Passed: May 27, 2022
Vote results and comments
Posted: December 4, 2021
Sponsors: College and school deans; college and school academic associate deans who comprise the Associate Deans Council; the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Lisa Nishii; the Provost, Michael Kotlikoff; and the Provost Council.
Senate Discussions: April 20 and May 18, 2022
Honors and Distinctions Proposal
Background:
This resolution is aimed at creating consistency across the undergraduate colleges and schools in the award of academic honors and distinctions and balancing recognition of high achieving students against amelioration of an unhealthy level of competition at Cornell.
For many years, Cornell undergraduate students have complained that differences in academic policies across the undergraduate colleges and schools create confusion. Moreover, when students believe that divergent academic policies result in inferior treatment for them relative to other students in the same major but in a different college or school, the “disadvantaged” students may perceive their treatment as unjust. This is particularly true for students enrolled in cross-college majors. (Presently, there are at least ten cross-college majors and for May 2018 graduates, the last year data were collected, 25% of graduates earned a cross-college major.) In response to these student concerns, the Associate Deans Council examined academic honors and distinctions for undergraduate students and unexpectedly found wide variations across the university. The group concluded, and the other sponsors agree, that these differences did not advance college- and school-specific missions or goals, and that they could produce the negative effects of which students complained – confusion and perceived or actual inequities.
The sponsors also believe that having many types of awards that are based solely on grades perpetuates an obsession with grades and makes students feel that they are in competition with each other. Students’ obsession with grades can impact their choice of courses and make them less likely to take risks in their course selections. The sponsors advocate for a more measured approach that affords recognition for academic achievement but does not promote an undue and constant emphasis on grades, while also addressing concerns about inequities across colleges and schools. The three recommendations contained in this proposal, in their totality, are aimed at achieving such a balance. (For a discussion about the current practices at Cornell, including an analysis of data revealing great disparities cross Cornell’s colleges and schools in the award of honors and distinctions, and for comparisons to practices at the other Ivy league Institutions, see the sponsors’ background document: Proposal Regarding the Award of Honors and Distinctions to Cornell’s Undergraduate Students.)
Resolution
Whereas there is a huge range across Cornell’s colleges and schools in the conferral of Latin honors; at one end of the range, no students in a college or school can receive Latin honors, and at the other end, during the period of spring 2017 through fall 2019, 74% of students received Latin honors; this enormous disparity is both unintended and inequitable;
Whereas the divergent approaches to the award of Latin honors should be replaced with a single approach so that all colleges and schools would confer Latin honors on the bases of the same percentiles;
Whereas eliminating dean’s list is an important step towards accomplishing the goals of this proposal; because dean’s list is awarded repeatedly, it continuously promotes the centrality of high grades, thereby increasing student academic stress and encouraging students to have a grade-centric approach to their education;
Whereas in addition to Latin honors and dean’s list, across Cornell’s undergraduate colleges and schools, there are eight other types of honors and distinctions awarded with various titles; a few are based solely upon GPA, but most are based upon GPA as well as performance in an academic activity such as research or an honors thesis;
Be it resolved that the current divergent approaches to the award of Latin honors be replaced with a single approach so that all colleges and schools confer Latin honors based on percentiles in the colleges and schools, as follows: Summa cum laude – top 5%, Magna cum laude – next 10%, and Cum laude – next 15%[1];
Be it further resolved that dean’s list be eliminated; and
Be it finally resolved that non-Latin academic honors and distinctions based solely upon GPA be eliminated; colleges and schools could continue to award distinctions at the college- or school-level or by departments at the major-level based upon academic activities they choose or a combination of GPA and academic activities; but the nomenclature used across colleges and schools be aligned through a single naming convention, “Distinction in X,” with “X” identified at the local level.
[1] For undergraduate students presently enrolled at Cornell, the colleges and schools that currently confer Latin degree honors would use either their present eligibility criteria or the eligibility criteria set forth in this proposal, whichever are more advantageous for the students.
Vote results: 54 Yes, 18 No, 6 Abstain and 52 Did not vote
While appreciating the concerns, I worry about having percentages even as maxima: Imagine a situation where half or more of graduating majors have qualifying grades AND complete suitable honors theses – should they not all receive honors? If honors are being awarded solely based on GPA without a thesis or major research project then such percentages might make sense, but for programs requiring a thesis, where the thesis is a significant component in determining honors, percentage guidelines/mandates seem rather unhelpful.
It also doesn’t seem to be specified what the measure is that produces those top 5% / 10% / 25% categories – overall GPA? GPA in major? some other criteria? Even if taken as some sort of overall ranking and amounting to defining the number of students per program at the different levels, that doesn’t answer my initial question – and may be particularly inapt for smaller units with fewer graduating seniors. To expand on that initial question, suppose a unit graduating 20 seniors has 3 whom the faculty judges worthy of summa-level honors – under the proposal only 1 could receive that.
Personally I don’t like the idea of honors being awarded on the basis of GPAs alone, so I’m happy with the part of this that removes that path to honors. But at some level it seems to me that these questions become a matter of department/program/discipline expectations and norms, and while guidelines may be helpful, hard-and-fast one-size-fits-all rules may cause more problems than they solve.
It’s a purely anecdotal sample, but I talked today with two students doing honors in A&S, requiring theses, and they too felt that the process of research and writing was both a better criterion for honors and are more meaningful and rewarding than GPAs. As one noted, on the basis of GPA she’d be guaranteed summa-level honors – but she’s happy with the process involving her thesis because it’s so much more significant.
