High CUE Ratings May Hurt Tenure Chances

The course guide may provide class descriptions, but when it comes to actually choosing classes most students turn to a far more trusted source.

Students use the CUE Guide to determine a class' difficulty or to get a preview of a professor's pizzazz, but the guide has another audience--Faculty members.

The CUE Guide ratings can encourage a professor to alter his teaching style or change the workload of her class, but the greatest implication of the CUE guide is its effect on the tenure and promotions of professors within the university, according to some Faculty members.

Winthrop Professor of History Stephan A. Thernstrom says he believes ratings for courses can affect professors who are worried about their future.

"In bureaucratic places, for people who don't have tenure, their grading is very much influenced," Thernstrom says. "If they don't have high enough ratings, they fear they are not going to get promoted."

Though Thernstrom did not attach his theories to Harvard's system, other professors are much more adamant about the CUE Guide's potential influence on tenure decisions.

The CUE Review

In academia, the presumption is that a good scholar is one who publishes often, not necessarily one who teaches well.

"Being a good teacher carries with it the implication that you are not a good scholar," Bert R. Vaux, associate professor of linguistics and teacher of the popular Social Analysis 34: "Knowledge of Language."

"You can be a poor teacher and get advanced within the tenure track," Vaux added.

Dean of Undergraduate Education, Susan G. Pederson '82 admits that CUE Guide ratings can have an impact on a professor's promotion.

Pedersen calls the effect of the CUE on the tenure track "complicated."

"CUE evaluations become part of teaching evaluations, which become part of the dossier for professorial review," she says. "It is taken into account in consideration for promotion but is one thing among many many things."

CUE Guide Editor Brianna M. Ewert '03 has a similar understanding of the guide's influence on tenure.

"I do believe that evaluations play a role," she writes in an email. "From some of the experiences I've had working on the CUE Guide I would say that they are definitely taken into consideration."

After a lunch this summer with University officials and CUE Guide staff, Ewert was "very surprised the deans appreciated our work."

According to Ewert's understanding, the University reviews the ratings in tenure and hiring. Ewert also said that CUE-like rating systems from other universities are also included in a professor's dossier.

Research vs. Teaching

The CUE Guide's impact on professorial review touches on an important dilemma for professors who must choose to prioritize teaching or their scholarship.

The balance between the two roles a professor must fill influences the decisions that the university will make with regard to a tenure decision.

Pedersen notes that scholarship and standing in the field are significant to professorial review.

"This is a great research university with a faculty composed of preeminent scholars," she says. "It is fundamental to be an important scholar in one's field."

Pedersen believes research can only contribute to a professor's teaching.

"I can't point to a single thing that is the most important for making someone a good teacher," she says.

Pedersen suggests that professors need to be "following the field and figuring out new developments in it," she says.

But teaching, especially good teaching, requires time that might also be spent on scholarship.

Vaux believes the university does not respect the efforts professors make to be good teachers.

"In hard-core research institutions like Harvard, attention to teaching is considered to be the mark of a mediocre intellect; the great minds (the reasoning goes) focus on their cutting-edge research," he writes.

Pedersen says that professors often have a hard time balancing the demands of academia and teaching.

"There's no question that teaching seriously cuts into your time for research," she said.

Baird Professor of Science Gary J. Feldman also admits that a professor's teaching ability is not a strong consideration when professors come under review.

"Teaching ability is certainly not a primary consideration. It's not that we wouldn't hire someone known to be a teacher," Feldman says.

"One just concentrated on doing the best possible research is probably not going to be a very good teacher," Feldman adds.

Vaux is an outspoken critic of the CUE Guide's influence over a professors' reputation.

"The basic scheme with tenure appears to be that teaching performance as reflected in enrollments, CUE ratings, etc. can be held against you, not for you," Vaux writes in an e-mail.

Style By Number

Regardless of how much tenure is influenced by performance and professors' emphasis on teaching, the CUE Guide manages to influence professors teaching style.

Filling out the CUE Guide questionaire quickly may result in an early end to a section for students, but professors say they value student feedback.

"This is a relatively new thing American higher education, and about 34 years ago, it didn't exist at all," Thernstrom says. "It's better than a totally subjective questionnaire.[The CUE] has scientific merit."

The CUE guide motivates some professors to teach better.

Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Michael Shair, who teaches Chemistry 27, changed his teaching style as a result of comments made in the CUE.

"There are some good suggestions made in the CUE guides," he says. "There were some stylistic points. I do carefully read the [questionaires]each year and incorporate them into next year's lecture," Shair adds.

"I think we all became better teachers because of it," Bernbaum Professor of Literature Leo Damrosch says.