Are Professors Really like Chefs?

One of the school-wide faculty governance committees that I sit on has more students attending than faculty. Student input and insights are good to have. But, this committee is the curriculum committee. The committee that reviews new courses, reviews new and revised degree program proposals, makes suggestions for improving curriculum and reviewing the evaluation of courses. Given this list of responsibilities, having so many students has always seemed out of balance to me. But, when I bring it up, no, we need student involvement. Sure, but this is a FACULTY governance committee.

At the last meeting, the last agenda item was "course evaluations."  Things got weird. The students started telling horror stories about this course and that course and how the current course evaluation forms don't permit them to describe the problems. Okay, we can fix the form. Then, the conversation turned to students wanting to know which courses are good.  They want to see each others evaluations of a course. Here, I started to get queasy. I've seen how a class of student can gang up on a professor and turn the evaluations really sour. This experience and possibility wasn't holding any sway with this group of students.

Next a student said that he thought there ought to be transparency in the course evaluations. Okay. There ought to be 360 degree feedback.  I see a huge problem with this because faculty, especially tenured faculty, have no vested interest beyond the non-existent cost of living raise and ego to do good teaching.  This went over the heads of the students. He went on to say that if he is going to a resturant he wants to see how others have rated the chef and the service.

What?! Comparing faculty teaching and choosing classes to choosing a restaurant!  Needless to say, I went ballistic.These millennial students have such a profoundly different world view. From his point of view, he was buying my service. Never mind that the portion of my salary that actually comes from tuition is probably somewhere between 0% and 10%. I don't call that buying my service. 

It's a hard sell. They want to be entertained. I suspect they also want to feel like they are getting their money's worth. But, how can they really know if that's the case? What criteria do they have as a guide? They have grown up relying on the opinions of others as a frame of reference for their own assessments. How can they have enough knowledge of a topic before and while taking a course to know if they are receiving the right information? They can't; they can only know that the professor is funny and smart and makes them feel good about their work.

I dread the continuation of this agenda item. I dread the distance between the generations. I dread the gap in understanding the context of teaching and of learning.  I dread the lack of a one best path to make us all happy. I dread the continuation of this agenda item.

Blurry week

This past week I've been ill with a a bad cold. Thankfully, I didn't have many appointments and no classes. So, I slept through the Chicago Blizzard of 2011 and was too ill to shovel the 2 feet of snow. But, I live in a great neighborhood, and my neighbors were out shoveling for each other. What a blessing! So, public health as a lived experience.