[In these minutes: Vice Chair Election, Student Release Questions]

[These minutes reflect discussion and debate at a committee of the University of Minnesota Senate; none of the comments, conclusions, or actions reported in these minutes represent the views of, nor are they binding on, the Senate the Administration, or the Board of Regents.]

PRESENT: Alicia Smith (acting chair), Neal Brown, Kris Schwebler.

ABSENT: Jeni Kiewatt.

Kris Schwebler was elected SSCC/Student Senate Vice Chair.

Professor Cathrine Wambach, Chair of the Educational Policy Committee (SCEP), joined the meeting to discuss the student release questions. She said that there are two parts to the evaluation form, the student release questions and the questioned used by the faculty and department heads for feedback, promotion and tenure decisions, and salary increases. Both are mandated by a Senate policy.

She said that the student release questions were revised first since the old questions were clunky and uninformative. The revised questioned were piloted in spring 2006 and then approved by SCEP. The students have been waiting for the faculty to revise their questions. Now that these are almost to complete, the total form includes a lengthy set of questions. The student side has seven categories with 17 questions, while the faculty side has just six questions.

When the form, with both new faculty and student questions, was piloted students expressed concern that the form was too long, the questions were repetitious, and the rating scale from the front did not match the back side.

She then proposed that the student release questions be changed. David Langley from the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) worked with the faculty on their questions and then recommended a set of four questions for the student side since some of the current student questions can be answered from the course guide.

Another option instead of releasing a set of responses to questions is compiling a list of ‘exceptional faculty’ who score in the top third on the core faculty questions. Faculty would still need to agree to being on this list.

Professor Wambach said that there are pros and cons to each possibility. The cons of the student release questions is that they supply limited information since only ten percent of faculty consent to the release and that faculty need to agree to the release before they see the results. For the ‘exceptional faculty’ list, the pro is that over fifty percent participate at SCHOOL while the con is that there is less potential for information on poor classes to be released.

She said that the committee will need to decide which option they prefer:

Members then made the following comments:

Professor Wambach said that evaluations can make it hard to tell if a student is responding to a faculty or teaching assistant. Cultural differences can also lead to lower ratings for some instructors. However, faculty receive written comments from at least half of the students in most classes.

She said that on-line evaluations usually have a poor response rate, except in the AHC which has tied release of the final grade to completion of the evaluation.

The committee then discussed the following amendment to the questions:

The revised questions are:

Professor Wambach said that the faculty questions will be presented to the Faculty Senate in November or February for approval. Once the student questions are approved, they can be presented to SCEP for final approval. All questions need to be finalized by March so that new forms can be printed for spring semester. She suggested that the students work with David Langley on the phrasing of questions.

Neal Brown noted that the Crookston Student Association has its recycling bin evaluations. An informative session on the proposed smoking ban will be held tonight, to be following by a forum.

With no further business, Alicia Smith thanked all members for attending and adjourned the meeting.

Becky Hippert
University Senate