5/20 How important are course evaluations, and specifically
the evaluations of the professors, for faculty promotions
at Cal?
\_ depends on the dept. all depts read them, regardless of
whether the prof does. be fair and don't froth at the mouth;
instructors (and depts) can ID and tend to discount wildly
angry evals unless it's clear that those evals can support
their claims. wildly positive evals tend to be discounted
too. :) --humanities gsi
\_ Yes, it depends *alot* on the department. I think the
Berkeley math department really doesn't give a shit about
teaching. I majored in math, and got to see a bit about how
that department works and how they do their hiring. When
you apply for a faculty position there, they don't even ask about
teaching experience. Of course there are some great teachers,
like John Neu, but they decided to be great teachers on their
own, with no motivation from the department.
\_ And now the truth: you're an undergrad at a research university.
Unless you have film of the prof molesting 6 year olds just before
killing them in a satanic ritual (and his face better show) your
eval won't mean anything to anyone. The translation of the above
about ignoring the angry and the happy people is that the only evals
remaining are the vast bulk that say very little. Think about it.
\_ not ignoring all the non-bland ones, just discounting those
which sound stalker-like (at either end). there's a
difference. the research univ. emphasis is correct
otherwise; ucb does care more about teaching across
the board than many comparable research schools, both for
hiring and internally, but that's nothing to the fuzzy
warmth of small colleges. one's teaching record can help
for advancement but it rarely hurts enough to prevent
advancement. if you've a serious contention re: someone's
teaching, take it to the dept chair--they hold office
hours like anyone else.
\_ holy shit, no! do not go to the department chair! not if
you ever plan to take a class with that department ever again.
\_ If the professor is good or has tenure your evaluation forms
probably aren't going to negatively affect his career much.
Do you really expect one grumpy undergrad to matter that much?
However a lot of professors actually DO care about teaching well
and evalution forms do help them with that. Also departments who
have profs that have a history of getting really bad evals tend to
work with that in mind. For instance I think the famous Hurricane
Wu no longer teaches undergrad classes. And that is the math
getting much funcding yet expected to give almost every undergrad
department which is famous at cal for not giving a damn about
the undergrads. (Probably something to do with that whole not
getting much funding yet expected to give almost every undergrad
here a year or more of math.) Also as has been said, good
evaluations help more than bad ones hurt. So give good evalutions
to the profs you like, give constructive critisism to the ones
you think will actually listen, and don't stress too much.
\_ Mostly agreed. Bottom line, be honest, but be mature.
\_ I was in Wu's Math 1B class for about 3 minutes. That's how long
it took to realise the guy was a total psycho and walk out even
though I needed 1B that semester. I couldn't believe no one else
left. Did anyone else here actually take Wu for longer than a
week?
\_ Actually, a friend of mine took his upper division
differential geometry course and loved it. of course he
is also insane, and is now getting a phd in differential
geometry. For some people, Wu is actually a very good
teacher.
\_ Pulled a B. Worst semester ever. --scotsman
\- The time has come for:
http://www.jiggscasey.com/slappy/book_of_wu.html
--psb
\_ NOW THAT IS HILARIOUS. Is Wu REALLY like that
in person? All that cryptic Chinese proverb shit?
\- everyone i have pointed to that page
thought it was funny. everyone who had
wu for a class also added "it was really
like that!" The other funny thing is Wu
rally cares about teaching. If you go to
his WEEB site, he's written papers on
*teaching* math. ok tnx. --psb
\_ Now you know why you have fans.
\- PSB's Corollary to Godwin's Law: All conversations
about teaching at Berkeley eventually end up at
Hurricane Wu. --psb
\_ Wu, Math 113... Hard as all hell. |