The new year began with a bang for Undergraduate Student Government as they discussed the need for public instructor evaluations at last night’s general assembly meeting.
‘A new system will primarily focus on allowing students to register for classes with instructors who will suit them best,’ said Liesl Dye, the chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. ‘It will not be used for pay increases or for criticizing instructors, but for the benefit of the students.’
The idea for a new system arose after USG Student Welfare Senator Rob Hohler researched different forms of technology that would work to create a central database for instructor evaluations.
Hohler found that in order for more effective evaluations to be created, a new technological system would have to be implemented as well. However, before any work could be completed, Hohler left at the end of the fall semester and passed the task on to Dye.
‘At first, we weren’t sure about how we would go about this,’ Dye said. ‘But after talking with [Mike Sears] the USG president from 1991, it really opened my eyes to how serious this project really was.’
Dye began her research on the subject by collecting information about instructor evaluations from other schools and studying the effectiveness of their programs.
According to her research, a new system at Bowling Green would be formed entirely around the students rather than on trivial details.
‘We don’t want this system to be like the online Web sites,’ Dye said. ‘We want to eliminate things like hotness levels and star ratings and make it more about student and instructor compatibility in order to ensure learning.’
President Johnnie L. Lewis, although in favor of the public instructor evaluations, noted that many deans feel that a new system such as the one USG is proposing would result in a popularity contest among professors.
‘Right now, the system we have is based around tenure and pay for instructors,’ Lewis said. ‘How can this system possibly help the students when it comes to learning?’
Lewis hopes that a new system will focus specifically around class size, classroom materials and instructor effectiveness and that public evaluations lead to a system of uniformity throughout campus.
‘Right now, [instructor evaluations] are not uniform across campus or at any one college,’ he said. ‘We have different forms for different colleges and this just enhances the confusion we feel when it comes to evaluations.’
In order to clear up the confusion, Dye hopes that if the system is implemented, all evaluations would be made public on the USG Web site.
‘We are looking for something to attach our names to,’ Speaker Jeremy Lehman said of the Web site idea. ‘UAO has their thing and RSA has theirs. ‘[Instructor evaluations] could be USG’s.’
