Professor of sociology Sheryl Skaggs said including more qualitative questions may improve the current method of course evaluations. Photo by Anjali Venna | News Editor
Female faculty note differences in ratings, student behavior toward male colleagues
Students are encouraged to complete course evaluations at
the end of every semester, but factors such as race and gender may influence
how students review their professors.
Lauren Santoro, an assistant political science professor,
received comments in her course evaluations and interactions with students that
caused her to question if those remarks were related to her gender.
“Research has shown that female faculty and minority faculty
members are rated lower than white male faculty members. So the bias against, I
feel like myself or other female faculty or minority faculty, is going to be
implicit, which means that it’s not really intentional,” Santoro said. “It’s
not like I can essentially point to specific instances where the discrepancies
are widespread. It’s just you wonder, and I know that I am penalized for
certain things.”
One such instance, she said, are complaints about her
sticking to syllabus policy.
“I’m a pretty big stickler on deadlines and policies. To
ensure fairness for all my students, I don’t make exceptions,” Santoro said. “I
find in my teaching evals students talk about how that’s unfair or that’s not
appreciated and they can’t believe that I’m such a stickler about certain
policies. I don’t know, but do I get penalized more so for sticking to syllabus
policy than my male colleagues?”
She said there are more references to ‘teacher’ and
‘instructor’ instead of ‘professor’ in her evaluations, and she read comments
that question her qualifications.
“When you have students that come in and complain about a
grade or they debate you about a grade you always wonder if they feel like they
can debate their grade with me because I am a young female professor,” Santoro
said. “In my discussion with my male colleagues, the things that I’ve had to
deal with, they don’t deal with.”
One example, she said, is she has some male students that
will debate and complain about a grade or late assignment with her. This occurs
a majority of the time in her state and local government class, which is a
mandatory course for all students.
“There have been some instances I’ve dealt with that I’ve
asked my male colleagues about and they’ve told me ‘we’ve never had to deal
with that,’” Santoro said.
Santoro said she has also received negative comments through
informal methods such as Rate My Professor. One particular post commented on
her pregnancy.
“In these informal, anonymous channels, that implicit bias
does become more explicit. I try not to look at those other sources but if you
read them they are completely disparaging,” Santoro said. “In the fall of 2018,
I taught right up to my due date and so there was a comment disparaging me for
panting too hard while lecturing. I feel like students who are commenting on
your appearance, are they really able to evaluate you effectively or
unbiasedly?”
Santoro has not gone to administration about this because
she said there’s nothing that’s been so egregious that required her to go to
her program head.
“I think that a lot of this is part of the job and I think
it’s unfortunate that I have to deal with it, and until students see more young
female faculty in front of them it’s going to happen, unfortunately,” Santoro
said. “There is definitely some understanding and sympathy. I know that people
in my program are aware of the implicit bias against women in course
evaluations, but I don’t know the extent to which that goes into our (overall)
evaluations. I think that, and I can only speak to my program, that the EPPS
college is going to be supportive were I to raise (the concern).”
Santoro said she believes there’s a role for student
evaluations in the university but that we need to be aware that they have
limits. In her courses, she has students give critiques to improve her class,
but these critiques are not anonymous.
“I appreciate students’ feedback and I try to get it from my classes in ways that
are constructive and helpful for me,” Santoro said. “Regarding course
evaluations, I think there’s a role for them to play, but if we know that
they’re biased against certain members of academia, I think that bias should be
incorporated in our female and minority evaluations.”
For Larissa Werhnyak, professor of interdisciplinary
studies, critiques are helpful when they discuss details such as the usefulness
of the books she assigned, the pacing of the course, and the amount of time
spent on topics.
“Anything that really goes to the substance of the course
that I may not be seeing is really useful,” Werhnyak said.
“In general, if you’re making comments from a place of ‘I
really was here to learn and here’s something that maybe would have helped me
to learn better,’ if you can say that with a 100% confidence then that is a
useful comment.”
The way course evaluations are used in the hiring, promotion
and tenure process of faculty members varies wildly, Wernhyak said. When she
served on hiring committees, she considered course evaluations, but was a lot
more interested in a sample assignment, syllabus or teaching statement that the
candidate submitted.
“If we interview that person they will do a teaching
demonstration, so seeing them on the spot tells me a lot more,” Werhnyak said.
“The way that evaluations play into that is that it’s one of the main ways to
improve. If I’m seeing somebody who’s a good teacher, then part of that is
having read their evaluations and implementing pieces of constructive criticism
from the past.”
In September 2019, the American Sociological Association
released a statement on the use of student evaluations of teaching (SETs).
“A scholarly consensus has emerged that using SETs as the
primary measure of teaching effectiveness in faculty review processes can
systematically disadvantage faculty from marginalized groups,” the ASA said.
Sheryl Skaggs, a professor of sociology, said emphasis on
raw scores of the evaluations is one problematic effect of course evaluations.
“I think across the board what ends up happening — whether
it happens at the university committee that oversees the tenure and promotion
cases or within programs or departments within schools — is that the peer
evaluators look at a raw score and say ‘Oh they’re not a good teacher because
they got a 3.8 instead of five, so that means they’re not as good of a
teacher,” Skaggs said.
The second thing the peer evaluators do, Skaggs said, is
look at the grades of students in their courses.
“If you place all the emphasis on the average score or
average gpa for a course then I think you’re missing a lot of important
information. Like how difficult is that course? Is it a required course, is it
known to be a challenging course to students?” Skaggs said. “I think that kind
of stuff is missed in these basic teaching evaluations, and unfortunately I
would say (at) UTD we’re still doing a lot of what we were doing 20 or 15 years
ago.”
In their statement, the ASA suggests five examples of how
SETs can be used more effectively. Changing the rating scale from five points
to ten points is one way to reduce the amount of bias, Skaggs said.
“A lot of it, too, is paying less attention to the personal
characteristics or traits of the faculty members and more about the contents of
the course,” Skaggs. “Universities are being almost lazy in relying on these
kinds of measures largely because they’re cheap and easy to administer, but
they’re neglecting things like response rates and how the measures are actually
used to assess the quality of ones teaching. (They pay) less attention to
putting in more qualitative types of open-ended questions, which means it would
take more time to look at and assess the quality of the teaching.”
This means moving away from personality traits, and moving
toward getting students to discuss what was useful in the course or what
teaching strategies could be implemented to improve the course, she said.
“I encourage the university to think about if this is truly
important, that faculty are effective teachers, then there should be more
effort to improve the way that teaching is evaluated and not just relying on a
cheap easy type of instrument,” Skaggs said.