[University of Nashville Grade and Roll]

By 1857, the University of Nashville was organized on a military system through its connection with the Western Military Institute.  The school offered a collegiate department and also a medical department before the Civil War. Monthly Merit and Absence records for University of Nashville students B.M. Sowell, J.F. Sowell, AW.O. Sowell and A.B.D. Spain are part of the Grade and Roll book that faculty used to track student progress. Demerits for rule infractions were recorded here, along with grades in each class. These students are all taking six course, but the classes taken give us insight into their grade levels if we compare them to the 1859 catalog in the collections. Elocution and Composition was taught in the Junior Class’s Classical Course, suggesting B.M. Sowell and W.O. Sowell were probably juniors (although W.O. appears to have missed a lot of class); German and French were part of the Scientific Course and Physiology was taught in the first term, so J.F. Sowell was probably a first year student; A.B.D. Spain’s “Reading & Spelling” is not a listed course and so may be remedial. Students entered the school with varying levels of accomplishment and deficiencies were  addressed in the classroom. The grading system may be based on a 0-3 range, as the highest grade given is  2.77 and the lowest is a 0.00.