May 12, 2023
Summary
It’s Friday, it’s sunlit, it’s grading time. Thank you for all the time and attention I know you are putting into student assessments right now. It’s a heavy lift, especially for senior grades from exams that take place during the last few days of the exam period. I’m really grateful for your dedication to our students and their academic and social wellbeing.
Full Description
Dear all,
It’s Friday, it’s sunlit, it’s grading time. Thank you for all the time and attention I know you are putting into student assessments right now. It’s a heavy lift, especially for senior grades from exams that take place during the last few days of the exam period. I’m really grateful for your dedication to our students and their academic and social wellbeing. A few announcements:
Grading deadlines Final grades for undergraduates are due on Friday, May 18 at 9 am for graduating seniors; and on Wednesday, May 23 also at 9 am for continuing students. Please observe these deadlines. Your colleagues in the Dean of Students Office and on the Committee for Academic Status have to move quickly on graduation status and on continuance, and any delay in the receipt of grades severely impacts their work. Graduate student grades are due on May 16 by 12 pm for graduating students and on May 23 by 9 am for continuing students.
Graduation ceremonies Please plan to attend both the W&M-wide Commencement ceremony at 7 pm in Zable Stadium (Patton Oswalt is our Commencement speaker) and your departmental/program ceremonies. It is really important to both our students and their families to see that their faculty, who have been so dedicated to them throughout their time at W&M, want to be there to celebrate with them as they graduate and say their goodbyes. Faculty are also welcome to attend the cultural/affinity group commencement ceremonies organized by the Center for Student Diversity. The full schedule of events is available on the commencement webpage.
Teaching Faculty Committee (TFC) I am very grateful to David Armstrong (PHYS), Elizabeth Barnes (ENGL), Tuska Benes (HIST), Victoria Castillo (GSWS), Jay Watkins (HIST), and Jordan Walk (CHEM) for agreeing to serve on the TFC. Their first job in the fall will be to establish A&S wide criteria for evaluation of Teaching Faculty (renewal, promotion, performance, merit). Your academic unit may choose simply to default to those standards (which will need to be approved by the Personnel Policies Committee), or you may choose to develop your own unit-specific policies (which will also need approval). Some preliminary criteria are listed in the final document. Over the summer we will work to post these policies and related materials on the A&S website.
Now, cross the line if you dare. If you don’t, have a great week ahead!
During this week of exam stress, I am wondering how it is manifesting itself for you, the people giving and grading the exams, rather than for the students, whose stress is most often the focus of concern. This is a multiple choice quiz with no answers required.
During exam period, I:
Have repeated nightmares in which I leave my completed student blue books in a bag in a phone booth from which they are immediately stolen [yup, done this]
Have repeated nightmares in which I have to take an exam in a language with an alphabet that I don’t recognize [yup, this too]
Forget to write an exam [thankfully, no]
Feverishly write an exam one hour before it’s due to start [no comment on this one]
Cannot read my own handwriting, in which I wrote an exam on the back of an envelope [thankfully no]
Eat a great deal of chocolate and Hula Hoops, a delectable British treat [yup, this too]
And now for some exam answers that might amuse you:
Q: What is the process of separating chalk from sand?
A: It is a process called flirtation.
Q: If you had 3 apples and 4 oranges in one hand and 3 oranges and 4 apples in the other hand, what would you have?
A: Very large hands.
Enough of that! Have a great weekend,
Suzanne
Suzanne Raitt
Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences
Chancellor Professor of English
Pronouns: she/her/hers
