With the end of the fall semester coming into sight, members of Miami University's Associated Student Government (ASG) are preparing for some big changes to come in Miami's future. Much of Tuesday night's meeting focused on two of the largest changes to come: the search for a new College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) dean and the university's upcoming switch from paper to online course evaluations.
According to Secretary for Academic Affairs Tyler Sinclair, finalists for the position of CAS dean will be coming to campus over the span of two weeks in mid-November. Steve Howe, department head of psychology at the University of Cincinnati, will be coming Nov. 7 and will be in the Bystrom Room of the Shriver Center. Phyllis Callahan, the CAS interim dean, will be available Nov. 10 in 1 Upham Hall. Robyn Hannigan, chair and professor of environmental, earth and ocean sciences at the University of Massachusetts- Boston will be on campus Nov. 16 in 2 Upham. All times will be 5:15-5:45 p.m.
"It'll be a time to talk and get feedback," Sinclair said. "They'll be meeting with every constituency a dean could have and one of those constituencies are students."
According to Sinclair, more than 120 candidates applied for the position, hailing from all over the U.S., as well as from locations in China and Scotland.
Sinclair said while the meeting times with the finalists will be rather brief, he would like to see as many students as possible in attendance. He said it might be difficult for every student to get their questions in during the time allotted, and asked that students interested in attending and asking questions of the candidates communicate with him first to ensure efficiency during the meetings.
Sinclair also introduced a bill supporting online professor evaluations during Tuesday's meeting.
In Miami's current course evaluation system, students fill out paper evaluations of their professors and their courses in the final days of the semester, which take months to return and cost what Sinclair estimates to be over 70,000 sheets of paper and potentially over $200,000 per year.
"Those estimates are actually very low," Sinclair said. "I chose pretty conservative estimates. The estimates the university is using are 89,000 sheets of paper and $250,000 a year."
According to Sinclair, Miami is addressing this problem by instituting a system wherein students will fill out their course evaluations on their own time electronically. The advantages of this system, according to its supporters, are that students could have more time to craft thoughtful responses, student anonymity is ensured, massive amounts of paper and money will be saved and the results are available immediately to professors and students alike.
"If you go through the process of how paper evaluations are done, teachers are given a printout of every course they teach and it takes a couple months to get back to them," Sinclair said. "Teachers who teach in the summer can't restructure their classes before fall, and teachers who teach in the fall can't restructure their classes before spring semester."
One of the main points of debate in Tuesday's meeting was how to give students incentives to fill out evaluations if they are not doing so in a classroom. According to Sinclair, small incentives such as bookstore gift cards, Starbucks gift cards and box seats at a Miami hockey game could be used to ensure students still fill their evaluations out.
Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter
According to Sinclair, other schools that have made the move to online evaluations have found on average that their student response rates drop around 10 percent. To combat this, Sinclair elaborated on some of the incentives possible.
"Early access to your grade is something (the university) has thought of," Sinclair said. "Instead of waiting for the day the university chooses to release the grades, you'd get them as soon as the professor completes the gradebook. You could have it so you'd get bonus points for filling the evaluation out, but that'd be on a professor by professor basis."
Another feature Sinclair said he hopes to see would be an in-house version of the popular professor evaluation Web site ratemyprofessor.com. Students would be able to view randomly-selected responses from other students who have taken courses previously, allowing them to make have more information about the class and professor at their disposal.
"Miami would (still) have some leverage over what students can see and rating the accuracy of the information," Sinclair said.
To further encourage students to take their evaluations, links to evaluations will be highly visible both on the online MyMiami portal and on Niikha, as well as through email and paper flyers.
Sinclair said the university has already tested the evaluation system by having students who have already completed sprint courses this semester take them. At the close of the fall semester, 10 departments within the university will offer the online evaluations and it is hoped the new evaluations will be fully integrated into all of Miami's classes by fall 2012.
According to Sinclair, integration of online course evaluations will happen regardless of ASG's input into the matter.
"This bill is asking that this process be incentivized and Miami creates this in-house ratemyprofessor," Sinclair said. "Without this bill, those things will not happen. They will not take place unless students stand up and say ‘this is something that we want, this is something that needs to happen.'"
The bill will be further reviewed during next Tuesday's meeting.
Read More
How one professor and her classes are preserving Oxford’s Black history
By Sean Scott | March 20, 2024Jazma Sutton, an assistant professor of history, teaches The Black Midwest (HST 350Q) and Black Women in America (HST 450D) classes. In both courses, she has students working with the Smith Library of Regional History and Miami’s archives to document and preserve Black history in Oxford.
Miami faculty members recount Freedom Summer in new documentary
By Luke Macy | February 25, 2022After seven years of work, “Training for Freedom,” a documentary highlighting Oxford’s involvement in the Freedom Summer of 1964, premiered on PBS Western Reserve on Valentine’s Day.
“Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic”: History in the making
By Alice Momany | August 29, 2021In March 2020, Miami University’s archives launched “Documenting the COVID-19 Pandemic,” a collection focused on life during the COVID-19 pandemic.