I. Evaluation of Teaching 1. Student Evaluations Evaluations are given to the instructors who hand them out to their classes in the last two weeks of each semester. These responses are recorded on a categorical scale.
Additional space is provided for written comments.
The data are used in preparing promotion and tenure cases and constitute a portion of the teaching profile on each faculty member. Some department chairs, at their discretion, use them in annual salary discussions with the Dean. Because the form has not been significantly altered in several decades, we have a stable sample from which the teaching evolution of an individual faculty member can be charted over time. For this reason, there is significant opposition to any substantial changes in the evaluation forms. Some standardization is needed, however, in the manner in which the evaluations are handed out and in the compilation and presentation of the summary evaluation data.