Accommodating Student Interviews

[polly_mer]

This week, we had scheduled on-site interviews for people who will graduate in May/June with their shiny new bachelor's degrees.  Due to weather on the day of the interview, we ended up canceling and rescheduling.

However, I now wonder, what do professors do to accommodate these interviews?  To travel to our primary site is a full day for nearly everyone, so the one-day on-site interview means 3 days of travel for an interviewee.  And now these students will have been on travel for 6 days in one term just for us.  There's no way these students are interviewing with just us, although it's likely we are the most travel for one interview since our nearest airport is hours away and has very few direct flights from anything except regional hubs.

When I was teaching in the appropriate disciplines in which we hire, we seldom had course attendance requirements in upper-division courses in part because seniors should be interviewing.  However, it's possible that seniors in those fields would be taking the last of general education requirements.

Just curious about whether people worry about that situation or whether course attendance must be enforced as more important.

[dr_codex]

I teach those gen eds. This would fall under the "excused absence / responsible for course materials and for making up the work" category. It's the same thing for medical reasons, bereavement, military service/reserves obligations, for scheduled licensure exams/field exercises, and for intercollegiate athletics. In general, if the student has limited or no choice in the scheduling, we work around it.

[Caracal]

I just drop three attendance grades. The only time I have excused absences is for religious holidays and reserve service. So this would just fall under that. There are lots of good reasons to miss class, I just don't want to be in charge of determining what they are.

[the_geneticist]

I teach a general requirement biology class with a lab.  This is a "congratulations on your interview! you are excused from lab" situation.  I just calculate their total lab grade out of fewer points.

[Puget]

I teach an advanced seminar in the springs, and always have some students who miss some classes for job and grad school interviews-- I congratulate them, re-arrange their presentations if necessary, and let them make up the work they miss. It's not a big deal-- these are always good students doing what they should be doing to get ready for the next step in their careers.

[polly_mer]

I just drop three attendance grades.

One of my points is that students are likely to be missing more than just 3 class sessions over the term.  What happens to those students?

[dr_codex]

I just drop three attendance grades.

One of my points is that students are likely to be missing more than just 3 class sessions over the term.  What happens to those students?

They make up the work. If there's something that they really had to do, hands-on, then the faculty members cover for one another -- somebody will run another iteration of a lab, for instance.

My syllabus specifically refers to consequences of "unexcused absences", in part because it's S.O.P. around here to excuse professional requirements over which the students have little to no control. How we all handle those is written into the "Institutional Syllabus" for all professional courses, and most other instructors abide by them.

I recall taking an undergraduate Philosophy of Education course as an elective. For 3 weeks during that semester, the Ed majors went on their practicum placements. It was hard not to notice that the content for the rest of us during that period was, well, filler, or at best "alternate content", since nobody would schedule a key assessment during that time. But I learned a lot, and it was clear that debriefing the education students was probably the most important part of their entire degree. Nobody would have dreamed of penalizing them during that time.

[Caracal]

I just drop three attendance grades.

One of my points is that students are likely to be missing more than just 3 class sessions over the term.  What happens to those students?

Nothing particularly terrible. I drop three attendance grades, so if we have 23 classes and you miss 4, your attendance grade would just be a 95. It is also a pretty small portion of the grade which means it mostly only makes a difference in the overall grade when students are close to grade cut offs unless you're only coming to half the classes or something.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't worry about taking attendance, but my students are busy people and if there's no immediate and clear consequence to not coming to class, too many of them tend to make bad decisions that catch up with them later. I learned early on that I didn't want to be dealing with excused absences. The problem is that it gets arbitrary quickly. Should I give an excused absence to a student who has an interview, but not one who can't come to class because they had to take their brother to high school that day? If you're close to a grade cut off and you end up getting a B instead of an A because you had a bunch of interviews that semester, nothing that terrible will happen. It isn't a moral judgement I'm making, just a practical one.