THEBATl:
est
Opinion
The Battalion
Page 9 • Friday, December 6, ^
ICO
The Evaluation Problem
btudent apathy and untimely results hamper the effectiveness of evaluations
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KELLN ZIMMER
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or years now,
students have
been trou
bled with under-
■anding the exact
■irpose of end-of-
course evaluations. This lack of
understanding is shown in the num
ber of people that leave class as the
^instructor walks out to have them
idniinistered. Again this year, stu-
pents stared at the Texas A&M
lourse evaluations that are handed
out in every one of their classes, and
Igain these students have yet to see
lithe point of them.
I A favorite question asked on eval
uations has always been, “Is this
course required?”
Even if it is a supporting course or
an elective, chances are it is some
how required for a student’s degree,
li the question is asking whether the
lourse is required for a student’s
nujor. it should be clarified.
I Unclear wording aside, the
llnstructor and Course Appraisal”
lould use some reworking. The eval-
btion process is somewhat foreign to
ludents completing the evaluations.
Jhe lack of noticeable results from
feedback increases the apathy which
|lagues student evaluations. Students
are unaware of what is accomplished
b\ completing evaluations.
As it is stands now, evaluations
e administered at the end of the
|rm and are reviewed and presented
lack to the department at the begin
ning of the next term. According to
Measurement and Research, the indi-
jidual departments are given the
Jesuits and determine how they will
pse the information.
I There is no room for progress in
Such a system. In case of poor evalu
ations, professors cannot be held
ccountable for their methods
ecause by the time the information
caches them their jobs are secure for
nother semester and they, in some
ases, may go on using poor teaching
methods unchecked.
To combat this and in an
effort to provide more imme
diate feedback, the A&M
Student Senate has called for
midterm evaluations.
But this is a resource that
already exists at A&M. According to
Nancy Simpson, Director of the
Center for Teaching Excellence
(CTE), there are resources currently
available for teachers to conduct
midterm evaluations.
“The Early Feedback Program in
conjunction with Measurement and
Research Services allows for profes
sors to evaluate their classes early in
the semester in hopes of providing
feedback during the term,” Simpson
said. CTE administers an evalua
tion mid-semester,
much like the current
evaluations from
Measurement and
Research, and there
are spaces under
neath the scale for
student comments.
CTE officials also
perform class
room evaluations
to make recom
mendations to
teachers in effort to
improve their
teaching, according
to Simpson.
The professor must
request this service,
though. “The program is in its third
semester of operation, and right now,
we have as much business as our
office can handle with our current
staff,” Simpson said. CTE recom
mends teachers perform their own
informal evaluations at midterm.
Mark Troy, associate director of
the Office of Measurement and
Research, said midterm evaluations
on the same scale as the current final
ones would not be feasible for the
office to conduct at this time. “We
receive over 150,000 forms for more
than 5,000 courses.” The turnaround
time for the final evaluations is
somewhere between two and three
weeks for most of the classes.
“Due to the volume, it is very
unlikely that all of the
course evaluations will
be returned before the start of the
new semester. In fact, it is very likely
that many will still be here at the
start of the spring semester,” Troy
said. Evaluations cannot be processed
during exam week, due to final
exams that must be handled by
Measurement and Research Services.
The most compelling argument
against the current form of evalua
tions is how the students regard
them. Many students choose to leave
class rather than complete the evalua
tion. Others simply bubble in
“strongly agree” on all of the ques
tions, get a free pencil and get out of
class fifteen minutes early.
For evaluations to be effec
tive, student
should real
ize that
departments
and the
University take
the evaluations
quite serious
ly, Troy said.
“The evalua
tions are very
important in
promotion and
tenure applica
tions and
University man
date says you
must show evidence
of teaching ability.
These evaluations are
taken more seriously
than students realize and
perhaps somewhat less
than faculty fear,” he said.
Dr. Larry Gresham,
associate professor of
Marketing, and past director of CTE,
sees the evaluation system as a valu
able tool for faculty choosing to take
advantage of the information. They
have the opportunity to take the eval
uations and use them to improve their
courses the next time
they teach and take
Reverse discrimination?
student comments and concerns into
consideration, he said.
Dr. Gresham also is a proponent
for midterm evaluations and the serv
ices provided by CTE.
