RESOLUTION:
FACULTY ACCESS TO STUDENT EVALUATIONS
(Adopted
Resolution: The
IUPUI Faculty Council charges the Dean of Faculties to assure that existing
policies on faculty access to student course evaluations are implemented
according to common principles at the school and department level. The Faculty Council asks reaffirmation of the
faculty’s right to access their student evaluations and statistical and other
summaries of them by explicitly granting access in the Indiana University
Academic Handbook to these documents, in addition to other documents named in
the Handbook which the faculty may already access.
The right of access is already implicit. The
Indiana University Academic Handbook, < http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/acadhbk/
> acknowledges the right of the faculty to access their personnel records,
and implicitly, student evaluations. The “Policy Governing Access to and
Maintenance of Academic Employee Records” (item I-B, p. 103) defines these
records to include “…any items or collections of information on individual
academic employees including transcripts of conversations, recorded and stored
in any medium under personal name or by any equivalent identifying number or
symbol.” “Access to Personnel File by
the Academic Employee” (IV-B (3), p. 104)
guarantees faculty members’ right to access their personnel file, except
for letters or statements from students solicited by the University and written
prior to November 1, 1983. Also,
“Maintenance of Records of Academic Employees” (V-C, p. 105) clearly indicates
that formal student evaluations are considered part of the faculty member’s
personnel record and, hence, under the above-mentioned policies, accessible to
him or her, “With the exception of formal student evaluations of teaching,
anonymous communications shall not be included in any record, nor shall they be
stored or maintained. Such anonymous
communications shall not be considered or referred to in matters of promotion,
tenure, reappointment, or salary determination.”
The use of student evaluations for faculty
development. The principal use of student evaluations is for
faculty development and faculty have a right to access all information that
will help them evaluate their own teaching effectiveness and enhance their performance
in order to meet the goals of the unit in which the faculty member is
employed. This conclusion is consistent
with AAUP policy (“Redbook” or AAUP Policy Documents & Reports, 1995, p.
136) that states, “The responsible evaluation of teaching does not serve
advancement procedures alone. It should
be wisely employed for the development of the teacher and the enhancement of
instruction.” Faculty members’
self-assessment and their ability to learn from evaluations are hampered by
inadequate access to information within or derived from them.
Correction of administrative errors. It
has come to the attention of the FAC
that, on occasion in recent semesters, faculty have been denied access to their
student evaluations and have instead received only their supervisor’s opinion
of the quality of their teaching drawn from the supervisor’s interpretation of
the evaluations. The FAC believes that the faculty must be given the
opportunity to correct erroneous conclusions drawn from statements that have been
taken out of context and, in other rare cases, as a result of an
administrator’s vindictiveness.
According to the AAUP (1995, p. 134), “…unilateral judgments by
department chairs and deans…” based on a paucity of data, are inadequate. All too often, chairs do not actually witness
the teaching of their faculty, and conclusions drawn from anonymous opinions
must be handled with sensitivity and caution.
This protection is possible only if a faculty member can examine
original evaluations in order to verify the correctness of summaries of them as
well as to verify the context in which comments are written, whatever the
evaluation procedure employed in different units across campus.
Correction of conclusions drawn from student
misconceptions. There must
be a provision for faculty to examine student evaluations so they can
distinguish complaints from students whose low expectations of their own
responsibilities prompt them to conclude erroneously that the standards which
an instructor establishes are unreasonably high, as opposed to complaints about
assignments that are inappropriate considering the prerequisites and objectives
of the course. It is imperative that faculty, not students, set the standards
in a class. The integrity of every
discipline depends upon the faculty determining those standards.
Furthermore, the return of
student evaluations to faculty, whether the evaluations are administered at the
end of a semester or midway through for some pedagogical purposes, as well as
the return of statistical inferences generalized from them, can be delayed
until after course grades have been assigned, eliminating the risk of
retribution to students who write negative reviews of their instructor. In
cases where there is continuity between the instructor and student beyond a
single course, complete typed transcriptions of student comments, which
eliminate any possibility of identification of the student by handwriting, can
be given to the instructor. Evaluations
that are multiple-choice, machine-graded forms pose no risk to the student in
any case.
Conclusion. The
IUPUI FAC acknowledges the extreme importance of this complex issue and notes
that standardized principles protecting faculty members’ access to their
student evaluations are already implicit in the Indiana University Academic
Handbook. Although we recognize the
right, and the desirability, of each school or division to establish evaluation
procedures that best meet its needs, it is vital that all faculty
in all units across campus be explicitly guaranteed access to student
evaluations as integral contents of their personnel records as stipulated in
the Academic Handbook.
Passed by Faculty Affairs Committee: 2/03
Approved by FC Executive Committee for Advancement to
Council: 3/03
Up for Passage by Faculty Council: 4/03
ADOPTED
W/AMENDMENTS BY FACULTY COUNCIL: