Undergrads think it's too easy to get tenure

[coendou]

My husband just alerted me to this article in a student newspaper:

http://www.newsrecord.org/news/news/sg-examines-uc-professors-tenure-1.2449007

It had us LOLing, and I'm sure it will you, as well.

The best parts:

Rooney will be

Comments

[joyousandjuicy]

I think undergrads advocating for better teaching is commendable.

[coendou]

I'm not sure I believe that "student evaluations should play as bigger role in the tenure process" is the same as "advocating for better teaching."

And I'm not sure that anyone who says it's too easy to get tenure really has room to be saying much of anything.

[lissiehoya]

I'm not sure I believe that "student evaluations should play as bigger role in the tenure process" is the same as "advocating for better teaching."

That was my thought exactly.

[fountaingirl]

Ah, but how are we measuring it? Engaged, energetic instruction that helps make complex concepts understandable? Or a 'fun' professor who shows lots of movies, gives plenty of extra credit, doesn't assign much homework, and curves all of the exams?

It's not all that uncommon for undergrads to equate 'good teaching' with 'class is fun and doesn't require much work.'

[phamos818]

I'm not sure that's not a joke paper...I mean, the other top stories are about a Harry Potter appreciation club and a column about pubic hair...

[perpetua_redux]

The pubic hair column was written in 2004; it just seems to get a lot of residual traffic. The paper doesn't seem to get a lot of internet repostings (which is what gauges the popularity, I'm guessing).

[sensaes]

2004 was a great year for pubic hair - it saw the end of Brazilian tyranny, and the resurgence of the Hitler moustache.

[venetia]

Yes, the good old days, before the surprise resurgence of the merkin.

[hkitsune]

For what it's worth, I have historically always liked new faculty better, and a system like this is probably inclined to promote more faculty to tenure than otherwise, but maybe that's just been my experience in the social sciences.

[coendou]

Do you think that student evaluations are a good measure of teaching quality?

[coendou]

Yeah, my husband's observation (as a white male who doesn't have to deal with the more insidious problems brittdreams points out above) is that his teaching evals are basically a measure of what level class he's teaching, and nothing else. Freshman basic << freshman honors << upperclassmen << grad students. Which also happens to correlate with how much choice the students had in taking the class and, in general, how much they actually want to be in a math class to begin with. That's not useful information for the tenure review committee, but you can bet that the students probably think it's invaluable.

The trick is IMO getting the undergrad students to accept that they work hard and deserve their Cs and Ds. And getting the grad students to believe they earned their Bs. If the institution has that kind of culture, then an eval can be helpful. If they just want inflated grades, to get through easy and that kind of thing ... Forget about it. I agree - if student evaluations were useful, then they'd deserve a better place in tenure review.

[timestep]

At our last university, you could be a horrible teacher with great research and get tenure, but you could not be a great teacher with good research and be giving the same results.

We watched some profs who the students loved be sent away untenured because the research didn't meet some imaginary expectation.

[paperkingdoms]

Research expectations are imaginary in some way that teaching expectations are not?

[timestep]

Yes, they would not tell you what the expectations were for research for tenure, but if you didn't meet what they decided they wanted you wouldn't get tenure. As long as you showed up for class and taught (no matter how well or poor) and you met the research expectation, you were tenured.

[paperkingdoms]

Perhaps you mean "ill-defined". I somehow doubt that "research expectations" should be filed in the same category as "unicorns".