JEREMY KAGAN
2214 Walnut Ave
Venice, CA, 90291
April 3, 2012
Hello there EB:
These are the conclusions of the task force created to examine the faculty evaluation
process. Besides myself, the committee consisted of Nasrin Bahari Chopiuk, Lucinda
Carver, Kevin Murphy, John Silvester and James Steele.
A request was made by Sandeep Gupta to all the schools to answer a series of questions
about the process and we received and analyzed all the responses. Some of these were
detailed and complex with thorough interviews with participating faculty members and
others were conclusions by the faculty councils or chairs of the councils. I then collated
all the replies to coordinate them with the questions posed. These were then distributed
back to the members of this committee and we shared our observations. Some schools
have specific issues but across campus we did find commonality.
The following are the conclusions we unanimously came to:
1 - Though there are varying feelings across the campus and schools about the
numerical grading of faculty, there is a very clear preference to change the
process to be qualitative rather than quantitative.
2 - Each faculty member should have a one-on-one meeting with the chair or
head of the evaluation team regarding his/her evaluation.
3 - Teaching performances should not be dependent on the student evaluation
system that presently exits, as it is too arbitrary and subjective, and doesn't
always reflect the abilities of a teacher, and often ends up being about popularity.
4 - The entire process should be transparent so that everyone knows exactly how
and by whom they are being evaluated.
We realize that in certain schools evaluations effect salary raises, and how that will
determined by a non-numerical evaluation system will need to be explored, but certainly
it is possible. And we understand that student evaluations have a place in the process as
they are our “consumers,” but we also are reporting that across the campus the way these
are obtained now is not working and needs to be re-conceived.
Thanks
Jeremy Kagan
Film and Television Director, Writer, Producer
Founder of the Change Making Media Lab
Tenured Full Professor, School of Cinematic Arts, USC
Chairperson of Special Projects for the DGA
One input to this task force report was a set of responses from faculty council chairs to a
short questionnaire prepared by Sandeep Gupta. These responses can be found on the
following link:
http://www.usc.edu/academe/acsen/Documents/Reports/Faculty_Evaluations_Collated%20Ma
terial.doc