I agree with Dr. Dumas. Our students should be in the position to rate the
entire course. This might be especially important for students who struggle
in the beginning, as they can better assess their own improvement as well
as the instructor's willingness to work with them to help them rise to the
level of competency in the course, etc.
         I'm sure this early date was dictated by the wish to lighten the
paperwork load at the end of the semester, but, like Dr. Dumas, I feel that
it undermine's the intent and quality of the survey. I would vote for a
later date.

Dr. Katheryn A. Thompson
Foreign Languages



At 03:55 PM 10/2/2002 -0400, Dr. Joe Dumas wrote:
>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