Faculty Senate Minutes
February 19, 2001
Present: S. Barnett, W. Breitenbach, T. Cooney, J. Elliott, W. Haltom (chair), J. Harwood, M.
Jackson, S. Kukreja, R. Mello, M. Sugimoto, G. Tomlin, K. Ward, R. Worland
Bill Haltom called the meeting to order at 4:05 p.m.
The minutes of the February 5 senate meeting were approved as distributed.
Announcements
Haltom announced that the Benefits Task Force is surveying the faculty and staff, and is
sponsoring open “forums” on March 7 and 8. Faculty are encouraged to complete the survey and
attend one of the forums.
Discussion of the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Student Evaluation of Teaching
Martin Jackson suggested we discuss the eight recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee one
at a time and determine what, if any, action to take in each case.
Recommendation 1: Open the “black box”! This means to assure the faculty and the students, in
an openly demonstrable way, of the accuracy and fairness of the process employed in the
interpretation and use of evaluation data.
Keith Ward stated that periodic discussion of the evaluation process is a good idea. Terry
Cooney mentioned that a written description of what the FAC does was distributed a couple of
years ago and that this document could be updated as needed. Terry also said that a meeting
with junior faculty was held a couple of years ago concerning the evaluation process. This type of
meeting could be repeated, presumably with former FAC members serving as panelists. Some
concerns were raised regarding confidentiality issues, as the FAC veterans would not be able to
discuss specific cases, even in an indirect or “hypothetical” manner.
A brief discussion ensued as to the merits of including students in such a meeting, as
Recommendation 1 mentions both faculty and students. Although there was some initial support
for such a joint meeting, this soon faded. Suzanne Barnett said that this issue is mainly a concern
of the junior faculty. Suzanne suggested separate meetings with students and junior faculty to
explain the evaluation process. Martin Jackson noted that we don’t have any evidence yet that
the students feel a need for such a meeting. Bill Breitenbach said that students need to
understand the evaluation process, but that a meeting probably wouldn’t attract many students.
George Tomlin M/S/P “that the senate will sponsor, at least once every three years, a
forum for the junior faculty concerning the use of student evaluations in the assessment
process.”
Recommendation 2: We must design different forms for feedback and appraisal.
George Tomlin noted that we can give our own informal surveys whenever we want feedback.
Terry Cooney reminded us that according to Randy Nelson (Director of Institutional Research)
research shows that student responses on evaluation forms are not affected by their knowledge
of whether the forms will be used for feedback or appraisal. Joel Elliott said that we will never
have a “perfect” form, the interpretation is the important thing.
Recommendation 3: Students must be clearly instructed about the purpose of the particular form
they are completing for a particular class.
There was some discussion of the statement that department secretaries read prior to handing
out the evaluations. The student members, Ryan Mello and Jim Harwood, stated that the
instructions they hear vary from time to time. Terry Cooney said that a script does exist and that
efforts have been made to regularize these procedures. It was agreed that we would look at the
script at our next meeting.
Recommendation 4: Questions on the form should take into account whether the class is small or
large, team-taught, multi-disciplinary, lab, etc.
Terry Cooney suggested additional questions asking the students to rate their own level of effort
or involvement in the course. He also likes the idea of a couple of supplemental questions for lab
courses. Rand Worland brought up the issue of lab courses in which the instructor being
evaluated does not teach the lab. Do students feel that they are evaluating the instructor or the
course? Bill Haltom said this issue also applies somewhat to team-taught courses. At this point
Bill suggested that we have copies of the evaluation form in front of us before we try to modify the
questions. This will be attempted at the next meeting.
Recommendation 5: Questions on the evaluation form should not ask about a particular teaching
style.
Terry noted that many of the questions on the current form could be interpreted as dealing with
teaching style. As with Recommendation 4, we agreed to return to this when we have the forms.
Recommendation 6: The evaluation form should obtain information which assist in identifying and
adjusting for the influences of students’ grade expectations, motivation and prior interest, and
workload. Each of these have been shown to have at least a moderate confounding effect on
evaluations. In order to have discriminant validity, the impact of these biases must be accounted
for.
Cooney asked to what lengths are we willing to go to demonstrate validity and how much would
be gained? Keith Ward stated that the biggest issue seems to be the perception of being
evaluated fairly.
We adjourned at 5:30 p.m.
Respectfully submitted,
Rand Worland