SGA movement makes instructors’ marks available on Portal

Many students wonder what their professors will be like before they attend their first class.

The Student Government Association wants to provide a way to do that.

A new link was added to the Central Michigan University Portal at cmich.edu, which allows students to view a grade distribution for the spring 2009 semester and includes every professor on campus, said SGA President Jason Nichol.

“We want to increase transparency between students and their professors,” the Mount Pleasant senior said. “This gives students more purchasing power when selecting which professors they will have.”

To view the grade distribution, students can go the portal, click Academics and then on Grade Distribution Reports for Spring 2009, under the General Academics category.

“We’re using this as momentum for our big project this year, which is getting (student opinion surveys) forms online,” Nichol said.

In the open

Grades distributions are available on CDs in Charles V. Park Library, but SGA Vice President Brittany Mouzourakis feels this is not enough.

“The resources are already available, but in a mostly unusable medium,” the Garden City senior said. “This is also more effective than other reviews because they are mostly outliers.”

Nichol said he also would like to have the SOS rating scores available online for students to view as soon as possible.

“It really depends on a number of things, including deciding which interface we are going to use,” Nichol said.

The SGA is aiming for the beginning of the spring semester as a desired target day, Nichol said.

Nichol anticipated there would be more resistance to the plan, but has not really seen any.

Tim Brannan, president of the Faculty Association, said there is no prevailing opinion on the SOS forms moving online one way or the other.

Nichol and Mouzourakis will attend a meeting with university administrators to discuss other options to allow students to view students’ opinions of their forum instructors, as well as instituting a rating system.