Collegiate Times

When Linda Arnold came to Virginia Tech in 1982, she was told of a professor in the history department who turned in his student evaluations, as expected, at the end of the semester. Weeks later, he was fired.

His termination stemmed from a curious trend of unusually positive comments in the open-end student responses, all written in identical handwriting.

Why might someone attempt to cheat the student evaluation system? The answer is tenure.

?It's possible to appreciate what some people might do for tenure. It's a lot of pressure and stress,? said Arnold, history professor and member of Tech's Tenure and Promotion Committee. ?But it's not like cheating Solitaire for yourself. Tenure isn't just about a professor, it's about the students.?

Tenure exists to protect the academic freedom of the teaching faculty and the interests of the students. To obtain tenure, eligible faculty members undergo extensive reviews to ascertain their qualifications, credentials and effectiveness.

?Tenure is usually a year-long formal process begun in the sixth year. The university wants to see efforts and effectiveness in teaching, research and outreach,? said Shannon Jarrott, human development associate professor who earned tenure in 2005.

Arnold added that when considering tenure, the university also looks at awards, teaching publications, initiative, creativity and the development of course content. These considerations ensure a high level of overall excellence. Although only one portion of the decision is influenced by these factors, student evaluations are taken into account in the tenure decision.

?From my experience, even if you have published an award-winning article or book, if your student evaluations were significantly below average, your chances of getting tenure would be slim,? Arnold said.

According to Test Scoring Director Barbara Robinson, Tech introduced course evaluations in 1973 as a method of ?gathering opinions about a class and instructor from the students.? Test Scoring, a section of Learning Technologies, was instrumental in the original development of the evaluation system. Test Scoring currently processes the OpScans and produces statistical information from the results.

This statistical information is the data that can frighten some tenure-track professors. While a professor filling out his/her own student evaluations may be an extreme example of manipulation, lenient grading is another possibility.

?Does an individual get higher evaluations from giving students higher grades? I don't know,? Arnold said. ?But there is a whole body of literature discussing this concept.?

In 2004, The Journal of Classroom Interaction published a report ?The Relationship Between Student Performance and Instructor Evaluation Revisited? that found a positive correlation between expected grade and student evaluation.

A report in the Assessment & Education in Higher Education, ?Ratings of university teacher instruction: how much do student and course characteristics really matter?? found that ?grade expectation was significantly associated with student ratings.?

Most clearly, in an experiment conducted by Paul Isely and Harinder Singh, two professors at Grand Valley State University, ?Do Higher Grades Lead to Favorable Student Evaluations,? although not the only variable, ?expected grade relative to the incoming GPA of students provides more explanatory power? of evaluation.

Although Jarrott found the tenure process stressful, she said that Tech's reviewing system allows for improvement over time.

?It's inherently stressful, just like any big hurdle. Like final examinations, you know it's an important event. But I did not have a whole lot of concern because I was receiving recommendations and feedback throughout the process, so I know what I needed to work on,? Jarrott said.

Improving over time is an essential factor in the tenure decision. Arnold explained that with Tech the student evaluation in the tenure process is relative. The Promotion and Tenure Committee looks for a pattern of improvement, allowing newer professors time to adapt to the position.

?It takes someone two to three years to develop. We look at the numbers over time, we don't expect someone to be an all-star immediately,? Arnold said.

But Arnold added that with student evaluations, communication with students is key. The inability to communicate causes problems for students.

?When performance is significantly below course average, that is what causes concern. Your job is to educate. If you can't communication, you can't educate,? Arnold said.