The Citadel Faculty Council

Minutes of the Regular Meeting of May 10, 2001

Computer Lab, Daniel Library

1. Prof. Tom Thompson, Faculty Council chairperson, called the meeting to order at 11:08 a.m.

2. Members attending: Profs. Bishop, Briggs, Chen, Dunlop, Lally, Lineberger, Moody, Nath, Pages, Silver, Skow-Obenaus, Templeton, Thompson, G. Williams, Barrickman for Jones, Lassiter for Matthews and Crawford for Zuraw.

3. Members absent: Profs. Britz, Brown, Gordon, Kelley, McDowell and Woo.

4. Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Williams seconded that the minutes of the April 19 meeting be approved. This was passed unanimously.

5. Prof. Thompson moved and Prof. Lally seconded that Prof. George Williams be elected Faculty Council vice-chair for the coming academic year. He consented to take the job, and was elected unanimously.

6. Prof. Silver reported on the latest Academic Board meeting. 5th-year students can now be civilian day students again if they have completed eight terms of ROTC, and the new policy for furlough the day before holidays is that it starts after the student's last scheduled class whether that class meets that day or not (both of these were also announced at the general faculty meeting on Wednesday the 9th). Students can now test out of up to 30 hours of courses with approved AP or other credit. The Health and Physical Education Department will now be called Health, Exercise and Sports Science. Prof. Leonard of English has been using a new computer program to track down student papers plagiarized from the Internet, and others can too.

7. Gen. Mace, Col. Pinkerton and Col. Lackey came in from the Commandant's Department to discuss the issue of students having to choose their military over their academic duties where they conflicted. The specific instance that raised this topic was Prof. Templeton's complaint about students not being allowed to miss drill period for field trips, but Prof. Thompson also pointed out that faculty were annoyed at things like Band members being pulled out of classes for Greater Issues speeches. Most of the meeting was given over to a vigorous debate on the issue. Gen. Mace said that the Commandant's Office supports academics, and he had changed the policy for PT runs so that students would fall asleep in class less, but the Greater Issues speech is academics and the drill period is a moderate two hours a week. Col. Pinkerton, who is in charge of field trips and leaves, emphasized how sacred the drill period was to their office, and all three agreed that there was no way students would ever be excused for field trips during it. Prof. Bishop asserted that drill is repetitive motion and classes are unique and irreplaceable, so if students can be pulled out of one class to go on a field trip for another class (her special grievance she brought up later) but cannot ever be pulled out of drill, this is not because it is right but because Jenkins Hall has more power than we do. Profs. Templeton and Lally talked about unique circumstances, such as when a lower-school class is at a particular point needed for an Education major's training, and how they should be respected as professors to know when their student need a field trip. Gen. Mace said that though drill is repetitive the parade is different every Friday and they need to practice the special things each week, and that cadet time is the most precious commodity on this campus, with students being about twice as busy now as when he was one. Prof. Lineberger suggested that faculty could be notified in advance of the occasional Tuesdays and Thursdays when no drill is scheduled so we could plan unusual things then, though Prof. Lally pointed out that that did not answer the question about unique circumstances. Col. Lackey spoke to another way students get to miss class by saying they can't get out of class for a 48-hour leave unless they have a 2.0 average; several professors noted that there seemed to be a blizzard of pink leave-request cards this year, and Prof. Templeton complained that missing class was not the right kind of reward for students. Col. Pinkerton replied that the reward was for being good academically. There was some discussion of the nuances of marking students absent-- if they were sick but not in the infirmary, Gen. Mace said professors should mark them absent and Col. Lackey would adjudicate it. Prof. Silver mentioned last year's idea of having section marchers, student attendance-takers; the three visitors liked this, because it would ensure uniform standards as to the borderline between Late and Absent and such. Prof. Moody asked what times were best for field trips; noon to 1 and 3 to 5 Monday through Wednesday seemed to be best. She also asked whether students could be put to work delivering campus mail instead of walking tours, and Gen. Mace spoke of his thinking about eliminating tours in favour of all cons but West Point did so and had put them back, they should be available for egregious offences. Earlier in the discussion, which veered from topic to topic and back, Prof. Thompson had summed up by saying perhaps Faculty Council members should let the departments know how sacred drill period is and always schedule things at other times.

