• Robbie McClintock, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 2nd floor, Gottesman Library
    Thursdays 4:00 to 6:00 pm and by appointment
    
• Frank Moretti, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 603 Lewisohn Hall, by appointment
    (Call Teresa Gonzales, 212 854 1962, or email her teresa@columbia.edu)

MSTU5606/MSTU5607 Grading Policies

     Participants in MSTU5606/MSTU5607 seeking letter credit will be assigned separate grades for the fall and spring semester.  The instructors consider grades at an advanced level of graduate education to be an extrinsic part of the academic system, not an intrinsic part of the course.  At this stage, youmay learn with them, but not from them.  By that, we mean that grades are necessities possibly marginally furthering your ability to advance through the system, but they do not give you any real, substantive feedback.  For a self-directing scholar (and at this stage you should think of yourself as a self-directing scholar), substantive feedback comes from your inner accounting about the development of your understanding, about the scope of your awareness, about the state of your agenda of inquiry.  Your understanding should deepen; your awareness expand; and your agenda of inquiry become more subtle and demanding.

     Essentially, we provide grades for the system on the principle of "do no harm." They have three variants — excel (A), succeed in two flavors (A- or B+), and caution with degrees of emphasis (B, B-, or down).  We base these grades on our judgment about the quality of your participation in class discussions and in the course wiki.  To succeed, you need to have made a serious effort to prepare for class discussions by engaging the assigned readings thoughtfully, you need to contribute your questions and observations actively to class discussions, and you need to participate with some regularity and creativity in developing the course wiki.  Harm can be done in grading by failing to recognize genuinely standout achievement or failing to warn when effort, or its result, falls short of reasonable expectations.  Otherwise, the question of grades should be neutral, not intruding on the substantive process of inquiry and interpretation.