About 82 percent of course evaluations from the last two years are not available at M.D. Anderson Library as required by University policy, according to a Daily Cougar investigation.
Donald Foss, vice president of Academic Affairs, said he will probably assign Universitywide responsibility for placing the evaluations in the library to one staff member in the next few days.
"It’s the policy of the institution, and we need to make sure that the policy is followed," he said. "In order to accomplish that, one wants to look for the most efficient and effective way to do that. We don’t have that process at this moment, so we need to fix it."
Each college or department is currently responsible for sending compiled evaluations to the library, he said, and each usually assigns the responsibility to an individual.
He attributed the missing evaluations to miscommunication or oversight.
"I don’t put this down to anything other than people not realizing that they should have been doing this," he said. "These people probably change from time to time, and this piece of their job may not get conveyed to the next person – that’s my guess as to what happened here."
Foss said designating one individual to be responsible for the library’s course evaluations Universitywide would help prevent the problem, noting deans of the University’s colleges expressed support for the solution at a meeting Tuesday. He declined to name the person to whom he would likely assign the responsibility before discussing it with him or her.
He said the University will likely replace missing evaluations, though his office has not yet determined which evaluations are present.
By the book
According to the UH Faculty Handbook, course evaluations "will be compiled in a uniform format by the department/college and will be housed in a central location in the library for general public access."
According to the Daily Cougar investigation, the C. T. Bauer College of Business has the most evaluations available, dating from Fall 2005 and missing only the course evaluations for Spring 2006. Only Bauer, the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and the Cullen College of Engineering have course evaluations available in the library from Fall 2005 or later.
The College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, the College of Education, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, the Graduate School of Social Work and the UH Law Center have no course evaluations available dated Fall 2005 or later, though some are available for earlier semesters.
From CLASS, the largest college, only philosophy course evaluations from Fall 2003 are available in the library. CLASS officials did not return phone calls or e-mails as of press time.
The library has no course evaluations from any semester for the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, the Honors College, the College of Optometry, the College of Pharmacy or the College of Technology.
Suzanne Ferimer, director of Learning Services at the College of Optometry, said the college’s course evaluations are available online but the college will print and store a hard copy in the Optometry Library.
M.D. Anderson Library’s role
The University’s available course evaluations are housed near the distance education resources on the first floor of the main library. The course evaluations date back to 2003, though a sign near the course evaluations says the library has kept them for two years.
Diane Bruxvoort, assistant dean of Collection Services at the library, said the staff usually keeps older evaluations if more recent ones aren’t available for a specific department.
Library staff members shelve the evaluations colleges and departments submit to them, Bruxvoort said, and the facility serves as an "access point."
"We don’t solicit, we don’t remind people it’s time to send them to us," she said.
Bruxvoort said the library has never had problems with individuals stealing course evaluations.
"My impression is that (the evaluations) don’t see a lot of use," she said.
Although Foss joined the University after the policy went into effect, he said many schools have similar requirements.
"It was (implemented) in order to give students an opportunity to look at the evaluations of faculty. It may help them in figuring out from whom to take the courses," he said.
The paper trail
Most University departments, excluding the College of Pharmacy, the UH Law Center, Bauer, the College of Optometry and the Mathematics Department, use the UH Measurement and Evaluation Center to compile and bind course evaluation statistics for about 13.5 cents per sheet.
"We’re a group that facilitates the colleges and departments in fulfilling University policy," Patrick Daniel, director of the MEC, said. "We collect and compile the data for them – that’s it."
Faculty committees within each department or college decide evaluation questions, Daniel said. MEC helps with the wording, organization and presentation of the evaluations. The forms are sent off to the colleges where they are distributed within their departments to students for their input, he said.
After the evaluations are filled out, the colleges send them back to MEC where they are scanned in and data concerning the professors is compiled, he said. Written comments are transcribed within the colleges, he said.
Daniel said MEC aims to return bound and compiled copies of the evaluations to the colleges within two weeks. Daniel said if a college fails to turn over the evaluations after they are complete, MEC contacts the college’s dean to request them.
MEC also handles distance education evaluations, which are found at www.eval.uh.edu. MEC took over distance education evaluations from Web CT in Fall 2006.
Online evaluations are handled in the same manner as the hard copies, he said. WebCT alerts students that course evaluations are available online for students to fill out at their discretion, he said.
Once they are completed and compiled by MEC, a report is sent to the respective college.
Daniel said that MEC’s purpose is only an auxiliary role for the colleges.
"All the information that we gather is for the college – it’s their data, it’s their responsibility," Daniel said. "We’re not responsible for the evaluations heading to the library."
Since 2005, Bauer has scanned and compiled course evaluations in-house, said Elizabeth Fletcher, associate dean of Administration and Academic Affairs at Bauer, and the school’s assessment department takes responsibility for sending the evaluations to the library.
"We started processing teaching evaluations in-house a few years ago," she said. "We wanted the ability to (1) maintain our own database and (2) analyze the data in different ways to meet faculty and department chairs’ requests."
Fletcher said the students’ course evaluations play an important role in determining adjunct faculty hires and salary increases in the college.
"We take the teaching evaluation process very seriously," she said.
Fletcher noted the evaluations are also valuable to students.
"Having teaching evaluation data public enables students to make informed decisions about instructors," she said.
