Non-scientific survey rates CMU professors among nation’s worst, university officials refute claim

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Ratemyprofessor.com statistics list Central Michigan University’s professors as 15th worst in the country, according to a report released in December.

But many call into question the validity of these findings. Faculty Association President Tim Connors said the site is not a true measurement of student opinions.

The data was collected by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and will be used in college ranking data for Forbes Magazine.

“It is a site open to anybody, anywhere, to say and do anything,” he said. “How do I know that they were students who even took that class?”

Also making the Rate My Professor list were Western Michigan University at No. 12 and Michigan Technological University at No. 4. One million professors are ranked on the site by 11 million user-generated responses.

Connors said RMP may be fun and interesting, but is not meaningful. It is unfortunate, he said, when people attach legitimacy to something without scientific merit or research attached.

CMU Provost Gary Shapiro said he was not familiar with the RMP figures, but the university takes teaching seriously.

“I don’t know anything about (RMP), and I wouldn’t put great faith in it,” Shapiro said.

He said students may view faculty ratings in a scientific format while registering for courses on the university website. The program was implemented last year.

Results for a professor from a specific class will be available when students click on a faculty member’s name.

Shapiro said each member of the faculty contract requires the faculty member to be competent in three areas: teaching, service and scholarship. The three competencies are further specified by each department, which has separate criteria for each individual faculty member.

“We have not reappointed (tenured) people … denied promotion to people or, at the last step, taken actions to terminate people who are tenured who have not been effective teachers due to deficiencies in teaching,” Shapiro said. “We consider teaching to be very important. It is very serious to us.”

He said teaching effectiveness is measured mainly by the student performance evaluations.

“Someone who is demonstrated as an ineffective teacher is unlikely to be reappointed (based on student evaluation forms),” Shapiro said.

The process is not perfect and consequences are not seen immediately, he said, but tenured faculty are reviewed periodically. When a faculty member has a performance review indicating deficiency, they are given a performance plan.

Good vs. bad professors

Saginaw senior John Ketchum said he has had more good professors than bad professors at CMU.

“I can count the number of bad professors I’ve had on one hand,” he said.

Ketchum said professors can fault students when they do not present material to students in a way for them to retain the information. A good professor, he said, interacts with students and gets them engaged in the material.

“A good professor doesn’t go by the book,” Ketchum said, “and puts some of his own personality into the class.”

Connors said the evaluations are students’ chance to express their opinions on their instructors. But student opinions are not “primary” when a department makes decisions on promotion and tenure, he said.

Student opinions are not necessarily immediately reliable, Connors said, because students do not see the lasting impacts of a difficult or unsavory class until later in life.

“But sometimes, thinking (‘I learned so much’) comes two, three, four years in the future,” he said.

Shapiro said performance must continue at a low level for a while before personnel action is taken against an under-performing faculty member.

Faculty looking to improve performance can turn to the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching and their departmental peers, Shapiro said.

The FaCIT Center supports faculty in the design and implementation of high impact teaching and learning at CMU, according to their website.

“We have several avenues faculty can take advantage of,” said Jim Therrell, director of FaCIT.

Therrell said FaCIT offers classroom observations, workshops, seminars, webinars, podcasts and consulting.

He said he urges students to discuss any issues they may have with an instructor in the class instead of taking their anger or frustration out on a site like RMP.

“RMP does no good at the end of the semester,” Therrell said. “(The semester’s) already done and there probably are a lot of biases and axes to grind (for people) that go to (RMP).”

He said the anonymous survey option on Blackboard is a better way for students to comment on their interactions with their professors.

Therrell recommends professors make anonymous surveys on Blackboard with open-ended responses available early in the semester to determine what is working in the classroom and what needs improvement.

FaCIT was used by 535 faculty members, or 47 percent of faculty, from July 2009 to June 2010, according to figures from FaCIT.