These minutes reflect
discussion and debate at a meeting of a committee of the
Minutes
1:00 – 3:00
238A Morrill Hall
Present:
Emily Hoover (chair), (George Green for) Victor Bloomfield,
Dale Branton, Vernon Cardwell, Shawn Curley, Gretchen Haas, Adam Hirsch, James
Leger, Richard McCormick, Christopher Pappas, Emily Ronning, Karen Seashore,
Mary Ellen Shaw, Craig Swan, Joel Weinsheimer, Jenny Zhang
Absent:
LeAnn Dean, Douglas Wangensteen
Guests:
Karen Zentner Bacig (Office
of the Provost), Professor Andrea Berlin (chair, Morse-Alumni Award Committee),
Professor Patrick Schlievert (chair, Graduate-Professional Award Committee);
Susan Van Voorhis, Tina Falkner (Office of the Registrar); John Engelen
(Director of Federal Relations)
[In these minutes: (1) award winners and concerns about the
numbers of nominees; (2) draft policy on the evaluation of instruction; (3)
federal requirement to teach the constitution; (4) external demands for
accountability]
1. Award
Winners
Professor Hoover convened the meeting at 1:00 and asked
for a motion to close it to consider nominees for the teaching award. The Committee voted unanimously to close the
meeting. During the discussion, in
addition to approving the nominees for the Morse-Alumni and
Graduate-Professional teaching awards, a number of issues were raised.
-- There were only 12 nominations for the Morse-Alumni award; the
committee forwarded the names of six individuals.
-- There were 18 candidates for the Graduate-Professional
award; the committee forwarded the names of eight individuals.
Professor Hoover noted that the number of nominations for
the Morse-Alumni award was a concern, given the number of faculty members who
teach undergraduates. Twelve is a small
number, she commented. There was also an
imbalance in the gender of the nominees.
Dr. Bacig said she has now watched the process through
three cycles; she provided graphs of the number of applicants. They have declined for the
Graduate-Professional award and have gone up and down for the Morse-Alumni
award. There are things that SCEP could
do: the internal college deadlines may
be too early in the fall, with not a lot of lead time, so perhaps publicize the
award more in the spring; anecdotally, it appears there is a lot of variability
in terms of support and infrastructure to move nominations along, and where
there is little support, the nomination is difficult to assemble because it is
a lot of work. That varies by
department, Dean Green said; in small departments it is harder to mobilize the
effort needed for a nomination. Departments
could think about getting letters, etc., in the spring, Dr. Bacig said, and
they could follow up in the fall with information sessions.
Nominations are active for more than one year, Dr. Bacig
said in response to a question from Professor Leger. The dossiers are updated and some who have
won the award have done so on the second or third try. Professor Seashore recalled that when she
served on one of the committees, they told some nominators where a file was
weak and needed improvement.
Some departments have a nominating committee that is
responsible for nominating individuals for McKnight Professorships, Regents
Professors, outstanding service, Morse-Alumni and Graduate-Professional awards,
and so on, Dean Green said. Political
Science has done this for decades and it pays off. Deans notice if a department wins awards. If there is no committee, the work falls to
the chair, and in small departments it is too much. CLA, with a large number of departments and
some very large departments, some are well organized to go after awards,
Professor McCormick said. For smaller
departments, he agreed with Dean Green, it is a workload issue. He said it is also his impression that in
general more work is falling on the shoulders of chairs so that even though it
may be in their interest to nominate people for awards, it is too much
work. So, Dean Green said to Dr. Bacig,
do not let the process get any more difficult.
Professor Berlin said that the Morse-Alumni committee
addressed this issue because it knew this Committee was concerned about the
number of nominations. In the view of
the alumni, the Morse-Alumni award is taken very seriously, it is an enormous
honor that very few deserve, and there should not be a lot of nominations. There should be an exceedingly high standard
and the award should count for a lot. It
could be that there are departments deciding not to make nominations unless
they really have a good candidate.
