You probably remember the brouhaha (ire, in my mind) raised by the New York Times article, "Judgement Day," supposedly about "polarizing" professors, student evaluations etc. The object of the slaughter story, Annemarie Bean, received little support even on popular sites such as Confessions of A Community College Dean, where, except for one or two like-minded souls, those responding to the post wrote things like "there must be more to it [her non-renewal]," and, except for one writer, who must be my cyber-soulmate (Are you out there ? Have you found me ?), no one pointed out that only the women who were in danger of losing, or who had lost, their jobs, were named. Consider this cozy little bit recounted in the original (NYT) article:
In his polemic “Why the University Should Abolish Faculty Course Evaluations,” published in a faculty newsletter in 2004, Clark Glymour, a philosopher at Carnegie Mellon University, argues that giving good grades can even make up for a professor’s lack of charm and wit. When Glymour was department chairman in the 1980s, a “newly hired assistant professor consistently received the lowest faculty course evaluations in the department, and I was concerned for his career,” Glymour writes. “I knew the man and his outstanding scholarly work well, and I could guess the problems. He was not charming or funny or good-looking, and he had a deep and formal view of philosophical topics.” Traditional and serious, lacking the levity students appreciate, the professor refused to seek help with his teaching, but he assured Glymour that his student evaluations would nevertheless improve significantly. “The next semester he had the highest overall course evaluations in the department, and naturally I asked him how he did it — had he changed how he taught or what he taught? ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘before the evaluations were given out, almost all of the students knew they were going to get A’s. I see no reason to sacrifice my career to the cause of grade deflation.’ ”Let's be clear: Glymour [chuckle, chuckle, poke ribs] is condoning this boys' club bit, all for the career, you know. My guess is that women do this less openly. Though our pizza bills were no secret, there were none of those "Atta Boy !" moments in the dean's office. These are the things that make me very CIA. Discuss.
I have such mixed emotions about student evaluations. Ideally, the committees/admin who review them for whatever (awards, promo, tenure, etc) examine them in context, thus a faculty member who teaches mostly developmental writing classes will not be compared to the very popular painting instructor when student evaluations are reviewed. Ditto for the faculty member who teaches 2 preps a year (the same preps for 20 years) vs. the prof who teaches 4 preps a year.
ReplyDeleteI've been on these committees, and most people on them really do try to examine the evaluation numbers in such a context AND, more importantly, focus on the comments across a period of time. Thus one class of bad comments should not outweight years of relatively decent comments. We also ask students to first respond to a few questions such as how many hours they worked each week on the class, and what grade they expected. If we see a class where most students expected to earn an "A" those evaluative comments are looked at in THAT context.
BUT, that doesn't mean I love student evaluations. The process is filled with pitfalls, and there is no guarantee that a particular administrator or committee will, in fact, examine evaluations fairly. I've been teaching at my institution for 14 years and I still do them each year (though not every quarter since they are painstakingly typed up by administrative assistants rather than computerized), and I still feel a little sick each term that I do them.
I don't bring in chocolate, or pizza, nor am I an easy grader: but I do wait till spring quarter to do the evaluations. That's a trick of sorts, too.
Obviously, I have no answers, only more discussion points....
And I hope I made clear that this was not a case of committee members turning on other faculty. The dean had a cut off number that the committe was, by fiat, commanded to follow. No, the cut-off was NOT part of any official documentation.
ReplyDeleteThat's horrendous. Anyone (dean or committee) with a cut off number in this situation is truly an ass. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this...the topic of evaluations is so important and SO under-discussed!
ReplyDeleteDear anonymous blogger,
ReplyDeletePerhaps you are better at inferring my intent than I am at inferring your identity, but I doubt it. Have you anything to say in response to the arguments in my "rant"?
Clark Glymour