During a discussion at the Faculty Meeting on April 10, faculty were split by a memorandum submitted by student members of the Committee on Educational Affairs (CEA) that proposed a policy for a pilot program of mandatory Credit/No Credit (C/NC) grading system for first-year students during their first semester. The policy was not raised as a faculty vote, which would be required to implement the proposed curriculum change, and following the contentious conversation, it is likely faculty will not vote on the proposal in its current form.
The proposal forwards mandatory C/NC grading for first-semester students at the College in hopes of easing first-years’ academic and social transitions to the College. Students in their first semester would take classes as they currently do, receiving feedback and final letter grades on assignments, but would receive a credit (“C”) or no credit (“NC”) distinction in lieu of a final letter grade on on their transcript, analogous to the College’s Pass/Fail policy.
For the policy to be implemented, it would have to be approved by the CEA, allowed by the Faculty Steering Committee to come to a vote, and be passed by majority vote at a faculty meeting, according to Professor of Art History and CEA Chair Guy Hedreen.
The proposal was written by CEA student chair Cooper Desmond ’24, as well as Laura Sabino ’24, Hikaru Hayakawa ’24, and Samuel Riley ’23, who based it on similar structures at peer institutions such as MIT, Swarthmore College, and Wellesley College, where first-years take at least one semester of classes C/NC. Twelve student groups endorsed the policy presented at the meeting.
Hedreen introduced the proposal on behalf of the CEA at the meeting and acknowledged that it is a student-authored proposal. Desmond read the proposal to the faculty, before the floor opened for discussion.
“When [Desmond] brought it to us, he said that it was motivated by concern over the wellbeing of students,” Hedreen wrote to the Record. “If the students feel that this proposal would go some way toward addressing mental health at Williams, the least that the CEA should do is give the students the opportunity to present the proposal to the full faculty for a serious discussion.”
Many proponents of the proposal argued that it would improve student mental health. Sabino cited student deaths in the College community as an impetus for the proposal. “After reflecting on our personal experiences over the last four years, we wondered: What can Williams do to reduce student stress and its long-term impacts?” Sabino wrote.
The proposed policy intends to lighten the academic stressors for first-semester students in order to lessen transitional stressors such as “isolation, stress, [and] myopic focus on academics,” which the policy notes can be more demanding for students from marginalized backgrounds, “whether based on their racial identity, class, sexual orientation, or any ‘otherness’ [that] makes Williams particularly onerous.”
Sabino noted that she believes the policy would lower academic stressors and, as a result, broaden student academic engagement among first-years. “Importantly, we found research expressing that when students’ stress was reduced under policies like C/NC, schools also saw that students explored more academically,” she wrote.
“As students with various intersecting identities and that come from different academic backgrounds, we wanted to address the differences in the academic accessibility of Williams and the impact it has on its students,” Sabino continued.
During the meeting, a number of faculty members spoke on the content of the memorandum, many of whom raised concerns about the practical implications of its approval. Professor of Chinese Christopher Nugent, whose hesitations at the meeting were echoed by a number of other faculty members, expressed worry that the policy would restrict professors’ autonomy to govern the grading practices within their courses.
Nugent also wrote to the Record that he thinks that the policy, if implemented, would weaken student attitudes towards their work. “This new proposal also tells students that we don’t trust them to make similar choices,” he wrote. “Many students may well not want to take their first-semester courses credit/non for a variety of reasons. They may feel, legitimately, that they will do quite well in the introductory-level classes that many students take in the first semester. They may feel that they personally benefit from the motivation that grades provide them. This proposal takes away that freedom of choice.”
Nugent also said he believes the proposed measure won’t improve student mental health despite its emphasis on social exploration for first-year students. “The proposal is intended to help solve a problem — the ongoing increase in student anxiety,” he wrote. “This is a very real and troubling thing, but I have yet to see any evidence indicating that academic workload or time spent on academics is the cause of it.”
Rather, Nugent argued that professors have lessened academic workloads over the last decade, so changes intended to relieve academic stress are not a productive step to improve student mental health. “Every faculty member I know has reduced the workload in their courses over the last 5 or 10 years, in many cases significantly… If, while workloads/expectations have gone down and grades have gone up, stress has also dramatically increased, it seems very unlikely to me that time spent on academic learning is a primary cause of that stress,” he wrote.
Professor of Psychology Susan Engel also expressed some reservations about the proposal, but was supportive of the student effort in putting it forward. “I was both impressed and touched that students who have already weathered the first year are putting so much thought and energy into improving the experience for future first-year students,” she wrote in an email to the Record. “I found the proposal and the motivation behind it very compelling. That said, I’m not sure that making the first semester at Williams [C/NC] across the board is the best way to achieve the goals … articulated, and I’m not even sure those are the same goals I am most focused on.”
Professor of Mathematics Colin Adams similarly lent limited support to the proposal “I…think there is a potentially enormous advantage to a small number of students who need that adjustment time,” he wrote in an email to the Record. “But I also think it does some harm to a broader swath of students, especially in math and the sciences where each new course depends on students having learned all the material from the preceding course.” Adams, who completed his undergraduate studies at MIT and experienced their C/NC policy during his first year there, also noted that as an “18-year old who had not yet fallen in love with academics” he “stopped working and blew off the end of the semester including the finals,” an experience he sees as a potential pitfall of the policy’s implementation at the College.
Although faculty debated the policy at the meeting, the CEA “deliberately avoided” a faculty vote in order to field faculty opinions on the policy, according to the memorandum included in the faculty meeting agenda — and, following faculty debate, it is unlikely that the current proposal will be submitted to the faculty forum for a vote. “The CEA is unlikely to bring the proposal in its current form back to the faculty for a vote,” Hedreen wrote. “Enough concerns were voiced by faculty against the mandatory piece of the proposal … that the faculty as a whole, it seems to me, would be unlikely to approve this proposal as it stands.”
Adams echoed Hedreen’s sentiments, seeing it as unlikely that the proposal would pass any time soon. “It was clear from the faculty meeting that this needs a lot of thought and obtaining faculty support for a revised proposal will take a substantial amount of work,” Adams wrote. A big concern that came up was the rights of faculty to grade how they think serves the students best and the rights of students to decide which courses they ultimately take Pass/Fail. This is a very tricky piece,” he wrote.
However, even in the event of a restructure, it is likely that the proposal would meet staunch opposition and much debate. “If the proposal included a comprehensive and detailed set of empirically verifiable criteria for success on which a majority of faculty were able to agree, I would be very slightly more open to it, but only slightly,” Nugent said. “I still disagree with its basic premises.”
Correction: The print version of this article cut off a significant portion of the conclusion at no fault of the author. The piece was updated online to reflect this change on April 17 at 10:08 a.m.
