Evaluation Definition:
The official UW-L Student Evaluation of Instruction is comprised of the following six questions.
1. I was looking forward to taking this course.
2. The instructor was helpful to students.
3. The instructor was well prepared.
4. The instructor communicated the subject matter clearly.
5. I learned a great deal from this instructor.
6. Overall, this instructor was excellent.
These data will be collected for any instructor of a course in accordance with the guidelines adopted by Faculty
Senate. Data for these questions will be maintained by ITS pursuant to the University Data Retention Policy.
Data Retention for Non-University Required Questions:
ITS will continue to generate reports summarizing the data collected for department and/or individual
questions. ITS will maintain raw data for these non-university required questions until the first of June
in the calendar year following the current academic year (for the 2012-2013 academic year, data would
be deleted on June 1st 2014). At this time, both the raw data and summaries will be deleted from ITSmaintained databases. It is the responsibility of the department or the individual faculty to preserve
these data in accordance with the appropriate UW-System Record Retention Schedule(s).
University Data Retention Policy Options For Official Evaluations:
Used by ITS to govern the retention of the data and summaries for the official UW-L Student Evaluation
Option 1: Publish the data
Publish all data from the 6 university questions in the reference section of the UW-L Library for student
or the public to investigate on their own.
Option 2: Indefinite Retention
All data are kept forever.
Any evaluation will be forever available as an open record request.
Option 3: Fully Restrictive
Individual evaluations are kept until June first after the following academic year.
Summary data linked to individual faculty will be retained as per the Records Schedule (see Appendix
A below), with IAS treated like probationary faculty.
*Option 4: Hybrid retention (faculty and student data are divorced)
Individual evaluations are kept until the first of June in the calendar year following the current academic
year.
On June first the following will happen.
1. Faculty summary data are regenerated – allows any corrections due to misprocessing of data
by ITS (applicable predominately to paper SEIs). WINGS will maintain a class by class SEI
record for each faculty consisting of the fractional median score for each of the six university
questions.
2. Student summary data are generated. WINGS will maintain a term by term SEI record for each
student for each of the six university questions. Courses will be randomized for each question
within each term. No course identifiable information will be maintained. For terms where only
one course is taken no record will be maintained.
Retention of data:
Faculty summary data will be retained as per the Records Schedule, with IAS treated like
probationary faculty (see Appendix A below)).
Student summary data will be retained as per the Records Schedule.
Background:
On January 31, 2013, Faculty Senate charged the Academic Technology Committee with providing oversight
for the on-line SEI system. As part of that charge, the ATC recommended, and Senate passed, a campus
policy that the data from on-line SEIs be deleted yearly on December 1st for the previous academic year.
Assuming that departments were downloading all SEI reports and maintaining them as per the UW-System
Records Retention Schedule for Unclassified Staff (see Appendix A below), we believe this policy is in
compliance with the law.
However, Faculty Senate had previously passed a separate policy that said that SEI data must be used for
faculty promotion decisions. This requirement would seem to be at odds with the data deletion policy, and the
data deletion policy was put on hold. In an effort to resolve this the ATC, in conjunction with Dr. Bob Hoar, Mr.
Michael Gasper, and Mr. Scott Holzem JD, has worked out a set of definitions as well as Data Retention
options that both meet the legal obligations of the campus and satisfies the administration’s desire to maintain
data for TAI reports.
After seeking guidance from UW-System Office of General Counsel, we were able to summarize the criteria for
SEI data retention as follows.
1) The campus can define what an evaluation is for itself.
2) Any data taken as part of that evaluation is considered an public record.
3) If desired, we can delete the raw data after 6 months and the summary data per the UW-System
Records Retention Schedule for Unclassified Staff.
4) The data that must be kept is still an public record, regardless of the location.
These criteria guided the options presented above.
Appendix A (Abridged UW-System Records Schedule – Unclassified Staff)
Full text of the UW-System Records Retention Schedule is available at:
http://www.uwsa.edu/general-counsel/pdf-docs/grs-unclassified.pdf
(Modified by highlighting for emphasis)
Page 4:
E. Records to be retained.
In accordance with Wisconsin law, records to be retained are those defined as in the Wisconsin Statutes as
“public records,” that are made or received by any university employee in connection with the transaction of
university business. See Wis. Stat. § 16.61(2)(b).
Public records do not include the following:
1. Duplicates maintained by a university employee only for convenience or reference and for no other
substantive purpose.
2. Unsolicited notices or invitations which are not related to any official action taken, proposed, or
considered by the University of Wisconsin System.
3. Drafts, notes, preliminary computations and like materials intended for personal use by an individual
university employee or prepared by a university employee in the name of the person for whom the
employee is working.
4. Routing slips and envelopes.
5. Materials that are purely the personal property of a university employee and have no relation to his or
her office.
Records that are not “public records” under the definition may be destroyed at the discretion of university
administrators.
Pages 15-16:
STUDENT EVALUATIONS AND SUMMARIES
UWPER032 Tenured Faculty:
UWPER033 Probationary Faculty:
UWPER034 Academic Staff and TA's, PA's:
EVT= Date of the final appointment decision.
This series consists of statistical and/or narrative evaluation forms and summaries completed by students
concerning the teaching performance of individual faculty or academic staff. Student evaluation information can
be used to support tenure application as well as academic staff indefinite appointment.
Retention:
Campuses: For faculty and academic staff, transfer a copy of evaluation summaries to the individual’s
Official P-File if such is prepared.
If no summaries are prepared then evaluations must be retained according to the schedule outlined below:
Original Summaries:
UWPER032 Tenured Faculty: EVT + 5 Years.
EVT= Date of end of semester in which evaluations were completed.
UWPER033 Probationary Faculty: EVT + 6 Years.
EVT= Date of end of tenure review process
UWPER034 Academic Staff and TA's, PA's: EVT + 2 Years.
EVT= Date of end of semester in which evaluations were completed.
NOTE: If summaries have been prepared on ALL of the above, the actual evaluations need only be
retained 6 months and destroy.
Destroy Confidentially. PII/Confidential