New Grading System for Orgo
Professors in the Chemistry Department at St. Lawrence University have implemented a new grading system for organic chemistry that could possibly change its reputation as a weed-out course. Organic chemistry is a required course for undergraduates who wish to enter healthcare fields such as medicine and dentistry.
Samuel Tartakoff, an associate professor and co-chair of the chemistry department who has taught organic chemistry, stated that students and professors across the country describe organic chemistry as a weed-out class for undergraduate students interested in those professions. “At big universities and small universities, you will find students and some faculty who refer to it that way,” he said. However, in the fall 2023 semester, Tartakoff established a system known as specifications or specs grading.
With this system, students did not receive grades for their quizzes and were instead given a pass or a fail. If they failed a quiz, they would have the opportunity to retake it using one of their retake tokens, which they earned by completing homework assignments. The student’s final grades were determined based on the number of quizzes they passed and their performance on the final exam.
Tartakoff noted that for the Fall 2023 semester, the average final grade was slightly higher than previous years, the average final exam grade was about the same as previous years, and the number of students who withdrew from the course or received a grade below a 2.0 decreased. “So far, the results look very promising,” Tartakoff said. However, Tartakoff explained that he is hesitant to make definitive conclusions based on one year of data.
The current organic chemistry professor, Partick Lutz, implemented the specifications grading system this year as well. One of the students who is taking the course stated that he and many of his classmates prefer this system over a traditional grading system. “The general consensus is that specs grading is better,” he said. He stated that by allowing students to retake their quizzes, this system encourages them to learn the concepts that they struggle with.
Additionally, at SLU, organic chemistry is a prerequisite for biochemistry, another required course for many health professional schools. Therefore, pre-health students who wish to take biochemistry must first master the fundamental concepts taught in organic chemistry. “There are a number of important concepts from organic chemistry that are then used in biochemistry,” said Nadia Marano, an associate professor who teaches general chemistry and biochemistry at SLU.
Although the concepts from organic chemistry may not be used directly in healthcare professions, the way that organic chemistry forces students to think may be applicable to healthcare careers. “Medicine is a lot of pulling things you’ve memorized and trying to apply it to a patient,” said Jane Kring, a professor in the Biology Department and a pre-health advisor at SLU. She completed medical school, and she believes that this type of thinking is similar to the type of thinking that students utilize often in the organic chemistry discipline.