She cracked open her biology book and flipped to chapter six: DNA, RNA and protein synthesis. Her test wasn’t until next Friday, but she began her normal, rigorous study routine that she had mapped out more than five years ago during high school. Highlighting the text and jotting down notes, she would later be handed back the exam with a red “A” scrawled across the top—gratification would wash over her, and her aspirations to fully understand the material and submit her best work would be reinforced.

Even though she feels her grades contribute a lot to her college and future career, sophomore Jenny Cupero views herself as one of the few remaining students who ranks their grades significantly high on their priority lists.

“If I didn’t study and put the work in, which is what ultimately yields the good grades, I wouldn’t be prepared to go out into the world and be successful,” she said. “Grades kind of indicate how much you learned, but for me if you do well in school, you’ll do well in your career.”

Though many of her professors mention in class the lack of importance grades play when applying for jobs, Cupero, a corporate communications major and sociology minor who had a 4.6 GPA in high school and currently has a 3.98 GPA, said her high school-trained reflex to judge her progress by a number or letter is too overwhelming for her to disregard.

Professor of communications David Copeland considers himself one of those teachers who stresses the importance of grades as just one element of the learning process. He places an emphasis on the realization that one can’t always judge how much was learned through a letter grade.

Cupero agrees that GPA doesn’t represent her wholly, and views her tactics as normal, but more in-depth, compared to her peers.

“My GPA doesn’t make me a smart person, it means I work really, really hard,” she said.

Copeland has seen similar students, from prospective to capstone, that are entrenched in getting a good grade. He has learned through his own experience that the best work is usually completed by students who synthesize the information and don’t spit it back verbatim.

But he highlights one aspect of Elon’s grading system that many students and faculty members tend to forget.

“Today, a ‘B’ is ultimately the bottom of what students want to make,” he said. “But a ‘C’ means you’re doing satisfactory work, ‘B’ is above average and ‘A’ is excellent. [Students] don’t worry so much about the knowledge and feeling comfortable with what they learned than not worrying about the grades.”

Why are we this way?

Associate Professor of Art History Kirstin Ringelberg said she sees college students as having a better opportunity to excel than they did in high school, since there is not normally a clear-cut right or wrong answer.

Though she credits the national movement for a college education a necessity in today’s job market, she said the dominant social issue of extrinsic motivation over intrinsic motivation for students to have high GPAs drives them to look at numbers, and not at learning.

“The problem is if you’re rewarding that kind of thinking, a student may get a job and fail at it,” she said. “If they don’t have that experience that way and they don’t realize that, then you fail them as a teacher.”

But as long as there are grades, she knows there are still students determined to attain that 4.0.

This causes some students, like Cupero, to have very high standards for themselves.

Cupero prepares for all class assignments in advance to make sure the work she turns in is up to her quality norm, even though she plans to skip graduate school following graduation and head directly towards the public relations field. GPA isn’t a significant factor in securing a job.

But she still finds herself hung up on grades since the numerals were the way her work was gauged throughout high school and she finds it very hard to disconnect from this emphasis in college.

This, she claims, and the internal pressure she places on herself, are the sources of her grade-craze.

“It shapes you to be extremely aware of how your success is very much connected to that number,” she said. “The number means how smart you are, how you’re doing. It’s everything.”

But some of her peers, like senior Mike Kelly, don’t have a huge fixation with perfecting letters in the classroom.

Perfectly content with his 3.3 GPA, this business major and leadership minor said he places a bigger emphasis on leaving the class with something he didn’t have when he walked in than on receiving an “A.”

“I think [grades] are important, but I value my experiences over my grades,” he said. “It’s more about the hands you shake than the grades you make when it comes to making it in the real world.”

It is these sorts of alternative lessons that Ringelberg stresses.

Even though she said she is perceived as demanding, she said she’d rather be unpopular now and have her students thank her in 10 years than be popular now and have them go through life wrongly thinking they’re great and failing.

She describes it as her responsibility as a teacher.

Copeland agreed, saying it is important for students to remember that even though they work hard on an assignment in an attempt for the grade, they may not be learning the value.

“You can work really hard and not work focused, and students sometimes miss that. They equate hard work with deserving good grades,” Copeland said.

He also said it is very rare for someone to be asked at a job interview what their GPA was, especially in industries similar to communications.

“Grades in a way will show it, since hard work is probably going to show up in your grades,” he said. “But they want to know your skills and want to see what you can do.”

The responsibility of teaching overachievers

While the frustrations of teaching in a grade-obsessed environment often nerve Ringelberg, she said she doesn’t blame her students for their craze. Concentrating on details and box-checking, students are goal-oriented rather than learning-oriented.

“We should primarily be intrinsically motivated,” she said. “And we’re going to create a problematic society if everybody has a college degree but not everybody wants it.”

She said it would be revolutionary to focus on the information only and eliminate numbers, especially since schools contribute to this goal-setting focus rather than on what an education means.

Copeland has a similar philosophy for releasing students into the work world with a whole body of knowledge and the ability to think on their feet.

While some students have voiced that the creative areas shouldn’t be more subjectively graded, Ringelberg believes it’s a false conception; there are standards in those fields, she said.

She strives to give as honest of a response as she can through feedback and, ultimately, grades.

“When you get an ‘A’ from me, that’s something to be proud of,” she said. “I give them to the work that I really think is the best work; I’m rewarding students that deserved that reward.”

Last year, Ringelberg lobbied to the grading subcommittee at the academic summit to consider an alternative to Elon’s current grading system, but was disappointed when it was turned down, especially since she views Elon as a school that prides itself on innovative pedagogy.

“I’d rather not use letter grades and just do feedback about the students’ strengths and weaknesses,” Ringelberg said. “It would really be a beneficial way to move the mindset that all that matters is your grade to all that matters is you’re learning.”

Since her class is only required for art majors, some students choose to be there, which Ringelberg enjoys because it means more students should be receptive to learning how to make their work better from her.

She still views the importance of providing a challenging class.

“If everybody’s getting an ‘A,’ it means nothing,” she said.

Special Features Editor: Andie Diemer - 10/10/07