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0 pointsnilkn10y ago0 comments

I found this snippet from an open letter he wrote to the Mathematics Department in the past:

> you instructed me to show a draft of my final to another very eminent member of faculty and former winner of the distinguished teaching award. His comment on a draft that contained 8 questions was that it was already too long and too hard, and should be no longer. I had originally been planning on asking 15 or so questions, including some difficult ones, but I was not allowed to do so. In the end we settled on 12 questions. The result of this intervention by you and other faculty was that the median score was over 90%, and in order to keep to departmental grade distributions I had to set the A- cutoff at 93%

The implication here seems to be that his final exam was notably harder than is typical and yet he was forced to throttle the cutoff for an A- to enforce regulated grade distributions (which in and of itself is a horrendous policy).

The letter is here:

http://alexandercoward.com/OpenLetter.pdf

I think it's hard to ignore this in combination with the highest teaching scores anyone in the department has received in apparently 18 years.

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crimsonalucard10y ago

Too many universities fail to teach and only use unreasonably challenging tests to filter students.

You know you have an exemplary teacher when his students start owning these crazy tests. This is what every educational institution should strive for. Teaching is an art, and this man represents the epitome of the art.

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