Academic Council 2003/2004: Dean Weiss announced that Professors Stuart Leslie from History of Science and Technology, Gerald Masson from Computer Science and Michael Williams from Philosophy will serve as one-year Council members beginning next fall.

Approval of minutes. The minutes for the meetings of February 5, and February 19, March 5, March 19, April 2, April 9, and April 23, 2003 were not available.

Remarks by the Secretary. Professor Kingsland announced that there is one more Tuesday evening meeting. She asked Council members to give some thought to possible topics of discussion. She distributed a preliminary summary of the Council's Tuesday evening discussion of teaching evaluation. When Professor Kingsland asked for Council's opinion on giving the summary to Jennifer Franklin who is a consultant to Hopkins, Council members agreed that this was a good idea.

Open Discussion. Professor Rugh suggested having a discussion at some point on the relationship between research centers and departments. Professor Ball commented that he thought Professor Rugh's suggestion made a lot of sense. Professor Williams asked if centers were subject to the same kind of evaluation that departments are. Dean Weiss said that last year in the Krieger School a policy was implemented so that all centers must provide the Dean's office with an Annual Report. Professor Kingsland said that about seven years ago when Council was doing its reviews it focused on centers and institutes. Certainly this could be done again or Council could decide to renew individual centers on an ad hoc basis. She added that at several Tuesday evening meetings Council had discussed centers, after which a report was written up and passed on to the Provost and the Deans. Professor Naiman added that one of the messages in the report was that it was not clear that there were mechanisms to resolve some issues like funding. Professor Rugh commented that the view and nature of centers seems to be changing as time goes on. Professor Lattman added that the variety of units that come under the heading of "center" is very broad and it is hard to set general policy. Professor Williams commented that centers could "fly under the radar" because they are not treated the way departments are. Dean Weiss opined that centers should not be treated the same way as departments. They don't have the same structure, historical significance or the same function and discipline, and there is great variation in the kinds of centers that exist. Dean Douglas commented that the Council could be most useful in discussing those things that are generic to both schools. There are some things, such as the way the Whiting School returns overhead back to the departments, that would not be done in the Krieger School. Dean Falk suggested that one way the Council might want to think about this is to review a center that has a special relationship to a department at the same time as the department is being reviewed. Dean Weiss suggested exhuming whatever documents there are on the subject, giving them to the Council and resuming this discussion in the fall.

Discussion of teaching evaluations. Drs. Bill Conley and Jennifer Franklin joined the meeting at 4:00 p.m. Dr. Franklin passed around an outline of a rubric to evaluate how student ratings are used now at Hopkins. She said she was interviewing groups all over campus. Her research is on how ratings are actually used in performance evaluations and teaching improvement processes and how the design of rating systems impacts the usability of the information collected from students. Dr. Franklin said she hoped to give Hopkins a "no holds barred" look at the questions that are being asked, how the data are being handled and how they are being reported to decision makers. Dr. Franklin asked what Council wanted ratings to do. She wants to know Council's goals so that she could offer recommendations that will help leverage feedback from students into usable information for faculty both for improving their instructional strategies and as inputs into the promotion decisions. She said that she had looked at the CSEQ report, she is aware of the CUE report and she has begun talking to students. Dr. Franklin said that she has developed and administered full-scale evaluation systems from scratch at Northeastern University and the University of Arizona. These systems had to pass the faculty senate when they were done and the faculty senate agreed to publish the product of the ratings. Four years ago she went to California to direct a center for teaching. She asked Council where she could help and what are they hoping to get from the information she can provide and the work she does.

One of the Council members commented that Council wants to promote faculty based on the totality of their performance both as scholars, researchers and as educators. One of the difficulties is fairly and quantitatively measuring what faculty are doing in teaching activities. He suggested that it would be useful for Dr. Franklin to look at the Oraculum and The ACE guide. He added that Council has found that they are not getting enough information in order to consider teaching in a significant way.

Another Council member commented that in a certain sense Academic Council is not representative of the faculty because Council's role is primarily to evaluate. He suggested broadening the discussion to construct an instrument that is useful both to the Council for evaluation, and will be useful to improve the performance of the faculty. Another Council member expressed frustration with the existing system of teaching evaluation. Dr. Franklin commented that Hopkins is not getting nearly the data it should out of the data management strategy. She said she hoped to give technical suggestions of how to manage the system. She asked about formal support for teaching.

