Sponsored by the Faculty Council and the Office of the President to foster faculty discussion on the condition and role of teaching at Emory, the meeting attracted about 200 faculty members from across the University. The discussion was facilitated by President Bill Chace, Provost Billy Frye and Faculty Council President Richard Letz. In his brief opening remarks, Frye asked faculty members to focus a portion of their discussion on barriers that prevent good teaching from occurring.
Citing Emory's practice of relying almost exclusively on student evaluations to assess teaching as one such barrier, Elissa Marder, assistant professor of French, said that most students have at best a "cavalier" attitude toward the evaluations of faculty they are asked to complete. That attitude, Marder said, results from the students' lack of understanding about the responsibility with which they are being charged. "The students don't necessarily know what the evaluations will be used for," said Marder. "I think they would be shocked to know that their grading of me has far more serious consequences than my grading of them."
Marder recommended asking students for faculty evaluations two years after completing a course or shortly after graduation to ensure a more mature and reasoned response than the current system provides.
Marc Gotlieb of the art history faculty said that Emory's reliance on student evaluations, combined with the relatively recent phenomenon of grade inflation, is making teaching increasingly difficult. Gotlieb said the problem is of particular concern to junior faculty, who feel pressure to inflate grades because they fear that poor student evaluations will have a negative impact on their chances for tenure and promotion.
Echoing Gotlieb's concerns about grade inflation was Michael Evenden, assistant professor of theater studies and dramaturg for Theater Emory. "Students will evaluate you vengefully if they feel their lives have been ruined by a grade lower than a B," Evenden said. "They work strictly for the grade and forget the material after they get the grade."
To ameliorate such problems, Evenden suggested a more comprehensive approach to teaching assessment. He recommended using several strategies in concert, including student evaluation, peer evaluation and self evaluation. He also suggested taping faculty members teaching classes and sending the tapes to colleagues at other institutions for evaluation. Evenden said all forms of teaching evaluation should be agreed upon by the faculty member and the appropriate administrator in advance.
The difficulty of appropriately and accurately evaluating teaching has played a significant role in the emergence of another problem cited by faculty members: giving more consideration to research productivity as opposed to teaching quality in hiring, promotion and tenure decisions.
William Size of the geosciences faculty noted a distinct lack of incentives and rewards for excellent teaching compared to research. "There are just a few teaching prizes given each year," Size said. "We need a more equitable plan for promotion and tenure. It is difficult to evaluate good teaching, but that does not mean that we shouldn't try to do it."
President Chace asked Size whether he would favor a scenario in which faculty are allowed to select one of two career tracks, one emphasizing research productivity and the other stressing quality teaching. Size said he would favor such a plan, provided the two tracks are parallel, rather than one being considered more prestigious or desirable than the other.
Niall Slater of the classics department said he believes adopting two faculty career tracks would be unfortunate. Rather, he suggested a system in which the use of individual faculty profiles allows faculty members to pursue different interests at different points in their careers.
Jacqueline Irvine of the educational studies faculty urged the faculty and administration not to separate the issue of teaching from the context of the community in which that teaching occurs. "The definition of teaching and learning tends to be confined to what takes place in the classroom," Irvine said. "If we truly believe that teaching happens within the context of an entire community, then what are we doing to build a community where teaching is valued in its broadest sense, inside and outside of the classroom?"
Both Carole Hahn of educational studies and Bobbi Patterson of the religion department stressed the value of a strong community in fostering excellent teaching. Hahn and Patterson said faculty need more opportunities to come together and talk about their teaching, an activity that will invariably lead to better teaching.
Chemistry faculty member Walter Ott hailed the Town Hall meeting as the beginning of an important discussion, one that he would like to see continued on LearnLink. Chace said that while using LearnLink to continue discussions about teaching at Emory is a good idea, other methods of communication also must be used to avoid the possibility of excluding from the dialogue faculty members who do not use LearnLink.
--Dan Treadaway