Professor Berlin agreed that the point about smaller departments is
valid but the numbers may not be as bad as some may think. For example, one-half of the CLA faculty on
the Twin Cities campus are relatively new, Professor McCormick added, and most
of them have probably not accumulated a record that makes them suitable for
nomination for the award.
Dr. Swan said he asked Dr. Ellinger in his office to compare
the dossier size at
Professor Cardwell said that the nominating committees do
not always have all the data on student evaluations, that they do not have the
same data for UMD candidates, and that he was comfortable with 4-8
letters. In terms of getting more
nominees, he said that being nominated is itself recognition at the department
college level; nominees should be gratified that their colleagues think enough
of them to nominate them. It is often a
problem for nominees to compose a personal statement; it would be helpful if
everyone prepared such a statement as part of their personnel file, a
reflective document that would be useful to personnel committees. The Committee should promote this idea
because it would be beneficial.
Is there a way to activate colleges, Professor Seashore
asked? She said that hers does not have
an active nominating committee but it has wonderful teachers. She said she doubted it had occurred to the
college that it should be activist in making nominations. The system works now—people who are nominated
and receive awards are very good—but the process needs to be more systematic,
especially in small colleges.
Professor Berlin agreed with Professor Cardwell about
changing the dossiers. She said that her
understanding is that the nominating committee's work is done, but she asked if
the Committee would be interested in having the current members help draft
dossier guidelines. Professor Hoover
agreed; Professor Berlin said she would contact committee members to volunteer
to work on the guidelines and let Professor Hoover know when they had something
prepared.
The Committee voted unanimously in favor of the nominees
forwarded by the two committees.
2. Draft
Policy on the Evaluation of Instruction
Professor Hoover welcomed Vice Chancellor John Schwaller
to the meeting, by telephone connection, to discuss the provision of the draft
policy on the evaluation of instruction regarding the disposition of written
comments on student evaluation forms.
There has been extended discussion about who should receive the written
comments, an issue on which people have different opinions. The Committee on Faculty Affairs had a lively
discussion and adopted language that would let each campus decide on who gets
to see the written comments. (The two
Faculty Affairs resolutions seemed contradictory, Ms. Haas commented.)
Professor Hoover noted that Professor Weinsheimer felt
strongly about this issue. Professor Weinsheimer
said he would prefer to drop the language concerning written comments (the
draft language provided that written comments go only to the instructor) and
made the following comments.
1) At present, students can make their views known
where they will count: in the deliberations of committees that review
faculty. The effect of the proposed
policy is to disempower students, silencing their voices and reducing each one
to some fraction of a percentage in a histogram.
2) Perhaps the intent of the proposed policy is to
prevent irrelevant insults from becoming public. If so, it overreacts in the extreme by
outlawing all comments whatever from becoming public.
3) There is no way to differentiate insults from
criticisms. It is not possible to say
that "Prof. X should learn how to teach" is merely an insult, while
"Prof. X needs to take a course in pedagogical methods" amounts to
legitimate criticism. The effect of the
proposed policy to silence insults is in fact to silence criticism and twist
evaluations toward the positive by insisting that "complaints" have
no place on evaluations and should be directed elsewhere.
4) Footnote 8 alludes to "ways other than
anonymous comments on forms that students can make their dissatisfaction known
to the department or college." I am
of the opinion that making dissatisfaction known constitutes precisely one
proper and desired end of student evaluations and that the very purpose of
anonymity is to protect students who want to blow the whistle. In fact I know of no other avenues by which
students can make their dissatisfactions known, nor can I imagine any whereby
students would enjoy the same anonymity.
5) One of the
aims behind the proposed policy seems to be to separate formative from
summative information. And the idea is
that written comments are more useful for formative purposes. With all this I agree. But the fact is that written comments are
more useful for both purposes. Part of
the reason is that in written comments the students need not be constrained by
the parameters of the specific questions asked.
For instance, we include no question about whether the teacher came to
class late or dismissed class frequently; but if they did, should that fact be
concealed from P&T committees?
In every respect, the proposed policy discourages
honest and full student evaluation of teaching and thus undermines our
announced aim of "achieving instruction of the highest quality.
