Episode 13: Stress, Grades, and the American Way! Time for a Re-boot.

The percentage of students on our campuses suffering from depression doubled from 2009 to 2019. Suicides increased 50% over the same period. The pandemic probably hasn’t helped. Campuses nationwide are responding by increasing access to health care professionals and training staff and faculty to identify stressed students. However, most campuses are not dealing with one of the most significant stressors in student’s lives, GRADES! In this episode, we talk with Dr. Joshua Eyler, Director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi about the stress of grades and how institutions and faculty need to rethink approaches to decreasing stress by changing how we think about and act on grading and evaluating students. We rely on grades, a time tested but inaccurate and misleading assessment system, a human construct, first brought into higher education in the 1790s. Time for a reboot, perhaps?