A Council member opined that it is not really part of the culture on a fundamental level. Another added that there is plenty of freedom if one wants to innovate. A Council member mentioned the Center for Educational Resources that was created a couple of years ago and has developed a fairly active program. The School of Arts and Sciences Howard Hughes grant for improving undergraduate education was mentioned. Dr. Franklin asked how important is it to increase student satisfaction and how open is the Council to investigating the relationship between instructional strategies and teaching practices and student satisfaction. Dean Weiss commented that the Academic Council is focused on teaching effectiveness with regard to promotion and tenure. Dr. Franklin asked if teaching has not been articulated as a value how is it rewarded in promotion and tenure strategies and what are those promotion and tenure strategies for? What is the point of including teaching in the formula? She suggested that one should first clarify what is valued, and then design evaluation systems.

Professor Kingsland told Dr. Franklin that the papers she was handed are a summary of Council's concerns. Because they care about teaching, Council's main concern is that there should be a mechanism for fairly evaluating it. One of the key questions is is the University intent on using questionnaires and if the answer to that is yes, what is the best possible approach to that kind of quantitative measure. She added that the current questionnaire format is very unsatisfactory and said that specific help on making questionnaires more appropriate and improving the quality of the answers would be helpful to Council.

Dr. Conley said that he oversees the course evaluation process and while for Fall, 2003 there may be a different instrument, the answer to the "big question" why and how it is being used may still not be answered.

Another Council member asked for new ideas on assessing teaching performance or educational performance. A Council member commented that he was confused by Dr. Franklin's presentation. Dr. Franklin said that she knows she can make recommendations about what kind of questionnaires should be used. She said that the system that she administered delivered 60,000 teacher course evaluations and had them in the hands of faculty within two weeks. She said that it takes a stable institution commitment to doing a systematic survey. The contents of the questionnaire are not predetermined.

A Council member commented that evaluations are handed out and when the results are given to the faculty the class is over. The Council member prefers to talk to students and ask for concrete suggestions in mid-course. Dr. Franklin said she would share in her report strategies for doing that. She commented that students are thrilled when their voices are heard in time to make a difference in the course. End of semester ratings do not do that. Another Council member commented that for Council's use it would be useful just to have responses to the present questionnaire for all courses. Dr. Franklin asked how the data are maintained over time. She said she will offer plenty of technical advice on ways to improve the quality of data management and analysis processes. A Council member commented that if improving data in the technical sense could be done by next fall that would be super. That is first priority. The philosophical structure is something Council is working on. Dr. Franklin encouraged Council members to e-mail her. Dr. Conley said he would send Council Dr. Franklin's e-mail address. The guests left the meeting at 4:55 p.m.

A Council member commented that Dr. Franklin made a good point about the fairness issue, when teaching evaluations are looked at without having any idea about an appropriate comparison. Dean Weiss commented that there has been significant discussion about whether or not it was appropriate to hire a consultant at this point. He said that a decision needs to be made as to what to have her provide. Clearly people are interested in technical advice. Dean Falk added that he thought Dr. Franklin was asking if Council wanted the evaluation to serve a broader institutional purpose. Dean Douglas commented that Dr. Franklin has looked at the systems analysis view of assessment and he feels she can produce a reasonably good instrument. Another Council member said he thought it would be useful to know what peer institutions do. Dean Weiss suggested working this process carefully and making sure that the faculty support what is being done. He said that the issue will be re-visited with Dr. Conley and then brought back to Council.

The promotion of Dr. Pier Larson to Associate Professor in the Department of History effective July 1, 2003 was approved.

The promotion of Dr. Brenda Rapp to Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science effective July 1, 2003 was approved.

The appointment of Dr. Laurent Younes as Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences effective July 1, 2003 was approved.

Remarks by the Chair. There were no remarks by the Chair other than to remind Council that there will be a meeting next week on May 7.

The meeting adjourned at 5:12 p.m.

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Last updated 18Sep03 by dgips@jhu.edu