LSU’s Faculty Senate held its first meeting of the semester on Wednesday discussing a proposed change to end-of-semester Student Course Evaluations.
Other items on the agenda included changes to the I-grade remediation window and international travel registry.
The new evaluation form, now titled the Course Experience Survey, was presented to the committee by Tara Rose, associate vice provost for institutional effectiveness, and Kristen Mauch, associate dean of student service for the College of Art and Design.
This suggested remodel included changes to the CES core prompts, cutting the questions down from 20 to eight and making questions shorter for an easier student experience.
“Our goal was to get rid of the 60 questions for all these courses that are tagged all these different ways, and just have a very short set of prompts that are small but meaningful,” said Rose.
Many members of the Senate criticized the proposal, claiming that this proposition does not aid faculty in end-of-semester feedback. The proposed prompts would ask students, for example, whether the course objectives were clear, if the materials and activities enhanced learning and if they received feedback that helped the student improve.
“These are quantitative questions that require qualitative answers,” said Carla Vance, a French studies professor.
Faculty members expressed concern that the revised CES prompts would be ill-suited for certain types of classes, including online classes and those with over 200 students. Although this was not presented as an amendment, many members expressed that they wanted to get rid of course evaluations altogether.
The Senate also passed a new set of regulations for the LSU Online’s Graduate School I-grade remediation, which was proposed last October. The amendment will give online graduate students until the second following semester to rectify their incomplete grades.
“This is my third year of Faculty Senate. This issue has been before us many times since,” said Paul Manthei, director of Logistics for Online & Continuing Education Partnerships for LSU’s College of Human Sciences & Education.
There were also updates to the international travel registry, which is the system used by the university to track faculty and students travelling abroad for safety and emergency communication.
This change was prompted by a 2023 audit by the LSU auditors of International Services, which suggested that the university should adopt a policy that better protects faculty and students from emergencies they might experience while abroad.
The revised policy was implemented on January 1. Faculty members have said that the new policy has gone off without a hitch.
“If somebody called and said, there’s been an explosion in Paris…because that did happen, and it took me eight phone calls and six hours to find the people and figure out who was in Paris at the time,” said Jane Cassidy, senior Vice Provost of Academic Affairs. “27 people have already used it, and there’s not been one question about it,” said Cassidy.
The Faculty Senate will have their next meeting on February 12 at 3 p.m. at the Dalton Woods Auditorium.
