Students and teachers swapped roles for the last three weeks while students evaluated professors on performance and teaching techniques.
Roles returned to normal Friday after the university finished conducting student-teacher evaluations, which began April 9. The evaluations are part of the contract the California State University system has with the California Faculty Association.
Junior Alika Edwards, a communications major, said he only fills out evaluations when professors do excellent or awful jobs.
"Some teachers do a good job, and you want to give them good reviews," Edwards said.
Ninety-five percent of the evaluations that he has written have been positive, he said.
In his three semesters at Chico State, Edwards has only written one bad review, he said.
He wrote a negative evaluation for a professor who was always late and had a confusing grading system, Edwards said.
Evaluations are voluntary for professors during the fall semester, but they are required during the spring semester, said Judith Zachai, the test officer in the Testing and Research office.
The university may choose not to renew a professor's contract if there are a lot of negative evaluations, but evaluations by fellow professors and the teacher's involvement with the campus and community are also considered, she said.
The evaluations go into the professors' files, Zachai said. Tenured professors have evaluations every spring, but they are only looked at every five years.
If there are at least five students in a class, they must complete the evaluations, which allow students to give feedback to faculty, she said.
"Students have opinions," Zachai said. "They get a chance to inform faculty what they liked and what they didn't like."
The university uses the number of negative evaluations to tell the difference between disgruntled students and poor teaching. If only two or three students in a class of 20 say negative things, the university will question if their remarks are valid.
Sociology professor Olga Bright said that in addition to the mandatory evaluations, she gives out her own to her students. She asks students what they liked about the course and what types of books would suit their needs.
"Mine are much more tailored to my courses and more useful to me," she said.
The remarks that she has gotten are usually positive, but she has received negative comments, too, Bright said.
Negative comments probably come from students who are failing her classes, she said.
Students write about their feelings on how the semester went, Bright said. She learns what to teach and how to teach from other professors in her field.
Some students said they take the evaluations seriously so professors can get an idea of how they performed throughout the semester and can learn from them.
Junior Norma Cabrera has only written positive comments about professors at Chico State in the two semesters that she has been here, but she wouldn't hesitate to write bad ones, she said.
Students should take the evaluations seriously because professors can learn what students like and don't like, she said.
Cabrera would write a negative review if she didn't gain anything from the course or if the professors weren't prepared or organized, she said.
"So far, the teachers have been good, but I would leave one if I have to," Cabrera said.
Sergio Delgado can be reached at sdelgado@theorion.com
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- Editorial: Students should take evaluations seriously
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