Student Government is reworking its goal of adding a five-question, online teacher evaluation after Faculty Senate expressed opposition to the idea at its March 15 meeting.
SG would like to have a separate evaluation asking students how a teacher communicated the subject material, if the textbook was relevant to the graded material, if the instructor was accessible outside class, how likely the student is to recommend the teacher and how class information is presented.
Jeffrey Wale, SG director of academics, said he met Wednesday with Bobby Matthews, director of the Office of Assessment and Evaluation, to discuss the feasibility of the survey.
Wale said there would be a cost associated with the project to cover the preparation, software and delivery of the survey.
Wale said SG is waiting for a cost estimate and, if necessary, would pay for the survey with available funds.
Faculty Senate President Kevin Cope said SG has the right to distribute funds as it pleases, but he isn’t convinced the evaluation is the most productive use of resources.
Wale said the survey would be an additional document distributed with the teacher evaluation filled out by students at the end of the semester.
T. Gilmour Reeve, vice provost of Academic Affairs, said in many cases students don’t have a choice when scheduling, especially in upper level classes.
Reeve said faculty will likely object to the survey for multiple reasons.
Reeve said cost, relevance to students and legal issues in human resources are all reasons to oppose the survey.
Wale said although he is not trying to call the University a business, students are in some ways customers.
“This is somewhat a customer satisfaction survey,” Wale said.
Wale said SG plans to keep data for two years.
Cope said students can benefit from taking classes that don’t cater to their learning styles.
“Students benefit from variety and challenges,” Cope said.
Wale said the project was created to help achieve fair evaluations of teachers, as opposed to those on websites like Universitytools.com.
“It’s more of an effort to fix a problem,” Wale said.
Cope said he feels the project may only appear to help fix a problem while providing an elevated form of gossip.
Yoshinori Kamo, sociology associate professor, said he shows a printout of some comments from Universitytools.com on the first day of the semester.
“An official source would be better than an underground source,” Kamo said.
David Sobek, political science associate professor, said students will continue to use outside sources whether or not the University provides data.
Wale said SG has presented the proposal to Faculty Senate, but there is no official resolution. He will no longer be in office when Faculty Senate meets April 11, but he plans to see the project through by aiding the new director of academics.
Samantha Fields, biology senior, said the online survey would be more helpful for freshmen and scheduling lower level classes.
Drew Samaha, petroleum engineering junior, said he uses outside websites and “the more input the better.”
 
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Contact Celeste Ansley at [email protected]