8. Prof. Thompson reminded us that Public Relations wanted notices of good works by cadets, and we should send any we knew of to Jennifer Wallace.

9. Prof. Templeton reported on the work of her committee to look at the issue of not being able to see the actual pages of the student evaluations. The committee ended up with more questions than it started with, and they had a report which should be attached to the minutes. Prof. Moody moved and Prof. Briggs seconded that the committee be continued into the next academic year, and this was passed unanimously.

10. Prof. Barrickman invited the Council members to the armed services commissioning ceremony the next day, as it is very special to the students.

11. Prof. Templeton apologized for the way she had put her e-mail about her proposal to discuss field trips and drill period with the Commandant's Office, which she had meant only to go to Prof. Thompson. Prof. Thompson apologized to her for distributing it to all of us.

12. Prof. Bishop complained about a recent experience where several students had had to miss her class in order to go on a required field trip for a colleague's class. She observed that with all the military obstacles professors should not cut each others' throats, and proposed that students be formally given the choice between the class and the field trip in like situations in future. Prof. Briggs said it would be disastrous to give the students this power, and proposed that a student pulled by a professor from another's class should have to take the latter a pink card, and the other professor could refuse to release him or her. Prof. Crawford noted that his policy was to make his students clear their trip with him with all their other professors; this had not been done in Prof. Bishop's case, which several others recognized. It was decided to carry this issue over to the fall and perhaps invite Les Robinson to a meeting to clarify any official policy there is about professors getting students on orders to miss each others' classes.

13. Prof. Bishop, maddeningly holding up the longed-for adjournment for the summer, brought up the Grade Grievance Policy Prof. Thompson had called our attention to in the March 22 meeting, item 8. She suggested that, since it was a recipe for a horribly long and formal procedure way out of proportion to our need for it, we move to refrain from adopting it. Profs. Thompson and Silver said that it should be buried (or not) in the fall after more members had looked at it.

14. The meeting was adjourned at 12:21 p.m.

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To: Faculty Council

From: Sub-Committee on Student Evaluation of Instruction

Date: May 10, 2001

I. The committee addressed the issue of concern, by some faculty members, over the student evaluation of instruction.

A. The committee has met three times

II. The committee determined and began to investigate several areas which are causing concern.

A. What is the purpose of the student evaluation of instruction and is the purpose being accomplished?

1. What is the purpose of the questions on the back? Are the open-ended comments really useful for teacher improvement? If so, why do they need to be typed by someone else rather then being directly given to the instructor?

2. Returns on the evaluations are not timely enough for the class in which they are given.

3. How much financial overhead is involved in typing the written responses?

4. There have been incidences of the completed forms in envelopes being left in classrooms and of students getting in groups and discussing what they were going to put on the evaluations.

5. There have been incidences of the completed reports going to the wrong instructor and of filled out forms from previous semesters being found in the envelopes by a class monitor administering the evaluations

B. What is the law regarding student evaluation of instruction?

1. Is student anonymity really a legal issue?

2. What are the legal issues that faculty could raise based on psychological stress, etc. caused by the comments on the evaluation?

3. Why are third parties reading the forms and interpreting them? Sometimes graduate students?

C. What are the minimum requirements from CHE concerning student evaluation of instruction?

D. Are the questions and the results valid for evaluation of instruction?

1. Some questions aren't relevant for some courses

E. Why can't faculty members keep the raw materials in their own personal files (have no written comments)?

1. Is the implication from the administration/CHE that faculty members are so unprofessional that they will retaliate against students ?

F. What role does (did) faculty governance have in the changes in the development, administration, and use of student evaluations of instruction?

III. The committee recommendation: it is imperative to continue this committee and its study until all questions have been answered.