Faculty evaluations I

While on sabbatical I have tried to keep from thinking about student attitudes on teaching, but when you have  been in the classroom as long as I have it is difficult.  And then today I received my course evaluations from the Fall semester.  I will try to save my direct response to my students for rateyourstudents.com.  Instead, I will explore the nature of faculty evaluation itself.

Some people view faculty evaluations as customer satisfaction surveys.  Sorry folks but you are surveying the wrong people if that is your goal.  One of the main points of higher education is to prepare the graduates to become a useful members of society by giving them the skills necessary for a career.  A politically incorrect analogy is, if you want to make a customer satisfaction survey of who make the best burgers, you don't ask the cattle.  You ask the actual consumer.  

Many students are interested in getting the highest possible grade for the least amount of effort.  To them the grade is needed to buy their way into graduate or professional school or a job where their natural ability will shine.  Such students evaluate courses and faculty members based on their needs, which are only tangentially connected with becoming useful members of society.

You want to know if a faculty member did a good job educating the students?  Ask the person who depends on the skills those students were to acquire.  If they teach a course that is a prerequisite for a couple of later courses.  Ask those faculty members in the later courses.  When the course is a senior level course ask the employer or graduate schools the student goes to after graduation. 

And if the necessary skills are not there, let's send the student back for a repeat at no cost to the taxpayer or student.  Make the faculty member/department/university pay to fix their product.  As an added benefit education reporters will be employed writing new articles about rampant grade deflation.  I have commented before about the duty of higher education to provide certification.  We need a education lemon law.  

As faculty evaluations become increasingly used to evaluate faculty for tenure and promotion, and students demand less and less real challenge and honest evaluation of their skills, we engage in a race to the bottom in terms of educational quality.  The education lemon law would allow the real customers to weigh in.  The Retention, Tenure, and Promotion committees could ask, how many lemons did this faculty member produce.  Too many lemons could be grounds for both denying or revoking tenure by demonstrating the incompetence of the faculty member.

Sorry, came close to ranting there.  In the next part of this epistle I promise to comment on the valid application of student opinion in faculty evaluations.

Radical Ideas in Higher Education

There is some value in opening up the floor to all ideas, no matter how radical, as a means to prompt discussion on the fundamentals behind a problem in need of a solution.  With this in mind I am going to propose a completely radical idea that has so many practical problems that it is likely to be completely unworkable.  But it may prompt some discussion that leads to workable solutions.

One function of higher education is to provide education, and another is to certify competency.  These two functions are related but not the same.  So, why not separate the two functions into the lecture/tutorial portions of higher education and the certification wherever possible.  

With today's technology course lectures and textbook content are available through mass media, such as the internet, course tapes/CDs, or in some localities on television.  In some cases this content is free.  This makes it possible for a willing person to become self-educated, lacking only certification.  (I am reminded of an old TV show, "Hank".)

If we separate the certification function certification testing could be done on a separate cost basis from lecturing.  Since so many students appear to feel that attending class is a waste of their time, let them learn the material on their own and earn certification of their accomplishment.

Freeing the lecture/tutorial from the certification function would allow students to register for only those course tutorials where they need help in mastering the material.  This would reduce the pressure on university faculty and infrastructure and potentially save students and taxpayers money.  Since traditional multimedia lectures would be available on-line or on TV, the lecture/tutorial sessions would be interactive affairs focused on the students ability to utilize the material rather than dispensing the material.  Students could pay to take the same tutorial as many semesters/quarters as needed to gain the skills and confidence needed to demonstrate competency and become certified.

The Many Masters of Higher Education

The Higher Education industry is again in a tizzy over funding.  There are times when it feels the hysteria never lets up. 

As state and federal budgets get tighter there will be increased pressure to reduce funding from government and increased pressure from the populace to hold down tuition increases.  Commentators will decry the work ethic of faculty, etc.

Before we begin this annual venting of the spleens it might be useful to consider what we demand from higher education and the money we spend on it.  Here are some of the demands that come immediately to mind.

Employers what graduates to be trained in the latest technology and capable of stepping right into their careers without further training.  Of course, the latest technology costs money and needs to be constantly updated.

Some students come to college looking for a lifestyle, others for an education.  Some demand to never be challenged or required to do more than cut and past from Wikipedia, others look for the opposite.  As classes get larger and student evaluations carry more weight we race to the bottom on the education front.  (There will be more on this in the future.)

