Katie Garrigan, UGBC vice president, said at the Senate meeting Tuesday night that there are discrepancies in how professors apply the Carroll School of Management (CSOM) grading guidelines.
“Most of the issues are that professors think they have to follow that curve or curve people down to be within that distribution,” said Garrigan, MCAS ’25. “Teachers should not be curving any students down or curve any students’ grade in terms of that.”
The UGBC Senate discussed the CSOM grading guidelines and summarized a recent meeting with Ethan Sullivan, senior associate dean for undergraduate programs in CSOM.
According to Garrigan and Aidan Krush, student senator and MCAS ’27, Sullivan said professors can and should be flexible with grading, provided they explain how they distribute grades.
“They’re trying to address it between full-time faculty and part-time faculty,” Krush said. “Some professors may not be as familiar with the culture around the curve or the qualities of it.”
The CSOM curve is intended to ensure equity among professors, but Garrigan said it does not always work as intended.
“Having that curve as a standard for all of CSOM should eliminate students having favorite professors or wanting to take a certain class over another because they should expect that grade distribution for all courses,” Garrigan said. “In practice, it’s not accurate.”
Will Rafti, student senator and MCAS ’27, said there is a gap between the intention behind the CSOM curve and how it is being executed, but noted that there is little UGBC can do beyond the meetings student senators have had with Sullivan.
“I think we promote transparency from our hands and support their efforts, but I think at this time, there’s nothing really that we can do to solve that disconnect more so than we already have,” Rafti said.
The Senate then explored launching a UGBC academic advising satisfaction survey, led by Mariame Diop, student senator and MCAS ’27.
Cami Kulbieda, academic advising committee chair and LSEHD ’26, said the goal would be to produce more honest and accurate results than the University Council on Teaching advising survey.
“People are complaining about academic advising, but it’s not being reflected in the survey,” Kulbieda said. “What we’re trying to gain from this is that we would actually get honest negative feedback to address those gaps.”
During the discussion, student senators expressed different opinions on whether a separate, peer-to-peer survey would be productive or necessary.
“I would fill this out because it’s so impossible for me to go through course registration, like it is so hard every single time,” said Cece Mase, student senator and MCAS ’26. “I feel like there’s no help whatsoever.”
According to Kulbieda, the Senate is considering making the survey anonymous, optional, and available for several years to gather as many students’ opinions on academic advising as possible.
“It’s a little bit more honest with people who are having negative experiences,” Kulbieda said.
Earlier in the meeting, Kulbieda shared that a tabling event aimed at gauging interest in a potential American Sign Language minor received around 430 responses—just shy of the 500 needed to include it in a proposal to Julia DeVoy, associate dean of undergraduate students and programs in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where the minor would tentatively be offered.
“We’re just hoping to push to that 500 mark so that we can utilize it,” Kulbieda said.
Update (4/2/25, 11:12 a.m.): This article was updated from a previous version to reflect that Mariame Diop is leading efforts for UGBC’s academic advising satisfaction survey.
