Senate Chair Pamela Lanford addresses the Senate at the beginning of the meeting on October 2, 2019. Photo by Jenna Pierson.

By Jenna Pierson

During their Oct. 2 meeting, the University Senate passed the student course evaluation project, a committee-driven effort over two years in the making that aims to change the online evaluation process.

The faculty and undergraduate senate voted on the project, resulting in a vote of 104 in favor and 12 against, with five abstentions. The project itself was pioneered by the Academic Procedures & Standards Committee and began in 2017 after renewed concern that course evaluation participation has remained largely unchanged since the process went online.  

“Our goal here is not really just to change the system, but to change the culture surrounding how faculty and students approach this exercise,” said Marilee Lindemann, the executive director of College Park Scholars and a member of the committee. 

The committee decided that many of the current questions on the course evaluations are too vague, provide too much room for bias and primarily focus on student satisfaction over teaching effectiveness. 

The changes they proposed focus more on identifying the best teaching methods and providing questions that focus on specific feedback for faculty. The committee also proposed that grade distributions be readily available to the public and that college-wide averages across all courses of a given level be eliminated, as this measurement is too broad. 

Many members of the faculty senate disagreed with the idea of eliminating all questions on student perception and satisfaction with a course. 

“I believe the new system makes some improvements to the old system, but it still has some serious flaws,” said Senator Thomas Cohen, a professor of physics. “In the past, [the course evaluation] has asked questions about whether or not the teacher was effective, and objections were that this question is biased or that students are not sure if they were effectively taught. I think that is offensive to students… I believe we are capable of filtering out potential student bias. If we don’t bother to ask students what they feel they learned in the course, we are doing them a disservice. I ask that we still include student perceptions of teaching effectiveness.”

Other faculty senate members expressed concerns about the concept of publicizing grade distributions.

 “It seems to us that students will choose their courses based on the thought of getting higher grades instead of intellectual challenge,” said Senator Katherine Wasdin, a professor in the English department. “Professors might feel the pressure to give higher grades to consequently increase their enrollment.” 

Mike Passarella-George, the assistant director of Decision Support for the Department of Institutional Research, Planning and Assessment at the university and a member of the committee, shared some of his own findings.

“I have seen other universities… make grade distributions available to students, “ Passarella-George said. “We do see some potential inaccuracies in data that is acquired from external systems that students access and we want to eliminate that through our own transparency.” 

Similar amendments on the topic of course evaluations were proposed last year, but they did not pass. Another proposed solution was to require time during class to complete evaluations. But according to university policy, students are not required to complete course evaluations. 

“We believe that by finding ways to make the evaluations valuable to both students and faculty that we can increase the participation rate,” said William Reed, the committee representative for the project and a professor of government and politics.  

Another order of business was to vote on the approval of two new bachelor’s programs— ancient religion of the Middle East and immersive media design.

 Ancient religion of the Middle East will be a 30-credit program, typically added as a second major for students majoring in history or the humanities. Immersive media design will be a partnership between the College of Arts and Humanities and the department of computer science that focuses on virtual reality development and will vary on credit requirements based on proposed tracks. Students can choose to receive a Bachelor of Arts in immersive media design if they choose the 59-credit “artistic” track, or a Bachelor of Science in immersive media design if they choose the 77-credit “computing” track. 

The University Senate will meet again on Nov. 5 in the Colony Ballroom in Stamp, where President Loh will address the current state of the campus.