Across the campus, an alarming pattern has emerged-the use of faculty evaluations, and especially selective inclusion of student survey comments, to create the appearance of poor teaching. A growing number of both Full Time and Adjunct faculty have received “needs improvement” or even “unsatisfactory” in their evaluations. This pattern is especially disturbing when we consider that top-level managers haven’t been evaluated in years.

For the first time in recent memory, summary faculty evaluations have included only the hostile or negative quotes from students even when faculty have received only one or two of these “negative” comments within a host of excellent comments. As we all know, any instructor can receive a negative comment from an unhappy student. As teachers we tend to focus on these comments because we care deeply and take our teaching seriously. However, the inclusion of the one or two negative comments without a balanced inclusion of positive comments unfairly suggests some sort of instructor deficiency.

A second trend of assigning ‘VP Designees’ from outside the faculty area of expertise has led to questionable and arbitrary assessments. The VP Designee has long been a faculty member in the same field as the faculty being evaluated, but recently, managers with no teaching experience or whose expertise is outside of the given field are now appearing on the faculty evaluation teams.

Feedback after classroom observations can be valuable for learning. However, a 45-minute evaluation of a section of a class within the semester does not tell the whole picture of a faculty member’s teaching methods and expertise. Some Managers comment on teaching style without contextualizing the single observation within a larger lesson arc. Managers have asked to see “group work,” and unfairly criticized faculty for “no group work” when the evaluator has only seen a single hour within a 16-week course, for example.

The most vulnerable among us, the vast cohort of Adjunct instructors, understand full well that bad evaluations can lead to their dismissal. These kinds of targeted evaluations generate a culture of fear and uncertainty among faculty, and certainly facilitate a culture of fear for students, too. Most recently, three veteran Adjuncts with approximately 20 years of experience each and across three different divisions all received “needs improvement” for the first time in their long careers.

Is this possibly the college’s response to the new state funding formula, which is partly based on “Student Success”? The college is narrowly defining this as “did the student pass or not?” Therefore, untenured, full-time and over 1100 Adjunct instructors are, in effect, being pushed towards grade inflation.

It is everyone’s goal to increase student success across campus, and faculty work hard to stay up-to-date in their fields and to employ best practices in their teaching field. Our evaluation process should be a positive learning experience and should be centered on supporting faculty to become the best they can be. We hope this critical tendency isn’t a persistent trend. It is important to have evaluators familiar with best practices in your field of study so that observations taking place in such a small window of instructional time can be properly contextualized for that particular field of study and for the scaffolding involved in the lesson or unit.

If you’re concerned about your Faculty Evaluation process and/or the final report, call your FA reps to get guidance and to ensure a fair and equitable process for all.