Several Committee members
voiced agreement with Professor Weinsheimer's sentiments.
Professor McCormick said that if an instructor is doing
inappropriate things, anonymous comments on student evaluation forms are not
the way to report them. Anonymous
comments would not hold up in a court of law.
If anyone is telling students how to fill out the forms, that is a gross
violation of the policy. Students should
not be waiting to make anonymous comments; there should be other ways to
identify problems.
Dr. Schwaller said that was not the intent of the Morris
practice. They take irrelevant comments
out of the record.
Professor Leger said he agreed with Professor Weinsheimer
and added that if students know their comments go only to the instructor, it
will only add to their questions about what uses are being made of the results
of the evaluations. He said he feared
that students would not support the process if they did not believe their
comments would have any effect. Ms. Haas
also agreed with Professor Weinsheimer.
Mr. Hirsch reported that he had had an instructor who had
attacked his character and he brought the issue to the attention of the
department. His classmates were shocked
that he would do so but he did not feel that writing comments on the evaluation
form would matter.
Professor Seashore agreed with Professor Weinsheimer as
well. There was something about the
nature of the Faculty Affairs conversation (she concluded from reading the
minutes of the meeting) that makes one conclude that faculty are vulnerable and
students are powerful. That is not what
she sees, she said; faculty have a lot of power over students. If faculty do not carry out their
responsibilities, there are not many ways that students can make their views
known. If they complain, life can be
made miserable for them. It is asking a
lot of an undergraduate student to complain to a department. The process, however, must make sure that the
occasional odd comment on forms is not given much attention—one comment in
seven years that someone is a racist is not an issue but ten comments per year
that someone is a racist raises questions.
When she was an associate dean she had few tools to help faculty who
were weak in instruction; these comments were one of them.
Dr. Shaw asked if there is any way that vicious comments
can be stricken from the record. The
comments at the Faculty Affairs meeting say that people have been wounded by
destructive comments. And what does
"public" mean if it says the comments are made public—to a chair? To a promotion and tenure committee? Can whoever reviews the comments remove the
irrelevant ones? And do vicious comments
really end up hurting someone's career?
Dean Green said he could not imagine that an outlier comment could hurt
anyone's career, but he could imagine that if 10% of comments said someone is a
bad teacher they could have an effect.
It is helpful to have comments along with the spread of the ratings
because they illuminate the range of responses.
The comments provide valuable information that help to improve
instruction and aid on the assessment side.
When a chair or committee only has the numbers they are making
inferences in the dark.
Dr. Schwaller said that all Morris students must take a
first-year seminar. He reads every
comment. He said he has great confidence
in the faculty but the comments are essential for programmatic assessments to
help determine if the seminars are achieving their goals. Without the comments, they would need to
create an instrument. The use of the
comments has little to do with the faculty member and more with assessing the
curriculum.
Professor Weinsheimer moved to eliminate the language in
the draft policy providing that written comments go only to the
instructor. The motion passed 10-3.
The Committee turned next to the issue of verbal anchors
being attached to each point on the rating scales. Professor Hendel had provided Professor
Hoover suggested anchors.
The Committee took strong dislike to the scale proposed
for one question and asked Professor Hoover to seek a different set of
words. The Committee approved the scales
for the other four questions. In the
case of the scale that was not supported, Professor Seashore said that the more
she looks at the proposed anchors, the more she believes that if the anchors
are to be added, the Committee should rethink the questions as well because
some of them are bad questions. For
example, she said, the question that reads "how would you rate the
instructor's knowledge of the subject matter?" is something students
simply are not in a position to assess.
She has published in her field for 30 years but every term she receives
a few ratings that say she only has average knowledge. What they are rating with that question is
her COMMUNICATION skills, not her knowledge—they do not have the capacity to
rate her knowledge. Once the door is
opened to mediocre anchors, the Committee should reconsider the questions.
Professor McCormick recalled that the Committee discussed
at its last meeting whether changing the anchors should mean changing the
questions—and the Committee concluded it did not wish to go that far, even if
it had reservations about the questions.
