Teacher evaluations are something students come into contact with at the end of a semester to grade professors on their teaching performance in the classroom. “The purpose of both the objective and the subjective part is the improvement of instruction, which leads to improved student learning,” Dr. Alice Pecoraro, vice president of Academic Affairs, said.

Faculty members study the results of those evaluations and use the results to make changes or modifications in their classes.

“When students complete the evaluation there are two parts, one part is the objective part which consists of answers that are marked on bubble sheets,” Pecoraro said.

“They also have an opportunity to complete a subjective part, which includes answering questions about the course.”

The objective portion is brought to the dean’s office, and it is submitted to the Office of Institutional Research where it is analyzed.

After the results are recorded, the department head and dean have access to a copy.

The subjective part is held in the deans office until the faculty member turns in his final grades. Then, access to the evaluations is given to the teacher.

“The faculty member is the only person who reads the subjective part that the students have written,” Pecoraro said.

“Faculty members can obtain these sheets in a sealed envelope in the dean’s office after final grades have been submitted.”

These evaluations are studied as part of the overall evaluation of teaching. There are many other sources of information a department head uses to evaluate a faculty member’s performance.

“If the faculty members want to be evaluated for merit raises, they have to make those evaluations available. The department head then uses that as part of the determination of the faculty member’s performance. That is only one, of course, of the attributes that are looked at in a person’s portfolio,” Dr. Ridley Gros, dean of college of business administration, said.

Although teachers are not allowed to see each others’ evaluations, they do know how they rate in some way.

“They will have some idea of comparing themselves to, say, the overall university average, so they will know how they stack up compared to the rest of the University. Faculty members are not the sole measure of how they do their job in the classroom,” Gros said.

“They are only one part in assessing the overall quality of teaching,” Dr. Thomas Mortillaro, dean of college of arts and sciences, said.

“Teachers know the department head is going to use the student evaluations as part of a measurement for a review. That is, one small but significant indicator of how well they are doing their jobs,” he said.

However, should students have access to the information, that they as a college community have provided?

“My office has not received any requests from students to review a compilation of the evaluations,” Pecoraro said.

This information is considered part of a faculty member’s personnel file.

“Because it is an evaluation of an employee, from our perspective, even though it is from down the ladder rather than from up the ladder, if you want to look at it that way, it is still a qualitative judgment of a third party,” Mike Delaune, director of University Relations, said.

There are some thoughts as to having the evaluations made public.

“I think that students should be able to see the teacher evaluation results, not necessarily specifically, but as an overall population, what they think,” Maureen Gelston, psychology junior from Metairie, said.

“The caution that I would have in any type of single instrument is that we would see total cause and effect based upon a person’s perception as a client, in the case of what they are experiencing in the class room,” Gros said.

“That is too complicated a subject for us to use just that instrument alone.”

Mortillaro said that he has seen a university make teacher evaluations public, and expressed his opinion on the subject.

“I am indifferent when it comes to that, it would not bother me if we did that, but there are pros and cons,” Mortillaro said.

Students are also faced with whether or not they think that the evaluations would be beneficial as public information.

“I think the whole teacher evaluation is obsolete at the time because most students go and do it as fast as they possibly can so they can get out of class early. So, they need to come up with a better system of actually doing teacher evaluations than the normal scheme they use right now,” Bryan Beach, business administration senior from Baton Rouge, said.

Teachers have their own opinions on whether students should have access to the evaluations.

“It would depend on how they did it. There would have to be a mechanism by which it would be fair both to the students and the professor. In theory, it is good, but that is until you start filling in the details,” Dr. Rusty Thysel, government professor, said.

“Some say evaluations are subject to misinterpretation and there is so much data that one can take a little piece out and blow it out of proportion,” Mortillaro said.

“Evaluations are one indicator (of a teachers’ ability). They are not the be-all and end-all by any stretch of the imagination. They have to be put into context with other factors,” he said.

“Such information should remain as administrative, some of that is a popularity contest. But, a lot of that is personality,” Dr. Olivia Pass, professor of languages and literature, said.

“But a poor guy or woman who does not make jokes but does a really good job might get really bad evaluations, and something like that could really hurt them. So, I think it is best handled as it is now where students don’t get that information.”

Evaluations are fairly complex, and in order for it to be fair to all parties, there would have to be enough construction to accompany the decision to make them public, Pecoraro said.

“First, I would have to get legal clarification from our board as to whether that information is considered public information or not. At this point, to my knowledge, it is not,” she said.

“I do know that there are other universities outside of this state who publish that information, but, according to our system policies, these student forms are part of a faculty member’s personnel file, and therefore, are confidential.”

Although Pecoraro has never been approached with this situation, the Student Government Association has.

On Oct. 20, 1999, the SGA was confronted with the idea of having teacher evaluations made public.

According to the minutes from the meeting, student senators were for the idea and willing to take the time to search to see what was needed to be done.

“In the past, in order to study the idea, SGA formed a committee, and a few senators sat on the committee. They interviewed other school’s presidents, and they found out enough information,” Brent Callais, SGA president, said.

“The committee was organized and it met once, but then it never met again. It just came to a dry halt.”

Callais said if the student body wants access to evaluations, the SGA will pass it along to the faculty senate, letting it know the SGA feels the students need to know this information.

Callais has spoken with other schools in the University of Louisiana System, and they have informed him as to what they have done.

“One school says that they have it, and then another school says they are working on getting something done to make it public,” he said.

Callais said one school has a book in its SGA office, and it is broken down into sections. Students are welcome to write what they think of the teacher and the class. < br />
“That is a way of allowing students to communicate with one another on how the teachers are. Because they could not get the teacher evaluations public, they made something like that,” he said.

“It was an uphill battle to get the evaluations. So, they just decided to do this and allow the students to gripe about teachers, and they say they got a very good response from it.”

Callais said once the SGA gets complaints from students that they want it to be public, then the senate can officially begin looking into it.

“Good teaching is an essential part of our mission here at Nicholls. We do whatever we can to help faculty members improve instructional skills, when it becomes evident that they need help,” Pecoraro said.

“When we become aware of classroom difficulty, as we sometimes do through student complaints or department head’s observation, we attempt to address those concerns immediately.”

“Personnel issues are a private matter, and are not announced. Students are not made aware of changes that are being made, but work is done with that faculty member to help him improve the instruction in the classroom if there is a problem that needs to be addressed,” she said.