“Midterm evaluations are especial
ly useful if a class is being taught for
the first time or if it is professor or
graduate student’s first time to teach.
In those cases you really do need
evaluation before the course is over
in order to improve and address
teaching issues,” he said.
Unfortunately though, according
to Gresham, “Professors that need the
services the least are the ones taking
advantage of them.”
If a University-wide midterm eval
uation is not a feasible project to
undertake, there should be some
measure to allow more teachers to be
evaluated mid semester with the help
of CTE.
Confusing forms, slow turnaround
and outdated questions mar the cur
rent process as does the stated pur
pose of determine pay raises, promo
tion, tenure reviews, and building
teaching portfolios.
If a system was created to allow
for rotation of courses and instructors
were required to perform midterm
evaluations, perhaps the course and
the teaching would be the focus of
the evaluations and positive feedback
would be gained, thus improving the
quality of courses offered at A&M.
Students will feel they have a role
in the development of their education
rather than simply the career assess
ment of their instructors if measures
are taken while they are enrolled in a
course.
For now though, students will
have to live with the evaluation
process and keep their fingers
crossed that by bubbling in the
“Expected Grade in Course” question
with an “A,” they will see results.
Kelln Zimmer is a senior
English major.
MAIL CALL
(U-WIRE) BOSTON — Somewhere
between the massive Thanksgiving dinner at
my grandmother’s house, the hours spent
lying on the family room couch catching up
°n “The Osbournes” and Lifetime
Television for Women, and the various trips
back and forth to the fridge for my third,
fourth and fifth serving of Mom’s home
made apple pie, I devoted a very small
amount of time to completing dozens of law
school and graduate school applications.
The applications, which do not differ
much from the dozens of college applica
tions I completed four years ago, include
generic background information, transcripts,
^commendations and some sort of personal
statement or essay.
However, what was striking — and what
don’t remember when applying to col
leges -— were the “optional minority or
special circumstances questionnaires”
attached to the university applications —
questionnaires that allow a student to
ex Plain any factors about family back
ground, economic circumstances or special
responsibilities that may have affected his
°r her academic performance.
Looking over the “optional minority or
special circumstances questionnaire,” there
w ere no boxes I could “x” or spaces I
could fill in. I could not check the ethnicity
box because 1 am neither American Indian
uor Asian, Pacific Islander nor bilingual,
African-American nor Hispanic. Nor could
. mdicate I was the victim of poverty, the
mhabitant of a disadvantaged home or the
child of divorcees — nor explain how I
support a family or single-handedly raise a
child. And though I looked for it, there was
n ° box for “white child of middle-class,
Pnvately schooled, suburban parents” —
^d there was no blank space for me to
elaborate on my “Leave it to Beaver”
breets “Saved by the Bell” cookie-cutter
background.
. To me, the “optional minority or special
circumstances questionnaire” was puzzling,
art of me couldn’t help but wonder if the
scrimination, which affirmative action tries
b hard to prevent, had somehow been
versed and released itself on our genera-
ion of unsuspecting high school and college
dents, who naively think that hard work
d good grades are the only prerequisites
br gening accepted at a university. But then,
bought, while affirmative action is not a
Perfect system, it does seem to have the best
intentions: to provide equal opportunity
gardless of background, race, etc.
With the justices calling
the shots, one side of the legal
battlefield is the University
of Michigan and its equal
opportunity admission
policy.
Therefore, to me, the concept of affirma
tive action seems a completely no-win situa
tion — a factor that may explain why the
United States Supreme Court has continu
ously dodged the issue and refused to hear
relevant cases. And not since 1978, when it
ambiguously deemed sustaining racial quo
tas unconstitutional for federally funded col
leges and universities in their application
selections, have the nine justices agreed to
tackle the constitutionality of affirmative
action in the selection of college applicants.
But on Monday, the justices stepped —
or in the more geriatric cases — shuffled,
alongside the issue of affirmative action,
back into the limelight to referee what could
be a colossal battle in the making. On
Monday, the Supreme Court justices granted
certiorari to two pending lawsuits against
the University of Michigan — lawsuits filed
on the premise that certain white applicants
were denied admittance in favor of less-
qualified minority students.