There were no other suggestions for wording changes in
the questions. Professor Hoover said she
would speak with Professor Hendel to obtain a different set of anchors for the
one question.
Professor Seashore raised a question about having the
term "adequate" be the midpoint of the scales. The words are already skewed to the positive,
she said; the objective should be to achieve a normal distribution. If one knows the results will be skewed,
either the scale or the anchors should be changed. Professor Curley, however, said that surveys
are typically correlated with other things and that a normal distribution is
not an issue in this case. If the
results of the evaluations are on the upper end of the scale, that is fine—the
University is doing its job. This is
The Committee approved the new scales 11-2.
3. Teaching
the Constitution
Professor Hoover now welcomed to the meeting John
Engelen, Director of Federal Relations for the University.
Mr. Engelen noted he had been asked to speak to the
Committee about two issues: the new
requirement to teach the constitution on September 17 (Constitution Day) and
increasing external demands for accountability.
He told the Committee that he is the federal lobbyist for the University
and has an active agenda; there is also a website that people can look at to
learn about federal issues.
[ http://www1.umn.edu/urelate/fedrel/
] He asked at the outset that Committee
members remember that he is only the messenger.
When Congress passed the FY2005 Omnibus appropriations
bill last fall, it included a provision that all educational institutions
receiving federal funds must teach about the constitution on Constitution Day,
September 17. The bill does not say what
to teach or how to teach it. The
legislation was offered by Senator Robert Byrd of
When Congress had not completed a number of the
appropriations bills that were due last October 1 because there were a lot of
disagreements about them. They postponed
further action until after the election.
After they returned, they bumped up against deadlines to act on the
appropriations bills, started work late, and ended up with a 1900-page piece of
legislation that had about 3000 pages of comments. Even marginal notes became law. In a closed session, Senator Byrd wanted to
make September 17 a national holiday but accepted as a compromise the proposal
that institutions receiving federal funds must teach the constitution. There was no consultation with the higher
education community, the K-12 community, or any Congressional committees. It was passed so it is law.
Once it became known, Mr. Engelen related, he started
receiving emails and telephone calls from people who were very upset and who
saw this as an attack on academic freedom.
He expected that by February the institutions would have guidance on how
to implement the law from the Department of Education; they do not.
Las week,
a delegation of higher education representatives met with the members of
Senator Byrd's staff to find out what he would accept and what he would
not. Those staff are also concerned that
the Department of Education has done nothing.
Senator Byrd will fight any interpretation that says institutions can do
whatever they want to or that permits tallying courses that already teach the
constitution. He wants something that
goes beyond what is already done. It is
acceptable for the Department of Education to offer examples but it should not
prescribe what institutions do. That is
most likely what will happen, Mr. Engelen said:
there will be no prescription about what institutions must teach so long
as it is about the constitution.
Into
whose office does this responsibility fall at the
No
one is willing to take on Senator Byrd on this issue. Given the number of challenges that
universities face in
Did
he come to the Committee for cover, Dean Green asked? That would help, Mr. Engelen said. They University will be stuck with the
requirement for September 17; it would be fruitful to see where the Department
of Education is going with it. They are
not enthusiastic about the requirement, he added. He said he would keep the Committee informed
about what develops.
4. External
Demands for Accountability
Mr. Engelen next told the Committee that Associate Vice
President Peterson, who could not attend the meeting today, informed him that
next year at the legislature will be a year of accountability because the
Higher Education Services Office is working on recommendations about higher
education accountability. They like the
University's accountability report but want to make it more accessible to the public.
Is this primarily fiscal accountability, Professor
Weinsheimer asked? It starts with that,
Mr. Engelen said. It could go farther,
however, Dr. Swan said.
At the federal level, budgets are tight, Mr. Engelen
said. When budgets are this tight, he
indicated that accountability issues will be raised on the expenditure of
federal research dollars as well as on issues more directly related to higher
education that are dealt with in the Higher Education Act.
