Last week, Jarrod Wolf and I met with Dean Susan Art and several Masters of the Collegiate Divisions to discuss some issues of academic fairness within the College.  Specifically, we brought to their attention the fact that several professors within certain departments administer exams during one quarter and then recycle, use the same exam again, the next quarter.  Since certain groups of students take advantage of this and go looking for past exams to memorize so that they can ace their current exams, the Masters all agreed to remedy this situation by emailing their faculty members with suggestions to deter this behavior: 1) change the exams year to year, 2) post previous exams on Chalk so ALL students can study off them, or 3) change the exams year to year and post a list of study questions for all students to look at.

 The most important thing that the Masters told me to tell students is this:
If you feel like your receiving an unfair advantage in the classrooom because you’ve studied for weeks for a midterm and some kid is memorizing a past exam, talk to the specific faculty member.  They will listen and they do care that this type of behavior goes on in their classroom.  More importantly, write about it in the course evaluations that we fill out at the middle and end of every quarter.  These evaluations are read over by the faculty, and your comments will be brought to the attention of faculty members and carefully considered.

Talking to these Masters helped remedy the situation of “recycled exams.”  Jarrod and I will check back with them on the progress of this project.

Your 2010 SG Rep,
Jay Kim