The Pulse, November 1998

Student evaluations of professors are one of several ways that PAC students can guarantee the quality of teaching for themselves and for future students. Evaluations are used to determine faculty members’ promotion and tenure. Student evaluations are tools that help department chairs and administrators judge the performance of faculty members. Not all students realize that their voice counts. When one student was asked what she thought administrators did with the evaluations, she said, "Nothing whatsoever. I think it is done to waste our time." According to the Alamo Community College performance evaluations guidelines, evaluations are involved in the way promotion is determined, along with the supervisor’s classroom visitations, self evaluations, and peer reviews. The process of evaluations begins when students are asked to fill out surveys. Once completed, the surveys are sent to the chairperson of the department. If the instructor is the chairperson, they are sent to the dean of the department. If there is no dean, they are sent to the Executive Vice President Dr. L.S. Soliz. The chairperson reviews the evaluations in terms of the quantitative results and the students' handwritten feedback. Once this is done, the instructor must wait until the final grades have been submitted before meeting with their chairperson to review the evaluations. The evaluation questions are arranged on a five point scale. Five is the best, and one is the worst. "When an instructor receives a 3.2, there is a problem," said Dr. Dorothy Haecker, chairperson for the Behavioral Sciences and Humanities. "If an evaluation is bad, it’s bad (for the instructor)." When trends are identified through the surveys, her attention is gained. Trends are how Kelly Mumbower, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, identifies problems and helpful tools. He uses the trend to identify what teaching techniques were helpful or not helpful. Peter Myers, Assistant Professor of History, said that he uses the handwritten feedback more than any other part of the evaluations. Haecker said that when students think an instructor is performing below standard, like repeatedly arriving late for class, reading from the book, or not relating the lecture to the course, students should first speak to the instructor’s chairperson. If an adjunct faculty hired on contract from semester to semester consistently receives poor reviews and does not correct his or her behavior, the chairperson will not re-hirehim or her. However, if the faculty member has tenure, it is more difficult to fire him or her, because sufficient proof has to be made that he or she is professionally incompetent, shows moral deterioration, or is grossly neglecting his or her professional responsibility. Student evaluations of Palo Alto College faculty are given before finals. The dates are determined individually by each department.

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