On research compliance:
Federal agencies will see a lot of intrusions, audits, and questions
about what the taxpayers are getting for their investment.
Regarding reauthorization of the Higher Education
Act: bills are starting to be introduced
and there have been big policy speeches in the last few weeks. Margaret Spellings, the new Secretary of
Education (as White Domestic Policy Advisor during President Bush's first term,
she is one of the people largely responsible for No Child Left Behind) has made
it clear she will view higher education through the same lenses. Up to now, the administration has had little
to say about higher education, but it looks like it will say more now, and from
a No Child Left Behind perspective. That
will mean a lot more information-gathering (e.g., graduation rates, student
record data). The most extensive request
would be a requirement to share individual data, Dr. Swan said. Is that not a violation of law, Professor
McCormick asked? Mr. Engelen said the
law could change. It will be necessary
to address the question of how to keep student records confidential. But the federal government wants the
information because it is trying to figure out benchmarks for holding higher
education institutions accountable.
There will be proponents of consumer access to information, so parents
can have access to information to make better decisions for their
children. It is not clear what happens
to institutions who do not meet the benchmarks.
What sanctions would there be?
If one talks about common accountability benchmarks, Mr.
Engelen said, do private institutions equal for-profit institutions equal
research universities? Who says what
they have in common?
The biggest underlying issue for the University as a
public institution, it seems to him, Mr. Engelen said, is that
The initial action will be in the U.S. House and it will
be the most ideological and perhaps inflexible.
The Senate is likely to be more deliberate and more open to
compromise.
Professor Weinsheimer asked if there are areas that
people perceive as broken and need to be fixed.
Higher education has created some animosity around the cost of college
and tuition increases, Mr. Engelen said; there was proposed legislation to
impose caps on tuition increases.
Proponents now are talking about reporting, watch lists, but not
sanctions. If it had passed, Professor
McCormick asked, and caps were imposed, would they apply to all? They would, Mr. Engelen said, and would be
tied to the cost of education. Dr. Swan
observed that a 5% increase in tuition at a private university could easily be
more than 10% or 15% at a public university.
Nor does the federal approach take into account the fact the University
lost $185 million in state funds, Mr. Engelen pointed out.
Mr. Engelen said there is no grassroots call to action
now. He has been on an educational mission
with respect to the Congressional delegation.
Professor Cardwell asked if the representatives are on the same page
with the University. Mr. Engelen said
the University has an excellent relationship with every member of the
delegation and he has found something at the University that every member can
be proud of. There are 30-40
Congressional visits to a University campus each year, and the goal (which they
have exceeded) is to have each member of Congress visit the University twice
per year. None of them are antagonistic;
the University is working from a very strong base.
Is there any reaction to the vision of being one of the
top three public universities in the world, Dr. Shaw asked? That will have an impact, Mr. Engelen
said. The Congressional delegation wants
Professor McCormick said one of the loopier ideas he has
heard is the application of No Child Left Behind to higher education. Would it be No Undergraduate Left
Behind? He said he has also heard about
moving more to vouchers. How would that
work at the federal level, with federal funds?
Federal funds come primarily for research. And financial aid is already a voucher
system, Professor Seashore observed—students can take their aid wherever they
wish. Mr. Engelen said those proposals
would have no effect on federal student financial aid but it would have an
effect in the state. If the legislature
withdraws operating funds from the institutions (money the University uses in
part for research), and puts it into vouchers, the University would be a
different place. That would destroy the
infrastructure, Professor McCormick commented.
Asked about direct loans and guaranteed loans, Mr.
Engelen said there will be a "battle royal." One should never underestimate the lobbying
power of financial institutions with a vested interest in the guaranteed
lending program, he said, and they will oppose an expansion of the direct
lending program. A recent Congressional
Budget Office (CBO) report said that direct lending was a revenue-generator for
the federal government, so the University, as a direct lending institution, has
that on its side, but there will still be a big battle over the issues.
Professor Hoover thanked Mr. Engelen for joining the
meeting and adjourned it at 2:55.
--
Gary Engstrand