Brown and White Vol. 130 no. 22

              The Brown and White Vol. 130 No. 22
Tuesday, May 3, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Grade curves decided by professors, not registrar
By CATHERINE MANTHORP
B&W Staff
Grade curving, which is the prac-tice
of scoring exams based the rel-ative
exam scores of students in the
class, is used by professors at Lehigh.
While a bell curve is the tradition-al
method of grade curving, some
professors add points to students’
grades in alternative forms.
Cameron Wesson, the associate
dean of the College of Arts and
Sciences, said Lehigh Registrar Emil
Gnasso does not curve any scores
received in any courses. Grade curves
also are not governed by the college
or university. He said if professors
chooses to curve, they must do so in
a fair manner.
Wesson said there is no standard
practice or policy regarding curving
within the college. He said curving
is applied on a professor-by-professor
basis, so it is a personal decision.
Some professors choose to curve and
some do not.
“The grades belong to the faculty
member who’s teaching the course,”
Wesson said.
He said each of Lehigh’s depart-
Proposed building to add student housing
ments could have their own policy on
curving if they wanted. Gnasso wrote
in an email that some departments
have policies on curving and others
do not.
For the departments that lack
their own policies on curving, Wesson
said individual professors within the
department can each have their own
policy on whether they curve and
how they curve.
He said there is no
mandate from anyone
that curves are good
or bad, nor that curves
should or should not
be applied.
Wei-Min Huang,
the chair of the math-ematics
department,
and David Vicic, the
chair of the chemistry
department, wrote in
emails that neither
department within the College of
Arts and Sciences has a specific pol-icy
on curving. Vicic said individual
professors are free to curve as they
see necessary as long as the curves
are appropriate and fair.
David Johnson, the associate chair
of the mathematics department,
wrote in an email that when he
started teaching at Lehigh in 1984,
students did not register for partic-ular
sections of a course. Instead,
he said the registrar assigned stu-dents
to sections based on the list
of courses they provided. He said
this made consistency and similarity
even more important across sections
within a course. Johnson added that
4 o’clock exams
guarantee uni-formity
because
students take the
same exam at the
same time.
Johnson said
grading is also
uniform, with
the entire staff
of a given course
dividing up each
exam and assign-ing
specific graders to specific prob-lems,
which the assigned graders
grade on every student’s test. He
said homework and quiz grading are
more individualized, but the depart-ment
still works to ensure there is
uniformity in the averages of those
assignments.
Johnson said the department
assigns each course to a professor
who is considered the course coordi-nator.
He said the coordinator’s job
is to agree on the syllabus, schedule,
assignments and exams with other
faculty members within the course.
He said some things, such as teach-ing
styles and timing, vary between
professors and sections, but the rules
and expectations for all students tak-ing
the course are the same.
Johnson said the department usu-ally
designs exams so there is no
need for a curve.
“The reason for that is primarily
so that students really know where
they stand in the course,” he wrote
in an email.
Johnson said that does not always
mean average scores are between 75
and 80. He said each exam is com-pared
to what was given the previous
semester and a certain performance
standard has to be met for each. He
said the courses that do curve usu-ally
do so at the end of the course
rather than on individual exams.
By RAPHAEL KHALLOUQI
B&W Staff
Dennis Benner, ’76, a real estate
developer in the Bethlehem area,
has proposed the construction of new
apartments for Lehigh students in
the city’s south side. Benner is seek-ing
city approval to build a 13-story
building at the intersection of West
Fourth and Vine streets, across from
popular student destinations such
as Blue Sky Café, Sotto Santi and
the Goose.
Although the apartments and
their construction are not affiliated
with Lehigh, such joint ventures
are commonplace at several schools
across the country. The target demo-graphic
is set to be exclusively stu-dents.
Benner owns the buildings on the
block and plans to demolish them to
make room for the new apartment
building, which will have the capaci-ty
to house up to 29 Lehigh students
per floor and 348 total.
The exterior façade of the First
United Church of Christ, however,
will be preserved and will serve as
an entryway to the apartments and
include an outdoor common area.
The remainder of the bottom floor of
the apartments is planned to house
three retail spaces, a restaurant and
a nightclub.
There will be two four-bedroom
units, two three-bedroom units,
seven two-bedroom units and one
single-bedroom unit offered on
each of the building’s 12 residential
floors. Each bedroom will have its
own bathroom.
The proposal has undergone archi-tectural
review and is being pre-pared
for submission to Bethlehem’s
Bureau of Planning and Zoning.
Because this process can be lengthy,
there is, as of yet, no definite planned
start date for construction.
Benner, along with his two sons,
Courtesy of Dennis Benner
A new building on the South Side would provide housing for Lehigh students. Dennis Benner, ’76,
proposed the building and is waiting for approval from Bethlehem’s Bureau of Planning and Zoning.
See HOUSING Page 3
Liz Cornell/B&W Staff
See CURVE Page 4
Students will assess the
economic viability of
a proposed 348-student
apartment building on
Bethlehem’s south side