In advance of the start of the semester, I am reviewing the teaching evaluations for our sessional instructors in Calgary and Edmonton. We are very fortunate to have some fabulous teachers in those cities, individuals who are available and willing to undertake part-time work for us. Evaluations are not available to instructors until grades are submitted, of course, and so it is nice to provide quick turnaround on the data after that so instructors can make necessary adjustments early in the new semester.
For tenured and tenure-track faculty, there is no established schedule for reviewing evaluations. I like to look at mine as soon as they are available, but I will admit that they can be depressing if read, say, just before Christmas. I am fortunate to have had 97% positive responses over fifteen years, but one comment from a disgruntled student can stay with you through multiple egg nogs, I assure you. I have a colleague who compiles all his evaluations and has a look every two years, just before our progress reports are due with the Dean. Imagine the shock of ten or fifteen disgruntled students all presented at the same time.
Now, I am not suggesting that there is no practical value to these forms. Indeed, as I have said, I am reviewing them promptly so that their benefit may best be felt by our sessional instructors in the north. But evaluations are not without problems, and our faculty is looking to improve the questions asked. One of my pet peeves over the years has been how students have used more general questions to comment on the physical appearance of instructors.
Women and men, old and young, get the same feedback: complaints about hair, clothing, body odor. I think university instructors are less vain than your average professional, but having a nineteen year-old who lives in a cap comment on your favorite sweater seems to be universally galling.
As I was steaming my woolens and pressing my cottons over the holidays, I could not help but remember a spring day years ago when, walking between the physical education building and university hall, I ran into a graduating student, a young woman who had completed successfully, and with some elan, a number of my courses.
"You must be happy to be done," I said.
"Yes. No more having to listen to professors in cheap suits day in and day out!"
I was stunned.
"Cheap?" I thought to myself. "Cheap?"
Perhaps I am more vain than are my colleagues.
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