Towards the end of every semester, as final exams and projects seem to endlessly mount on top of one another, there always seems to be one constant: teacher evaluations. Students are encouraged to answer questions using a rating scale and fill out open-ended comments that describe both their instructor’s strengths and weaknesses. Some students at UNI want these evaluations to be made public.

The University of Iowa Student Government (UISG) passed a resolution in late September in an effort to make such classroom evaluation results public. The resolution calls for students registering for a class to have access to the ratings and comments from students who took the class in the past, similar to some websites that already provide such information. Although the student body passed this resolution, the ultimate policy decision falls under the purview of faculty and admistrative members.

According to the Daily Iowan, UISG believes that popular websites like ratemyprofessors.com are biased and unprofessional in evaluating instructors. Their student body hopes to achieve a University of Iowa-centric database where evaluations can be viewed by students who are interested in taking a class.

Joe Gorton is a criminology professor and president of United Faculty, the negotiating group for UNI faculty.  He said making faculty evaluations public would be a terrible idea for both students and professors if it were to happen at UNI.

“The purpose of the evaluations is to help the faculty members to make adjustments in their courses to improve the effectiveness of their teaching to help the students more,” Gorton said.

“Typically, students who visit ratemyprofessors.com are focusing more on how easy [a class is]. Students shouldn’t be in pursuit of easy classes; rather, they should pursue courses that are going to help them become [a] well educated person.”

Hunter Flesch, president of UNI’s student government said the Northern Iowa Student Government (NISG) too can pass such resolutions.

“The Senate resolutions are formal stances of the students saying that they support or don’t support a certain issue,” Flesch said. “They are really helpful because they portray the student views to faculty and administration.

However, they don’t have the formal power to change policies or procedures, so they typically serve as the first step of many in processes like potentially making classroom evaluations public.”

Flesch brought this issue up to with the Senate on Wednesday, Oct 12 to find out their perspective on the issue. This lead to a discussion about how teacher evaluations are done at UNI and how it might impact the campus if this information was revealed to the public.

The Senate did not propose a resolution that night, and many raised concerns about the topic. NISG Senator Tristan Bernhard in particular questioned whether having this information public would affect the choices prospective students would make.

NISG Senator Sunny Teeling brought up her own personal experiences giving evaluations in the graduate department.

“From my standpoint, there may be some professors that end up with no evaluations and then some with maybe a lot,” Teeling said.

Teeling also mentioned how she’s written evaluations for some of the same professors, but none for others.

At UNI, teaching evaluations are governed by the Master Agreement. This is a contract between the Board of Regents and the faculty union (United Faculty), the negotiating agent for UNI’s faculty members.

The contract includes information about student evaluations of faculty, their frequency, who has access to evaluations and how they are stored. Any changes to the contract require agreement from both sides during bargaining for the contract. This would include any proposed changes to student assessments of the faculty.

“Faculty teaching is evaluated through multiple pieces of information,” said Brenda Bass, the interim provost of UNI. “In addition to assessments completed by students, teaching is typically evaluated through periodic classroom observations conducted by the department head and faculty members of the department’s Professional Assessment Committee.  Furthermore, faculty often submit portfolios of their syllabi, assignments and other documentation of their teaching.”

Gorton strongly opposed making students’ instructor evaluations public.

“Some courses are more difficult and if students want to find a path of least resistance, they probably shouldn’t even be in the university,” Gorton said. “This is harmful for the university and would communicate to the public and professors that [the] university is noncommittal in providing rigorous education.”

Adam Powell, senior psychology major does not support publicizing students’ faculty evaluation results.

“I think they should be kept private,” Powell said. “They are used to help professors understand their mistakes and appreciate what they do good – not for students and the public [to] form opinions of how easy or hard their class may be or how good of a teacher they are.”

Abby Pereboom, sophomore social work major, said she supported making teaching evaluations open to the public.

“I think it’s a great idea. The students should know what to expect from that particular professor,” Pereboom said. “However, you can always do RateMyProfessor online. It’s pretty much the same thing, but it doesn’t go through the university. I look through all the reviews of my professors before selecting the class.”

– Copy Editor Leziga Barikor contributed to this story.