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Editor:
I was surprised to read in the Arizona Daily Wildcat that the Faculty Senate had failed to give student evaluations of faculty teaching significant weight in evaluation of faculty teaching ("Influence of student evaluations limited," Oct. 15). Even as a naive undergraduate without working experience, I could tell who was a knowledgeable, effective and caring teacher. As a faculty member who has received recognition for teaching excellence based on peer evaluation and on student evaluation, I am now more convinced of the importance of significant weighting of student input.
In some ways, we faculty are a self-serving and self-evaluating group. We continue some of these practices in an era where external customers and stakeholders are the accepted judges of organizational performance. Students with the responsibility to learn are the only regular classroom observers. They should have some evaluation authority. They are paying customers, and they represent other paying customers and stakeholders - their parents, Arizona taxpaying businesses and employers and citizen taxpayers. For each of them, good teaching is essential. The faculty should not be so foolish as to be its sole judge, and suffer the fate of American automobile manufacturers who ignored their customer input for so long.
If the students are the leaders we are trying to develop, and if the ASUA leadership seminars are worthwhile, the students should show such leadership and find responsible ways to ensure that their input counts. It is not sufficient for the Faculty Senate to say that "where applicable the teaching reviews will include assessment of student-teacher evaluations." The student evaluations of teaching should receive significant weight in the evaluation of teaching.
Students do have to live with the consequences of teaching evaluation judgments. Their peers select classes partly on that basis. Students graduate and become Arizona taxpayers, employers and parents.
Last year the Faculty Senate endorsed the idea of having the student evaluations published. The next logical step is to have them count significantly. Lip service isn't enough. If the Faculty Senate fails to grasp this opportunity through a special session, then the Arizona Board of Regents has a chance to embrace 21st century shared leadership in partnership with customers and stakeholders. It is risky business to share leadership and to trust students, but this is the price of progressive leadership. Students' leadership potential is not advanced if their judgments are not respected and trusted. The Kellogg Foundation that recently gave a leadership grant to the UA would certainly endorse this idea.
My bet is that the students will show the leadership on this issue and shape the final outcome. Let's watch.
Robert E. Tindall, LL.M., Ph.D.
Associate professor, management and policy
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