Nicholas Kip ’60, Instructor in Classics, was a student at Andover more than 50 years ago. While there were no female students on campus and an enforced dress code existed, term-end assessments have not dramatically changed since he was a student. “Finals week has remained [essentially] unchanged…for the last 45 years,” Kip said. Keith Robinson ’96, Instructor in Chemistry, said that when he was a student, each exam day had periods at 8:00 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Each class was scheduled into a block. Kip said that the Registrar or scheduling officer at the time would create the blocks and that only large multi-section courses, such as math and languages, were scheduled in a subject block. This meant that different sciences, for example, woud not necessarily give exams on the same day. The first major change to the exam schedule happened in the early 1980’s with the implementation of Dean’s Week, the week prior to exams during which only certain class periods could hold major assignments on a given day. Students have taken exams since Andover’s inception, and exams have occurred in Borden Gym since it was built. Paul Murphy ’84, Instructor in Mathematics, said, “Pretty much every class had an exam.” The old finals schedule “worked fine,” according to Kip. Robinson agreed, “There is no good way to do finals, but the old schedule worked.” In recent years there has been a change in teaching style, especially in the English department, said Murphy. He said there is no longer a need for English and sometimes history to have final exams . Due to these teaching changes, the new assessment week fits, “better pedagogically all around the board,” said Murphy. Murphy and Robinson both said that the current assessment schedule is closer to what students may encounter in college and in that sense is better.
