Iowa State: Steve and the Freshman Chemistry Curve

Iowa State was (is?) an engineering-oriented school and a whole lot of people wanted to be engineers than SHOULD be engineers–so the school had to weed people out early in the process. Ultimately there were a couple of courses that did this–physics and chemistry. Those classes changed a lot of peoples’ minds and turned them into business majors (maybe that’s why big business CEOs are cranky–they may have made millions, but really–they know its because they couldn’t hack engineering…).

With Chemistry, back in the days of needing to grade quickly for a ton of people, that meant scantron tests–whether it was multiple choice or filling in the numbers for a calculation. Then add to that the need to make it tough enough to get some people to change majors and most engineers dreaded the evenings those tests were held.

Not Steve. Steve had (has) a natural affinity for how chemistry works–it wasn’t that he already he knew the material, but he just *GOT* it. It’s like watching natural athletes or people who become proficient in playing an instrument in a matter of hours of fiddling with it.

So the way State handled those tests was they were taken then scanned. The tests were created to prove students didn’t know everything. On most tests, even the best students scored 60-70%. You can’t have EVERYONE flunking out, so the policy was to take the high score of an individual (usually around 75) and then add points to make that a 100%–and add the same number of points to all tests, so that if you got a 50–it became a 75, a ‘C’.

So this is where Steve comes in…Fall of 1987 I believe–the year he was in 307 with Dave M. One night, Steve asks if I want to go to Kwik Shop to grab a drink. Sure–I was always happy to do that. Pop there was cheap and I like being social with friends. He’d just come back from his Chem class–so this wasn’t usually timing but I didn’t think about that at the time.

On the way, Steve talked about his Chem test. He was excited he picked up an ‘A’…but then said “I need to tell someone and I know you won’t say anything.” I appreciate that–I do keep secrets safe (and I think 37 years is enough that I am not now breaking the agreement to keep quiet). It turns out Steve did well on his test. Real well.

The average was 55%, but Steve?? He scored a 96. That meant that rather than the usual 25-ish points getting added to a score (would’ve made a 55 an 80)–people were getting *4*. It was enough that in his section, a couple of guys talked about wanting to beat the ass of whoever screwed up the curve…because Steve, singlehandedly, caused about 400-500 people to flunk a test. He was highly amused that he’d done that, enjoyed the idea of the consternation others in Chem had. Me, too.

So here we are now nearly 40 years later–and I wonder how many people left the sciences and engineering because of Steve and that one test. I’ve also wondered since then if State changed how they grade those tests that hundreds are taking, whether they still curve things like that or not.

(What I REALLY wish–an image of the Foster sign from Westgate…and the back where everyone signed it…)