Meridian's approach to evaluation emphasizes self-awareness, empathy, and collaboration in the learning process. At Meridian, students do not receive traditional letter grades; instead, students are assigned one of the following at the end of each course: Pass (P), Low-Pass (LP), Incomplete (INC), and No-Credit (NC).
This grading policy results from the school's commitment to Transformative Learning, where standardized grades are viewed as oversimplifying the language used by faculty and students to talk about student learning and student achievement. At Meridian, it is understood that traditional grades or point systems provide a single hierarchal ranking-scale, representing learning in terms of a single set of letters or numbers that are static, discrete, and linear. This can be an efficient way to evaluate varying kinds of student performance. However, learning is a dynamic, continuous, and non-linear process. In the school's assessment process, grades do not serve learning and are viewed as obscuring how learning is represented, i.e., traditional grading systems miss who students are and what they are capable of. As such, there is no need to grade students in ways that do not accurately convey their learning nor the range and diversity of their skills, strengths, and further development of their capacities.
At Meridian, student evaluation takes place in the context of in-class transformative learning activities, transformative practice assignments, writing assignments, the quality of student posts (for online coursework) and exams that are assessed collaboratively by the student and their colleagues; all of these constitute a rich and multidimensional picture of student learning.
The Student Development Committee assesses student progress on a quarterly and annual basis through academic reviews. The Quarterly Academic Review, conducted four times each year by the Student Development Committee (after the Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer quarters), enables the Student Development Committee to assess student progress, performance, and potential as degree candidates and practitioners.
During each Quarterly Academic Review, the academic performance and status of all students in each program is reviewed; each student is assigned an academic status of Clear, Concern, or Probation. Each review also assesses students’ individual progress in their development of the capacities of Reflexivity, Empathy, and Collaborativity (REC), their development of Creative Inquiry Skills (Process Skills for Psychology; Communication/Facilitation Skills for Education; and Collaboration Skills for Business), their engagement with learning activities, their depth of practice, and their specific needs for individualized feedback and coaching. The specific information about capacity development comes from the particular program’s faculty.
After each review students who are falling behind or at risk of doing so are contacted and notified of the committee’s feedback, necessary remedial assignments, and/or other actions. Student academic performance is also reviewed in between Quarterly Academic Review cycles on an as-needed case-by-case basis.
At the summer Quarterly Academic Review, students who are in good academic standing are cleared to register for the following academic year.
Evaluation of Students Policy
2026-27 Academic Catalog