I strongly support Amendment 2. A survey of our alumni showed that the honors thesis is by far the most valuable research experience that they had, whether or not they went on to graduate study. Too few students are currently doing honors theses, instead pursuing double and triple majors. The unamended proposal would only exacerbate this, discouraging more students from this rewarding experience.
I strongly support Amendment #2, if this is to pass.
Students already know what their GPAs are, and awarding Honors strictly based on GPA seems both redundant and perverse. Numerical measures are not the only valid and meaningful measures of a quality education. Departments offering honors research experiences, and the students doing such incredible work therein, should not be stripped of that distinction because some other programs confer honors willy nilly to 74% of their students.
One major change the proposal makes is to shift all GPA-based honors from fixed criteria (which is currently the most common practice) to percentile criteria. Using a class-rank criteria like this places students explicitly in competition with one another, which I feel is completely the wrong way to frame student performance at Cornell. Percentile criteria do provide an automatic way to balance the fraction of students who are awarded honors across colleges, but it’s notable that the current grade-based criteria cited in the proposal are actually quite consistent across colleges. I don’t see a need to shift to a system where one student can achieve honors only by denying it to another student, which in my view sends the wrong message.
When I arrived at Cornell in 2001, the department Honors program was in clear need of an overhaul, as even my senior colleagues at the time admitted. There was a wide variation in advising, a lack of clarity in expectations, an enormous gulf in quality, and an inconsistency in student experiences. In the subsequent two decades we have worked as a department to slowly and meticulously overhaul that system. We have put in to place a structure that ensures students can succeed, in which they have clarity about expectations, in which they know they will get the advising—from both their chairs and from the instructor of our honors sequence—that all of us need in order to research and write an original research paper. We put enormous energy and passion in to this program and it is a gem. This is not something you can standardize across disciplines. There is no one-size-fits-all. Honors in History is not something that should solely be determined by percentiles and grades. Those issues certainly figure in to our committee deliberations in the assignation of Latin Honors but they are not determinate in and of themselves. The thesis itself is the capstone work. Our students go on to the top graduate schools in History and to superb non-academic jobs in part on the basis of the abilities to research and write that they acquire in the process of doing an honors thesis. I support the Amendment proposed by the Government department—specifically Amendment #2–that states: “2) Amendment Two: That individual departments and programs could impose requirements for Latin honors, in addition to minimum GPA’s. For example, a department or program that imposed the writing of a thesis as a condition for receiving Latin honors would be permitted to do so.”
Proposed Amendments to the Proposal Regarding the Award of Honors
and Distinctions to Cornell’s Undergraduate Students
Following an on-line discussion in the Department of Government, a majority of our colleagues who participated in that discussion indicated that they would support several amendments to the Proposal Regarding the Award of Honors and Distinctions to Cornell’s Undergraduate Students. While we appreciate the hard work and support the general intent of the proposal, we believe that the “one-size-fits-all” solution would, in fact, harm our own and similar honors programs. Our amendments are intended to eliminate that harm. Both amendments are directed at the first of the three recommendations which now reads:
“Replace the diverse approaches to the award of Latin honors with a single approach so that all colleges and schools would confer Latin honors on the bases of percentiles in the colleges and schools, as follows: Summa cum laude – top 5%, Magna cum laude –next 10%, and Cum laude—next 15%.”
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Here are the two amendments we propose:
1) Amendment One: That the percentages presented in first recommendation be considered “upper limits” on the award of Latin honors. A college or school could choose to award fewer (but not more) awards than these limits would set. In addition, the percentages would apply to individual departments and their programs instead to the colleges and schools.
2) Amendment Two: That individual departments and programs could impose requirements for Latin honors, in addition to minimum GPA’s. For example, a department or program that imposed the writing of a thesis as a condition for receiving Latin honors would be permitted to do so.
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Rationale for Amendment One: Departments and programs within a college or school often have very different grading standards and, thus, average GPA’s within their majors. This variation could easily adversely affect the maintenance of high academic standards within a college or school. For example, imagine a college with two departments, in one the average GPA is 3.75 and in the other it is 3.25. Given the limits on the various categories of Latin honors, the first department might monopolize all the honors categories even though the second department might be imposing much more rigorous standards of academic performance.
Rationale for Amendment Two: Many departments and schools have long-standing requirements for awarding Latin honors that reflect a belief that high student achievement requires more than just compiling an excellent grade point average. The writing of an honors thesis, for example, demonstrates intellectual discipline, creative ability, and comprehensive mastery of a subject. The original proposal has the, perhaps unintended, effect of lowering academic standards in those departments and programs that have imposed such requirements.
In sum, we believe that the first recommendation, as presently conceived, would both further encourage a “race to the bottom” by encouraging departments and programs to compete with one another for shares of Latin honors and, in addition, lower present standards for academic performance for many departments and programs.
Many thanks for considering these amendments to first recommendation.
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If these amendments were adopted, the first recommendation would then read:
“Replace the diverse approaches to the award of Latin honors with a single approach so that all colleges and schools would confer Latin honors on the bases of percentiles in the colleges and schools, as follows: Summa cum laude – top 5%, Magna cum laude –next 10%, and Cum laude—next 15%. These percentages would be considered “upper limits” on the award of Latin honors. A college or school could choose to award fewer (but not more) awards than these limits would set. In addition, the percentages would apply to individual departments and their programs instead to the colleges and schools.
Provided, that individual departments and programs could impose requirements for Latin honors, in addition to minimum GPA’s. For example, a department or program that imposed the writing of a thesis as a condition for receiving Latin honors would be permitted to do so.
Senators for the Department of Government:
Richard Bensel (rfb2)
Alexandra Blackman