"Dear Professor: I Hate You"

Anonymous student evaluations of faculty, routinely required at colleges and universities, can produce interesting comments. In the February 27 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription), reporter Thomas Bartlett gathers some choice items from students at schools around the country. Much of the piece involves interviews with faculty members.

Some teachers get upset: "It's the nasty ones that get you," the article reports. Others just get annoyed when students incorrectly read the instructions:

Susan Montez has been mildly irked when students misread the instructions for the numerical portion of the evaluation, giving her consistently low ratings and then raving about her in the comments section. "So now I tell them, 'If you want to nuke me, use 1. If you want to praise me, put 4,'" says Ms. Montez, a professor of English at Norwalk Community College. Like several professors interviewed for this story, she says she stays away from Rate My Professors and similar Web sites.

Another excerpt from the Chronicle piece:

As for why professors tend to remember the pans more than the praise, John T. Cacioppo thinks he knows. Mr. Cacioppo, a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, blames negativity bias, the human predisposition to focus on the bad. There are, he explains, sound evolutionary reasons for this tendency, such as remembering which fruits are poisonous and which caves contain bears.

But while it may be natural, it can also be a mistake. A small number of unhappy undergraduates does not mean a course, or a professor, is a failure, he says. "Just because a student doesn't like something doesn't mean it's wrong."

Mr. Cacioppo rarely gets worked up about his own evaluations. He tries to take the comments seriously, pro or con. One criticism, however, crops up again and again. "The standard one I've gotten for three decades is that I talk too fast," he says. "I would like to change that, but it's not under voluntary control."

In other words, students just have to deal with it.

Comments

[Super Dave 3438]

Evaluations pro or con are a tool to help us educators look at what we are doing to improve. Students filling them out should be honest and truthful.

It is sad to see the articles above. Educators should be passionate about being and educator and love making a difference in their students lives. If an educator is always complaining and unhappy they need to find something else to do. There is no money can buy a thankyou for a life changed by you. Smile, take a deep breath,be excited and enthusiatic knowing as you walk out the door that day you will touch lives. I feel for the students that hate their instructors. I would hope they would look at both sides of the street. Did that instructor do his.her very best to teach that student and did the student do their part and put an effort to learn what the educator was presenting. We are priveliged and honored to be educators knowing we are making a difference in our communities and country. If you love your work great. If you are here for the wrong reasons then get out and find something else to do.

We educators are priveledged to touch lives.

[Prytania]

Susan Montez? Who's she?