Mid-year graduates

Topics/tags: Miscellaneous, short, endnote-laden [1,2,3], rambly

At yesterday’s faculty meeting, the faculty approved the mid-year graduates. More precisely, we approved a motion that we recommend that a set of students, upon meeting the requirements of the College, receive the Bachelor of Arts degree [4]. If I recall correctly, at graduation [7], a representative of the Trustees of the College says something like, The Trustees of Grinnell College, upon the recommendation of the faculty, award the degree of Bachelors of Arts to all students who have met the requirements for that degree [8].

There were twenty-six candidates for mid-year graduation. I immediately recognized four of them as CS majors. That large number surprised me at first. Then I remembered that about one-seventh of Grinnell seniors are CS majors [9]. Hence, it should not be surprising that four of the twenty-six are people I can immediately identify as CS majors. However, as I went through the list a second time, I realized that six of the twenty-six are CS majors. Does that signal anything? I don’t think so; I expect that we’re just seeing some natural variation.

Of course, it may also be that some kind of chain reaction was involved. That is, Parent 1 may have said to Student 1, You have a lot of credits. We’d save a lot of money if you graduated early. Student 2, upon hearing that Student 1 was graduating early, may have looked to see if they could also graduate early. Student 3, upon hearing that Students 1 and 2 were planning to graduate early, may have looked to see if they could graduate early. Or something like that. But what do I know?

I’ll certainly miss many of our mid-year graduates. They are students I’ve come to know and appreciate over the years. It will be strange not to have them around anymore [10], particularly since at least one of them would regularly nest in my lab. More generally, I’ll miss their leadership, their enthusiasm, and, in most cases, their sarcasm.

Postscript: The Trustees approved the candidates during their meeting of October 2-5, 2019. Since it’s on the recommendation of the faculty, aren’t they supposed to approve candidates after we do, rather than before? Let’s hope the timing gets resolved this spring.

Postscript: I decided to go beyond estimates. From what I can tell from Grinnell DB, there are 60 CS majors in the class of 2020 and 374 students in the class of 2020. That means that nearly one in six seniors are CS majors. After mid-year graduation, it looks like 54 of 348 seniors will be CS majors, which is much closer to one in seven. There are currently 404 students in the class of 2021, 59 of whom are CS majors. That’s much closer to one in seven. Since most second-year students have not declared a major [11], I cannot compute that ratio. The numbers for the class of 2021 are also likely to change a bit over the next year as students add second majors or drop majors [12].

Postscript: For those who care, here’s the query I used to estimate the number of CS majors in the class of 2020. You can figure out the appropriate variants to search for other groups [15]. You can probably also find ways to make it shorter.

https://itwebapps.grinnell.edu/classic/asp/campusdirectory/GCdefault.asp?transmit=true&blackboardref=true&LastName=&LNameSearch=startswith&FirstName=&FNameSearch=startswith&email=&campusphonenumber=&campusquery=&Homequery=&Department=&Major=Computer+Science&conc=&SGA=&Hiatus=&submit_search=Search&RecordsPerPage=100&GYear=2020

[1] Since I’ve been using end note, I suppose that tag should be laden with end notes. However, I prefer the more concise tag.

[2] More precisely, laden with end notes and postscripts, at least compared to the length of the main body of the musing.

[3] I recall that Middle Son objected to my including references to end notes in the titles of musings. I wonder how he feels about them in the topics/tags section.

[4] I don’t have the exact language. I hope that someone does. At worst, we can find it in an earlier set of faculty meeting minutes [5].

[5] The May 6, 2019 minutes have the following motion.

Dean Michael Latham moved to approve the list of candidates for commencement provided in the advance meeting materials pending the successful completion of all requirements for the degree. The motion was seconded and approved by voice vote.

The October 1, 2019 minutes have the following motion.

Dean Michael Latham moved to approve the list of candidates for commencement provided in the advance meeting materials pending the successful completion of all requirements for the degree. The motion was seconded and approved by voice vote.

I tried looking back a few years before then, so that I could see what we did before Mike was here. I was surprised to discover that I could not find any approval of candidates in 2012-2013 [6].

The September 16, 2013 minutes have the following.

With an addition of [Name Elided], [Interim Dean David] Lopatto moved to approve a list of students seeking the Bachelor of Arts degree at mid-year contingent upon the successful completion of all degree requirements. The motion carried.

[6] That doesn’t mean we didn’t do it. It just means that I couldn’t find it in the faculty meeting agendas or minutes. I’ll also admit that I didn’t spend too much time on the task. Ah! Here’s the issue … I didn’t look early enough in the year. The minutes of the meeting of September 17, 2012 include the following.

Smith moved to approve a list of students seeking the Bachelor of Arts degree at mid-year contingent upon the successful completion of all degree requirements. The motion carried.

I’m still having trouble finding when we approved the spring candidates.

[7] At least at spring graduation.

[8] Once again, the language is approximate. I know I have a graduation script somewhere in my files, but my files are boxed up right now.

[9] We now graduate about sixty CS majors per year and about four hundred students per year. If I do my math right, that means that one in seven graduates is a CS major.

[10] It will likely help that I’m on sabbatical, and so wouldn’t see all that much of them this spring.

[11] While many majors allow students to declare before spring of their second year, CS tries to restrict earlier declarations so that all students have an equal opportunity to get their choice of advisor.

[12] How much of a difference do declared majors make? If my counts are correct, Grinnell has 374 students in the class of 2020, but 486 declared majors. In contrast, Grinnell has 404 [14] students in the class of 2021, but only 472 declared majors. If the 2020 ratios hold, 53 students in the class of 2021 will declare another major. I don’t expect that that will mean that another seven or eight students in that class will add a CS major, but you never know.

[14] No, that’s not an HTTP error.

[15] The URL should only work on campus.

Version 1.0 of 2019-11-05.