MINUTES OF THE MEETING PAGE

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OF THE FACULTY SENATE FEBRUARY 10, 2016

President Berkman stated that he agrees. Probably to put it all out there for the entire university would be a data overkill. He agrees with that. But he thinks UFAC should consider a provision that if particular students want to see the answers to the evaluations in a particular course that they ought to be able to look at the entire piece.

Professor Sridhar said there is also another issue. We have one semester’s worth of data right now. He has had a chance to look at some of these summaries and there are lots of courses that have one respondent so that’s the other issue with this which is that when you start sharing all data and there is one respondent for a course, then that gets queued as well. Again, as a matter of principle, he doesn’t think there is any issue with sharing. No one in this room is saying that we shouldn’t share data. It is a matter of how we are phrasing it out.

Vice Provost LaGrange stated that we are certainly happy to share the data in whatever way anyone believes is an appropriate one. One of the considerations that we were taking into account however was the time line. There was an expectation that we should give the data available to students as soon as possible. So it is easy and fairly quick to do a database. It is either the two-question one or all of the data. She stated that that is a fairly easy thing to do and we should be able to get it done by the end of this semester so that it is available to the students by the fall. Putting the database in such a way that it is interactive, students could look at the reduced data and then click on it and a pop up comes for the rest of the data. That is a little bit more technically challenging and would take longer. If that is the way we want to go, certainly that can be done but she just wants everyone to know that it might be a longer timeline. And, of course for the students, whether or not that is an issue.

SGA President Halasah said regarding the timing manner, after SGA spoke with Vice Provost LaGrange about it, SGA wanted it to be fall of this year. It was SGA’s job and they are trying to do their best to increase participation but they do need the faculty to promote it in their classes. She added that this addresses the point about not having enough but anything is better than “MyProfessor.com”. Some may think that some data is relevant or not but she just doesn’t think that UFAC should be the body to decide that. She thinks that students would feel a lot more included regarding the first question on the evaluation that was, “After you take this, what do you want to see?” The student may actually want to fill this out; “maybe I should take the time and introduce questions because I can get this feedback from people.”

Senator Maria Gibson commented that she is not sure about the information about the professor because she thinks it is private information. She believes that it is fair to give an evaluation of the course. We can see that in the health care system – they don’t evaluate their surgeons. They evaluate their hospital. She believes this is private information and should have the permission of the professor to be published.

Dr. Robichaud stated that since we are a public university, she is afraid that that information is not prohibited – it’s public. She continued stating that all of this data is