Chicago, 5 April 2013
Dear Dean Reinhard
Andress,
Thank you for
receiving me in your office in mid-March, and I apologize for the delay in
responding to your email.
During our conversation,
I made it clear that a major reason for my reluctance to submit my annual
assessment form to the Chair of the History Department since January 2010 was
the unwillingness of our department to make public the relevant data that would
correlate teaching evaluations with grading and other matters.
In the last few
years, beginning with the departmental committee report that evaluated my
request for promotion to the rank of professor, and further assessments by the
Chair, the students’ evaluations have become the most contentious issue. In our
meeting last month, you read to me what you perceived as “negative comments” by
the students, and in your letter you mention that “your teaching is problematical because
of a significant number of negative comments by students.” And you add that “I
see you as not fully complying with your teaching responsibilities.” First
of all, I don’t know what “significant” means here, since the department has
failed to provide us with any relevant figures that would correlate
evaluations, grading, and the quality of teaching. In effect, since the
students’ evaluations have become computerized around 2005–06 through a new
system, I’ve requested from the Chairs of our department to provide us with
relevant data that would situate the evaluations for each professor in relation
to his or her colleagues. Such data would include at the very minimum the class
average for grading and assessment; the standard deviation for each
course/seminar and the overall average; the correlation between each
professor’s performance and that of the department; and the distribution of
grades for individual courses and seminars and the department as a whole.
To wit, there is a
national problem of grade inflation, well documented in the academic and journalistic
literatures, and to which the department and university are willingly not
paying much attention. Consequently, those of us who have our courses and
seminars structured on rigorous readings and grading of papers and assignments
are punished for not fitting with the mysterious and unpublicized “general
curve” of grading and behaving. It is no secret, however, notwithstanding absent
data about grading and the performance of students and their professors, that
50 percent of Loyola’s students fail to receive their bachelor degrees within
the four-year period normally assigned to them, and that this may in turn point
to a major structural weakness in the performance of students, in spite of
Loyola’s lenient requirements.
Should professors
like myself, who have been at the service of the university for 20 years, be
punished just few years before their retirement, simply for assigning
first-class readings, and for providing rigorous comments and grading to their
students’ papers? During our conversation in your office, you have quoted what
you perceive as so-called “negative comments” by some of my students, which
were randomly accumulated by the departmental Chair. Besides the fact that such
statements would only produce circumstantial and anecdotal evidence at best,
they should not be used for purposes of tenure/promotion and the renewal of
contracts, unless, of course, they are substantiated by statistical evidence
for the totality of courses and seminars offered by the department in a
semester. Moreover, the so-called “negative comments” are taken for granted for
what is perceived as negative. When, for example, a student claims that “the
professor’s lectures are too long and incomprehensible,” shouldn’t we inquire
further and check whether this student has read the assignment, cares about the
content of the assignment (the
assigned book), and if so, whether his/her dissatisfaction stems from any
differences of interpretation, or is indicative of something else? Or when a
student claims that “the essay’s prompt is vague, if not incomprehensible,” shouldn’t
we pursue the question further and ask her whether she has read the texts upon
which the prompt was based? And if so, does she care about the texts she has read? Do they mean anything to her?
Why are you
confronting me only with the negatives? Why not look at what “positive”
comments have to say, and, again, confront such comments with a rigorous test
of quality in order to see what they have in turn to say about what Loyola has
to offer—or what it fails to offer?
There is the desire
of a consumer society to avoid learning curves. This tends to result in
dumbed-down products that are easily started but compromised in value and
application. Shouldn’t we contrast this with teaching experiences that do have
learning curves, but pay off well and allow students and teachers to become well
versed in reading and writing? For over 20 years I’ve committed myself to
demanding learning curves in my writing and teaching, and I want to pursue
along that path.
Sincerely,
Zouhair Ghazzal
Professor of
historical and social sciences
Department of
History
zghazza@luc.edu
Post-Scriptum:
Regarding my writing
and research, I prefer to be read rather than simply graded. For that purpose I
made public all my contributions since 2009–10:
Additional material
is available here:
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