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Thursday, November 04, 2004
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UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR'S STUDENTS TOP UP THEIR GRADES,
PINT BY PINT [Washington, DC, November 4] Inspired by a fellow English professor -- Merrill Skaggs of Drew University, who, upset by low voting rates among young people, made voting in the recent national election a mandatory part of her students' grade, University Diaries, a professor of English at George Washington University, has introduced a blood donation requirement for all of her classes, beginning with the fall semester of 2005. "I checked the statistics," UD explained, "and only 37 percent of people under the age of 25 donate blood on a regular basis. That really upset me. Then I read about what Professor Skaggs did about her issue - voting - and I decided to do the same thing with mine. If I want my students to appreciate the importance of what I consider an essential civic activity, I think it's virtually an obligation on my part to incorporate that activity into my grading procedures." UD commented that for the last decade she has been so dedicated a blood donor that the National Institutes of Health, at whose blood clinic she donates, has awarded her quite a few "Gallon Donor" certificates of appreciation, "of which I'm enormously proud." All it took was reading about Professor Skaggs's recent voting requirement for UD to realize that she, likewise, could include a certain required pint donation minimum on her syllabi. "Of course, the amount each student gives is up to them - but they're young and they can stand to lose quite a lot of blood." You don't have to give much, but giving something is non-negotiable: "You can't get a passing grade in my Modern American Novel without at least one trip to the Red Cross," she remarked. "But the more you give, the higher your 'Grade Pint Average,' as I call it. And," she continued, "for those students willing to undergo the lengthy and uncomfortable procedure of giving platelets, there's an automatic A." How, we asked her, is she able to verify that each student has given blood during the course of the semester? UD smiles: "Unlike Skaggs, who has to rely on the honor system, I can just check their forearms. After you give blood, the nurses put a length of sticky tape around the needlemark. So, each morning, as students enter my classroom, I station myself at the door and have them pull their shirtsleeves up so I can take a look." One side benefit of her new policy, UD says, is that she's learning things about her students she couldn't have learned any other way. "Some of them, for instance, are anemic; some are afraid of needles; some were exposed to hepatitis during junior year abroad! Who knew?" For those who cannot donate, a five-page essay on The History of Apheresis in the United States substitutes. |