From where they stand, the justices are
posed to make the first significant ruling on
affirmative action in the last quarter-century
and perhaps make “optional minority or
special circumstances questionnaires” a
thing of the past.
With the justices calling the shots, one
side of the legal battlefield is the University
of Michigan and its equal-opportunity
admission policy. It is claimed in the lawsuit
that the University of Michigan ran two sep
arate admissions systems in order to gener
ate a pre-determined racial profile of an
incoming class.
One admission system evaluated non
minority students on a 150-point scale,
while a second system automatically gave
blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans an
initial 20-point advantage over the non
minority students. And while this system is
now outdated and archaic, according to
CNN, University of Michigan admissions
officers, like the majority of private and
public universities, freely admit to taking
“race into account as a factor among many
in order to pursue the educational benefit of
diversity.”
Facing the university are two students
who claim themselves victims of racial dis
crimination. They allege their test scores
and grades far surpass those of accepted
minority students. And while they may
indeed have suffered at the hands of
“reverse discrimination,” the students were
hand-selected from thousands of other
potential white students as “perfect” stu
dents by money-hungry lawyers and anti
affirmative action interest groups as the
impetus of a monumental lawsuit against
the university.
And tucked somewhere off to the side
are two additional, and much more impor
tant, opponents: the United States
Constitution and the university’s generic
equal-opportunity credo.
The former — which abolished slavery,
guarantees the freedoms of life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness and most impor
tantly, demands that no individual or group
is given advantages based on race or reli
gion — stands ready to clash with the latter
— a policy held by many public and private
schools and insisting education is better
served by diversity.
Affirmative action began as an attempt to
rectify gross racial injustices of the past —
and in order to offer equal opportunities to
everyone on the racial spectrum of the
future. It made it possible for the children
and grandchildren of poor minorities, who
spent their lives and livelihoods as second-
class American citizens riding in the backs
of buses and sitting in the balconies of
movie theaters, to receive the same opportu
nities in employment and education despite
the economic and educational advantages
within non-minority communities.
This June, the Supreme Court will make
one of the most controversial decisions on
affirmative action since 1978. “Optional
minority or special circumstances” question
naires may become a thing of the past — or
they may be protected by the Constitution
as a fixed element of the future. And in
choosing between the two, the Supreme
Court will inevitably make dramatic
changes in the process of applying to insti
tutions of higher education.
For now, however. I’m just thankful my
applications are already in the mail.
Aggie spirit lacking
on today's campus
My first semester as a fish has
been somewhat discouraging.
Everyday I walk around campus
and I can't believe what I see.
Aggies are supposed to be stu
dents of respect and honor, and
at least once a week I see fellow
Aggies walking on the grass at
the Memorial Student Center.
Rarely will I get a reply when I
throw out a friendly "Howdy!" —
not even an acknowledgement.
It seems like no one knows
about the significance of the
Century Tree anymore, or even
knows what it is.
I see people carelessly walking
under it every day. I don't under
stand what has happened to the
12th Man.
Fortunately I was blessed with
the opportunity to be at the last
Bonfire in 1998, and I saw the
true Aggie Spirit.
Hundreds of students crossing
University at Northgate sounded
off with a thunderous "Whoop!"
as my brother blew Hullabaloo
on his horn.
Neither a Farmers Fight Festival
nor anything else could ever take
the place of Bonfire. The thought
of that experience sends chills
running down my spine.
One of the main reasons I
chose this great university was
for the Aggie traditions that I
thought would still be here.
Now there are only a handful
of true Ags. Just this past week
end I was talking to my brother,
Clint Harris '00, about his experi
ences while at A&M, and he told
me that everyone said howdy,
and every time a professor
would mention an upcoming
exam the whole class would
hiss, and whoop when they
mentioned holidays or breaks.
He, too, was disappointed
when I told him how it is now.
He said exactly what I was think
ing: It's like going to school with
a bunch of t-sips!
Now I ask you, Ags, why has it
changed? It is up to us to rekin
dle and keep that Fightin' Texas
Aggie Spirit.
So when you leave class today,
say "Howdy" to the people you
pass, hiss at the students wear
ing burnt orange, and wildcat
when something motivates you.
Be Aggies!
Cody Harris
Class of 2006
Denise Spellman is a columnist
at Boston University.