the intention is that the courses are taught as close to the same as possible. That is definitely not true here. No amount of sharing old exams and trying to "guess" what may be important to students will ensure that they will feel prepared for the final. In my experience when grading departmental finals are the students that do well are (1) the students typically in the class that had the coordinating instructor who writes the exams and therefore has seen very similar problems with exactly the same wording before or (2) students that have already taken AP classes in high school and are seeing the material for the second time. It makes very little sense to talk about 50% of the final being the passing grade when the classes cram so much material in them so that students need to have taken the course before to be able to keep up. I have taught calculus at other institutions and the classes re divided into differential and integral calculus a lot of the time. For example, I compared to my course at UTAustin which was Calc 2. The last 2 weeks of my Calc 1 course here goes HALFWAY through my Calc 2 course there. So our calc 1 course is doing about a course and a half of work. It is just too much and makes a lot of sense that during the final they will not do as well. Perhaps the issue lies with the knowledge they are coming in with. A lot of my students in 220 do not understand the concept of a function which makes teaching derivatives and limits very difficult. They start in a class without the background and then they fail 220 and take it again with exactly the same background and fail a second time. Many of them should likely not be starting in 220. I know there is a placement test for students, and I feel that that is not doing it's job. One 2 hour exam does not show competency and understanding of material. That is a fact. There are hundreds of reasons why a student may not do well on an exam but does understand the content. My question is why are we focusing on this "one letter grade rule" being the only thing keeping the students from knowing material or not? I have never seen such a rule in other universities, and I doubt we have found the magical solution to ensure people leaving a class actually know the material. As I have recommended before, as said above, it may be worthwhile to look at other ways to improve upon these courses. But likely this is not the best method to discuss this and regardless, I am leaving to be faculty elsewhere next fall so I am not going to be included in any long-term discussions anyway. Anyway, these are my thoughts coming from a place that truly wants to meet the students where they are and understand their background and try to set them up to be successful. I likely will not be replying to any future emails about this because it seems to me when this topic comes up at least by email, it is never an actual discussion where people want to listen to the reasons others give and instead the goal is to shut down any sort of disagreement. But I felt it was important to share my observations here and elsewhere over the years as someone who cares about teaching. -Andrea
I then promptly got notification on my website for multiple people visiting my website from the area. So i definitely ruffled some feathers.
I am not going to be bullied into harming my students because someone else doesn't like her fucking job.