Class evaluations revised in the interest of fairness

Jen Dixon News Editor

The results of a three-year evaluation on the part of the Student Advisory Committee on the Evaluation of Teaching (SACET) may be implemented this fall. This committee, which is composed of only students, is an advisory group to Dean of the Faculty Ron Sharp. Members are responsible for making recommendations to this office regarding the reappointment or tenure of faculty. One representative is elected to the committee for each major division: natural sciences, social sciences, arts and languages, independent/multidsciplinary, and undeclared.

The Vassar Student Association’s (VSA) elections website includes a description of the SACET representative positions that states “next year there will be a new system of class/professor evaluations.”

VSA Academic Executive Jon Delap ’05 has been working with the Dean of the Faculty Office since his sophomore year, first as a SACET representative and then as Academic Executive for two years.
According to Delap, the Majors Committee evaluations that were previously used to evaluate teachers are now defunct. These evaluations had a response rate of approximately 20 percent. Also, some questions seemed to evaluate a professor’s personality more than his or her teaching abilities. SACET voted in the fall of 2002 to do away with these forms.

Following this vote, the Committee decided to step away from their work evaluating the CEEQ forms filled out by all students at the end of their classes, instead devoting all of their attention to a year-long study of how to get evaluations forms back to a “fair place,” said Delap.

The forms were broken up into two categories, advising evaluations and course evaluations.
The Committee examined the policies of 30 peer institutions in order to see what their student processes were. The institutions considered included Bryn Mawr, Hamilton, Kenyon, Middlebury, Smith, Wellesley, and Williams. Each of the institutions had some sort of process for the student evaluation of teaching effectiveness.

Middlebury’s Faculty Handbook mentions a Student Course Survey (SCS) comparable to the required forms filled out by Vassar students at the end of each course. Many insitutions emphasized peer review for faculty being considered for tenure, something not yet formally included in SACET’s evaluation process.

In the fall of 2003, a proposal was formally presented to the Committee on Curricular Policies (CCP). This committee is the main body for reviewing academic policies.

The faculty representatives were in favor of one individual evaluation form rather than three, which cuts down on the amount of class time necessary for the process.

A task force subcommittee of the CCP has been meeting since September to discuss the possibility of faculty peer evaluations.

The goal of this process, according to Delap, is for SACET to make a presentation to the CCP in May. If this proposal passes, changes will be seen in September 2005.

“I have very much enjoyed working with John to improve the input that we receive from students in faculty evaluations,” said Sharp.

The new forms will most likely appear very similar to the current CEEQ forms, but they will also include an open-ended portion for majors.

“I think that having that open-ended component is a very important thing,” said Delap. Declared majors are expected to have the necessary experience to provide constructive criticism of professors in their discipline.

Revisions in the evaluation process will not be limited to course evaluations. A system will be proposed in which students will evaluate their major advisors and their thesis advisors.
“The faculty are almost more excited about that,” said Delap.

A process of evaulation based entirely on course evaluations leaves out the extent to which faculty members advise students.

Middlebury’s College Handbook, which was reviewed in the process of revising SACET’s policies, states that “Teaching should be taken in its broad sense, to include not only formal classroom work, but also the candidate’s contributions to the curriculum, advising, and other teaching outside the classroom.” This philosophy influenced the form that Vassar’s evaluation process may take.

Much of the responsibility for seeing this process through will rest upon the newly elected Academic Executive, Becca Worthington ‘06. Her guidance, according to Delap, will determine whether or not SACET “goes back to what it used to do.”