The Bowdoin Orient

April 6, 2001
Volume CXXXII, Number 20

Rethinking Honors Project Evaluations

by SOME AUTHOR (Font Size 1)

   It might not be a great catch to start a commentary with a caveat, but we'll offer one nonetheless. Students not doing honors projects this term (Oh, you clairvoyant ones!) might find this editorial a tad extraneous to their existence, and those undertaking honors projects will perhaps want to avoid any discussion of them. That said, for those less weary students doing projects, and for Bowdoin's faculty, we provide a suggestion for the evaluation of honors projects.
   Normally when students complete their honors projects their papers are deposited at the doorstep of the appropriate department, where professors gather to logically shred, er...read the papers submitted. An oral examination follows, after which professors discuss the papers and decide upon whether-and in some cases to what degree-students deserve honors. Lastly, the beleaguered students trudge to the library to submit their papers and nurse their wounds.
   Bates, our sibling institution to the north, adds an interesting element to this process. When students complete their theses, the department sends them to professors of the same discipline at peer colleges for review. In fact, several Bowdoin professors are, at the moment, commenting on Bates students' projects. The remarks of these outside adjudicators will then be taken into account by Bates faculty members when they evaluate students' candidacies for honors.
   This system has a couple advantages over our own. First, the Bates protocol benefits students by allowing them a larger, if only slightly, audience. The majority of all papers we write at college are read by only one other individual, belonging to the same institution as ourselves. Even if our papers do not make it more than a half-hour away to Bates, it is consoling to think a full year's worth of punishing work will be appreciated by a person outside Bowdoin's faculty before dying a dusty death in Bowdoin's archives (who can honestly say they have checked an honors project out from the library?).
   Secondly, and most importantly, the Bates scheme provides at least a partial antidote to departmental biases and politics. If Bates professors were to malign a student's work and an outside professor were to praise its scholarship, which would send a clear message to Bates professors that they might at least question their initial reactions. While Bowdoin professors are very unlikely to be unfair, it surely boosts students' confidence in the evaluation process to know that checks and balances exist. And a little consolation is all many honors candidates are looking for these days.