Faculty evaluation system at UH sparks student interest at UHCL
Every semester, college students are faced with the task of choosing the classes and professors they wish to take. Many students use websites such as RateMyProfessor.com to learn what they can about professors before enrolling in courses. However, some universities, like the University of Houston (UH), offer a different option to solving such curiosity.
UH allows students access to past faculty evaluation reports completed by students, giving students insight into what they can expect in the quality of potential courses and professors. The reports only show the numerical ratings of professors and their courses, excluding confidential student-written comments. The reports are available online to UH students through the Measurement and Evaluation Center and are also available as hard copies at the MD Anderson Library. Other universities that allow students access to past evaluations include The University of Texas Austin, Texas State University and Texas A&M University.
UH is the only campus in the UH System that provides such an option to students. Pat Cuchens, executive director for UHCL’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness, said that such a feature is an “individual college decision” and not something all UH System campuses are required to do as a whole.
A spokesperson from the University of Houston Downtown’s Technology Teaching and Learning Center explained there is “no particular reason” for UHD not providing such access to students, but noted that UHD “doesn’t have that option” and that the university has not chosen to “explore” such an option yet. The University of Houston Victoria’s faculty evaluation system is similar to UHCL and UHD.
Making students’ evaluation results available to students is not a new practice. Lisa Gossett, associate professor of environmental management and a former president of UHCL’s Faculty Senate, said Rice University made its reports available in their library when she was a student there in the late 1970’s.
Gossett said making such reports available is an “open records issue” and she feels that perhaps the option has not been made available at UHCL because of a lack of discussion on the matter, despite the issue still being one discussed in higher education.
“I just don’t think people have been asking in recent years,” Gossett said. “For such a thing to happen we would really have to get a discussion going.”
Gossett, who said she is a full “supporter of transparency,” said she was not in a position to speak for the faculty as a whole, but she could see why they would be uncomfortable because the reports are “one of several factors that affect teacher evaluations and post-tenure reviews.”
Gossett nevertheless expressed her opinion that the evaluations would be more credible than RateMyProfessor because of the questions the evaluations have students answer.
Izuh Ikpeama, UHCL’s Student Government Association (SGA) president, gave his support for the option becoming available at UHCL because of its advantages over other rating systems.
“I think that would be a great system for UHCL to implement; it would have a lot of advantages over RateMyProfessor as well,” Ikpeama said. “A lot of the times the reviews on RateMyProfessor are biased, and you only get a negative side of how a certain class or professor was.”
Ikpeama also said how the reports would be beneficial due to students being able to access scores for every class.
“Adding this system would be beneficial because students would get to see comprehensive feedback from all of their peers that took the class,” Ikpeama said. “Moreover, they’d get to see recent feedback from current students as opposed to RateMyProfessor which sometimes only has student reviews from years ago.”
Steven Berberich, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, chose not to give a definitive opinion on the matter, pointing out he is still in the process of learning about UHCL’s system of evaluations.
“I am still learning about the student evaluation process at University of Houston-Clear Lake including how the evaluations are given, what questions are asked during the evaluations, how that information is shared with faculty and used to improve instruction,” Berberich said. “As you know, I joined UHCL and UH System just this summer, so I am still in the discovery phase not only about processes at our university, but also about higher education in the state.”
Student interest in past faculty evaluation reports has been noted by UHCL’s SGA Senate and the topic will be discussed at the next senate meeting on Oct. 4.
