Just before nine on a Tuesday morning, I stepped off the elevator on the top floor of William James Hall and found a folded card with my name on it at a long wooden table.

Around that table sat professors from fields like psychology, philosophy, statistics, economics, and computer science, along with deans from the Office of Undergraduate Education and one other undergraduate. For the next eighty minutes, we talked about how Harvard grades its students. I’m one of two student members of the Standing Committee on Undergraduate Educational Policy this year, and I want to tell you what it’s like to be a student voice in that room.

Wait, what's the EPC?

The Standing Committee on Undergraduate Educational Policy, which everyone calls the EPC, is a faculty committee where ideas about teaching and grading get worked out in detail. Members talk through proposals, raise concerns, and sometimes form smaller subcommittees to study a question in depth before anything goes to the full faculty. The committee has always included students, and at our first meeting, one of the deans told us that student feedback had been critical to its recent work on grading. I was appointed as a student member by Amanda Claybaugh, the Dean of Undergraduate Education, supported by Dr. Sarah Champlin-Scharff, the Director of Academic Policy, and I sit at the table as a full participant.

A quick Harvard decoder for this post:

• OUE (Office of Undergraduate Education): the office that oversees the academic side of the College, from courses to academic policies.
• Concentration: Harvard's word for a major.
• SAT/UNSAT: a grading option where a course is marked satisfactory or unsatisfactory instead of receiving a letter grade.
• Registrar: the office that keeps every student's academic record and builds the systems grades flow through.

The view from the fifteenth floor

The first thing anyone notices in that room is the window. From up there, Cambridge turns into a carpet of treetops, and the Boston skyline stretches across the horizon. On a clear morning you can pick out the Prudential Center from your seat, which makes the first five minutes a little hard to focus.

The building has a strange history of its own. William James Hall was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, the architect behind the original World Trade Center, and according to the Cambridge Historical Commission, its top floor was built with a screened deck so researchers could study people on the street below without being seen. Today, the people up there are mostly debating grading policy, and I can’t decide whether that’s more or less interesting.

At my first meeting, we went around the table and introduced ourselves. When it was my turn, I mentioned that back home in Maryland, I had served as the student member of my county’s Board of Education, voting on policy for tens of thousands of students. I had sat through plenty of meetings like this one. What felt new was that the policies on this table would shape classes I’ll be sitting in myself.

What we actually talk about

Before this year, I assumed policy was mostly about big decisions. Most of our time goes to the questions that come after a big decision is made, and many of the questions on our agenda sound technical until you notice that each one decides something real for a student. 

In September, we worked through how Harvard’s new grading policy will run once it takes effect: how a failing grade should count, how a limit on A grades should work in a course split across many sections with different instructors or in an intro science lab built around a year of research, and when a grade becomes final if a student takes a makeup exam weeks later. We also discussed what a course should have to show before switching from letter grades to SAT/UNSAT, and whether makeup exams could happen within the same semester instead of months later.

This past month, we turned to a review of the program that lets some students earn a master’s degree alongside their bachelor’s, and to the College's work on guidance for how faculty should and shouldn’t use AI in teaching and grading student work. Every topic comes with a stack of reading. I’ve learned that a single late grade can ripple through a whole course’s records, which means someone has to think about it before it happens.

What happens when a student speaks

At our first meeting, one of the deans told us that because membership turns over, nobody should hold back for being new, himself included. I took that as permission.

So I raised my hand about orchestra. I played cello in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra last year, and I asked how you fairly grade more than a hundred musicians who spend every rehearsal trying to sound like one instrument. Staff explained how ensemble courses are graded now, and the faculty picked up the question from there. Later, I pointed out that the data in front of us showed how makeup exams affect students but not how much work they create for faculty, and I suggested asking faculty directly. One of the deans explained that a subcommittee would be the place to gather that kind of input, with the Faculty Council weighing in along the way.

The other student member asked how the new grading rules would play out in specific courses she knew from the inside, and the professors engaged with her examples as seriously as they did with each other’s. At the end of every meeting, the deans invite each member to email them with questions or information to bring back next time, and that invitation includes the two of us.

Why I'm telling you this

Students are the ones who sit the exams and live with the grades, so the committee wants to hear how a policy will land before it does. If you’ve read about Harvard’s grading changes and wondered what students think, you can ask me. What I can tell you here is what I’ve seen: the conversations are careful and slow, and the people having them want to get the details right. Students are in the room for them.

When I applied to college, I pictured Harvard as a place where professors make the rules and students follow them. Some Tuesday mornings, I get a seat at the table where those rules take shape, with the whole city out the window.

If you have questions about Harvard’s academic environment or how policy gets made here, reach out through The Recruitment Ambassadors Inbox. I'll write back!