Faculty To Vote on Expanded TF Review

A measure requiring evaluations of all teaching fellows (TFs) and teaching assistants is on the agenda for Tuesday’s Faculty meeting—along with another round of debate over the succesor to the Core Curriculum.

The Faculty Council, the governing body of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), unanimously approved a motion yesterday calling on “all teaching fellows and teaching assistants to be evaluated in the CUE process regardless of whether the course head opts in or out of the course evaluation process for courses in which the teaching fellows and teaching assistants served.”

Currently, professors can choose whether or not to participate in the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) evaluation process. When professors opt out, their TFs go unevaluated.

The motion was presented by Theda Skocpol, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and chair of the Committee on Graduate Education.

Last May, Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 told the Faculty at a meeting that during the fall 2005 semester, 60 professors chose not to participate in the CUE system, leaving 230 teaching fellows unevaluated.

“This is something that has been a concern for some time,” Skocpol said in an interview. “It is not fair because it deprives them of prizes for their teaching. We’re looking to professionalize training of teaching fellows.”

The Derek Bok Center on Teaching and Learning gives teaching awards to TFs who lead sections larger than seven students and who achieve a 4.5 or above out of 5 on their CUE evaluations.

A perennial opponent of student evaluations, Harvey C. Mansfield ’53 said last night that he opposed the motion.

“I have little enthusiasm for course evaluations even for teaching assistants and fellows. It’s consumerism, and it puts ill-formed opinion of students at the center of teachers’ evaluation,” said Mansfield, the Kenan professor of government.

Mansfield is not on the council.

The council also placed discussion of the Preliminary Report of the Task Force on General Education on the docket for the Faculty meeting next Tuesday.

The co-chairs of the task force—Bass Professor of English and American Literature and Language Louis Menand and Professor of Philosophy Alison Simmons, who are both members of the council—spoke with the council about progress the task force has made in reforming the report.

Menand and Simmons are expected to send a letter to the Faculty before next week’s meeting. The letter will include an update on the progress that the task force has made and will mention changes that have been suggested, according to Professor of the History of Science Everett I. Mendelsohn, a council member.

After Tuesday’s meeting, the task force will draft a revised report that they will present at a Faculty meeting in either January or February, Mendelsohn said.

The task force will then be relieved of its job, and it will be up to the Faculty Council and interim Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles to “flesh out what the task force’s report means in terms of actual faculty legislation,” Mendelsohn said.

He added that subcommittees will almost certainly be formed to address the report’s implementation.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the Faculty will also vote on a proposal to make the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences a separate school within FAS.

­—Staff writer Stephanie S. Garlow can be reached at sgarlow@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Samuel P. Jacobs can be reached at jacobs@fas.harvard.edu.