Professor Jennifer McStotts’ Blog

Hello all. This is just a reminder (or an announcement, if you didn’t know) that I will be on a leave of absence beginning in the fall of 2008. I may update this blog with interesting tidbits from time to time, but I will not being using it for class posts (obviously) or checking on the comments.
I hope you all had a wonderful summer! Best of luck in the new school year!
Jennie McStotts

All,
I was wrong about the last email business – I wanted to send some comments about the last PrEx.

1. Re: repatriation of the artifacts and remains – yes, it is required. The key is in the statute; I’m sorry if I confused any of you with my answer regarding a “retroactive clause”. No, there is not clause that says explicitly NAGPRA is retroactive, but there doesn’t need to be. What it says is that museums have to summarize and inventory their collections at the time the law was passed and repatriate in certain conditions. That’s not retroactive per se, so I struggled to answer the question I was asked.

3. I was looking for the triggering of any or all of the following laws:

I didn’t expect any of you to bring up AIRFA, as it is primarily instruction to the agencies to provide access. Here there’s really no need for the tribe to be required to give itself access, right?

4(b). What I mean by “internal nature” is the fact that this could be said to be a civil dispute. Does Hague apply to civil (internal) disputes? Yes – any armed conflict, not just “war”. Does NHPA 402 apply if we say this is internal, or is it still 106? I don’t know. Many of these questions (#4) are to test your reasoning. This one had fewer right answers than any other practical exercise.

4(c). Remember that the waiver has two aspects.

4(d). WHL or former NR status may make a difference primarily under 402, but also under the Hague convention. How you answer this will depend largely on your previous answers.

I hope that helps.
All the best!

Hello!
Glossary 2 grades and exam 2 grades are now posted; both should show up under My Grades, and under the assignment itself, there’s a downloadable rubric for the glossary. Two or three of you also got comments back directly on the document, so look for those.

Re: The exam’s curve. The best score in both classes was an 88. Curving the grades so everyone got 12 extra points put the average at 72 and the median at 68. While not ideal, it is acceptable. I did bear in mind if your exam score was lower than your normal grade when making final grades.

If you have questions, please make sure you’ve looked at all of your feedback, double checked your math, and cooled your temper before you email me.

Have a great summer!

Hello all,
This will likely be the last post you get from me. Your PrEx4 and Indep Project grades are up. I also created a column for poster grades as well. Should all be viewable from My Grades. The PrEx has a rubric you can download for feedback, and the papers have comments in the grade field on the assignment itself.
Re: Your Independent Projects, remember that your final grade for the project as a whole was the paper (the out-of-100 grade posted on WebCT) and your preliminary work (out of 10). To calculate, use this equation:
Prelim + (Paper*.9)
Thanks!

[ETA: I posted this on Sunday, and though Wordpress says it's published, it's not showing up or sending my email alert, so here's my second try. Apologies if it double posts.]

I’ll be posting the absences grades tomorrow morning, but I wanted to post this explanation of how I calculated the grades.

Normally, my policy is to count each tardiness as .33 absences, but given how many of my 8 o’clock class had that problem, in sympathy I dropped it to .25.

I take the total number of absences, subtract the number of excused absences for which I received documented excuses, add the total number of tardies (times .25), and subtract four for acceptable absences. I’ve decided to also subtract 1 for a reasonable number of tardies (four). The number that remains is the number that I subtract from your total grade, per the syllabus. This number (times negative 1 to indicate that it will be subtracted) is what I’ll be releasing tomorrow morning.

A couple of you have had such good attendance that you will actually be getting extra credit for this. Your numbers will be positive. This is one of those rare cases where a 0 is an acceptable grade.

I’ll post here again next week when Glossary and second exam grades are done.
Best – Prof. McS

PLE students,
Don’t feel that you need to upload your posters. If you can or already did, great, but I wasn’t expecting to see them until Monday. On Monday, if I really like them, I’ll ask to keep them, but otherwise, they are yours.