I just checked my mailbox and found my stack of "student rating of
faculty" forms for the Fall semester.  The attached memo from Dick
Gruetzemacher says that the deadline for returning the forms is October 31.

Is anyone else bothered by the fact that this deadline is *much* earlier
than normal?  Once upon a time we did them right before Thanksgiving ...
certainly the deadline was no earlier than mid-November.  Now it has
been moved, arbitrarily it seems, two or three weeks earlier.  It is
possible to do the instructor evaluations well before midterm (this
week, even!), and it is mandatory that they do not cover the last five
weeks of the term.  This seems rather ridiculous to me if the purpose of
the instruments is to rate the performance of the instructor over the
bulk of the course.  (At other institutions when I was a student, the
evaluations were done either during the final exam period or at the last
class meeting so they truly covered the entire course.  I always thought
we did them too early as it was.)

I would like to request that the Testing Office extend the deadline for
returning the student rating of faculty forms at least until the usual
time (the third week of November) so that the ratings will cover the
vast majority of the course and thus be more meaningful.

Joe Dumas