The Faculty Senate passed a resolution to strengthen the dead week policy in a 17 to 11 vote at its monthly meeting Wednesday.
The new policy presented by Student Government allows a teacher to give assignments that will count for five percent of a student’s final grade, which is a decrease from the previous 10 percent benchmark. Class projects are exempt from the policy because the student has a long period of time to work on it.
The resolution was read at the Faculty Senate meeting on Feb. 15 and offered ideas and changes to SG before the resolution was voted on. SG changed the original resolution to allow for quizzes and assignments worth less than five percent.
At the meeting, the Faculty Senate also voiced opposition to members of SG about putting teacher evaluations online.
Dani Borel, SG vice president, said the initiative came about because students said they had to fill out the evaluations, but never saw results.
Jeffrey Wale, SG director of academics, said the online evaluation would include five questions – a question about the textbook, course presentation, course material and whether the student would recommend the course.
Senators voiced reasons for opposition, stating evaluations should be between the professor and the department dean. Senators also said easier or more interesting classes will get higher ratings.
David Lindenfeld, humanities and social sciences senator, said he believes the evaluations should be posted online.
A lot of students discriminate when they use other websites to evaluate, Lindenfeld said.
“These questions set aside other issues and offer information students have a right to know,” Lindenfeld said.
Thomas Rodgers, SG assistant director of academics, said he encourages all the senators to visit websites like universitytools.com and view what is being said about them.
In other business, the Senate decided after little debate to postpone the vote on the resolution that could make Thanksgiving break a week long until the meeting on April 11.
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Contact Celeste Ansley at [email protected]