The community wants outreach to schools, convincing youngsters to go to college.  The community wants entertainment in the form of concerts, plays, sporting events, etc.  The community wants cutting edge research that transforms everything from farming to health care to society itself.

I am sure there are many other masters served by higher education, and feel free to add to the list, but before we start venting about costs might we ask which masters we should be serving.  Following that we can ask which are getting served and which still have needs to be served.  

Comprehensive vs. Research Universities

I took my oath yesterday and began my term as a "visiting research associate" at my local RO1.  (There really was an oath to support protect and defend the state, although all I had to do was sign.)  Most of my day was spent organizing parking, signing up to be trained to use instruments, etc.

One of the folks in the lab I am working in asked me what had prompted me to go back into the lab.  At first I thought it an odd question until I recalled that faculty at research universities don't work in the lab.  Many of us comprehensive university and primarily undergraduate university folks never really leave the lab.  When all your lab workers are fresh faced undergraduates and MS degree candidates it falls to you to be constantly training new students and being the expert in how to get things done in the lab. While our access to cutting edge equipment may limit our ability, our lab skills have to stay sharp to get anything approaching publishable results accomplished.

One interesting thing yesterday was the response to my question about chromatography.  The only prep level methodology available here is manual flash chromatography (glass columns and house air lines, etc).  No Isco, Biotage, etc. here.  Not even radial chromatography.  

I learned long ago that when time and money are the dual anchors holding down your research program you invest in technology that will save you both time and money.  I have found that radial chromatography is a good chromatography teaching tool and is low cost.  It can be faster than manual flash columns.  From the standpoint of preparing graduates for careers, some experience with flash instruments is useful.  Once my students use our system I can't get them to go back to radial and they never do manual flash.  

So, while many think of comprehensives as research backwaters when compared to our RO1 counterparts, it is worth noting that we are actually different institutions with different charges.  It's a matter of mission and resources.

Preparation

On my sabbatical I will be working in a laboratory of a friend and colleague at a nearby campus of a large public research university.  There are advantages and disadvantages to this.  One advantage is the ability to extricate myself from my many service tasks and committees on my home campus for the next seven or eight months.  The main disadvantage is leaving my current research students behind.  

Being at comprehensive university I have both BS and MS degree candidates in my laboratory.  Since they are BS/MS candidates they have poor lab skills and little understanding of the realities of producing publishable research.  They require constant supervision and support, which might make one ask why I do this.  Mainly, I do this because I get to help confused drifting young adults find focus and passion for a career.  It is really something great to help change a life.

I chose back before I enrolled in a PhD degree program to target a career at the comprehensive university where I could engage in both teaching and research on a near equal basis.  The decision was based in no small part to the mentoring I received from the faculty at a comprehensive university when I was an undergraduate.  I was a lost undergraduate drifting from major to major in the sciences until an organic chemistry faculty member took the time to help me find a focus.  In changing student's lives in the sciences the research component is key.  At that point when you leave the course work behind and embrace the real day-to-day of the field you really find out who you are and if the field is for you.

I realized that at a research university the first responsibility of faculty is research.  At comprehensive universities, at least in their mission statements, the focus is on training students and preparing them for careers and graduate school.  We may not publish as much research, but we do get to make a huge difference in student's lives.

On Saturday I met with my research students to make sure they were on track before I take off on begin my sabbatical.  E-mail will make it possible for me to keep in touch from a distance and hopefully keep them on track.  Today, I am organizing my notebooks and compounds I will need to get started in the new lab.

And so the adventure begins.

First Epistle

There was a time before modern agriculture when farmers would allow the land to lie fallow every seventh year so the soil could rejuvenate and be more productive.  This was the sabbatical year.  In higher education we have a tradition of allowing faculty members to take some time off to reflect and rejuvenate every seven years. 

I am beginning my first sabbatical after eighteen years as a faculty member and as I reflect I thought I would embrace the new world and share my thoughts.  Thus, this blog is born.  I intend it to span the next eight months until I return, like Cincinnatus, to the plow.  I hope to contribute on a regular basis and perhaps those contributions will find some purchase in blogosphere.

A bit about me for context purposes.

I am a full professor at a large public comprehensive university.  I am a chemist and I teach primarily organic chemistry.  While I have never had an administrative title, I have considered that aspect of higher education quite a bit and even applied for chair positions over the years.  This blog will probably touch on all those aspects of who I am.