Too many negative reviews from student opinion surveys in the College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Sciences will put a professor's chances of promotion in jeopardy, and may result in an important discussion with Dean Pamela Gates.

"Students should be respected by faculty members," Gates said. "Anyone can have an outlier, where you have a class that doesn't work well together. But if a faculty member consistently has problems in the classroom I will meet with them to discuss their teaching."

Supply orders for the spring and summer 2015 forms are due Feb. 23. Processing usually is completed four to six weeks after the end of the semester. Instructors are notified the day after the deadline for final grades that reports can be accessed. Students do not have access to these reports.

Gates' faculty members are expected to publish research professionally, and be committed to teaching students.

"Overall I think we have excellent teachers," Gates said. "We rarely have problems, but when we do, I address them."

Positive reviews also increase faculty members chances for a raise or tenure. Professors use student feedback as a means of self-reflection and assessment, but the surveys themselves are questioned by some.

"I have somewhat different views on the way the SOS should be used," said psychology undergraduate director Mark Reilly. "While important, SOS scores end up being the primary focus in evaluating teachers' performance."

Reilly recognized the need for student evaluation, but as an experimental psychologist, he said the surveys aren't a measure of what students learned during their experience with a certain professor. His PSY-384: Behavior Analysis course consistently receives high marks from students, but SOS forms cannot quantify the amount of learning that really took place.

"It can change behavior in ways that are not necessarily beneficial to pedagogy," Reilly said. "Designing a more challenging, high level course for example does not typically generate higher ratings."

Sterling Johnson, a political science professor, said he noticed early on in his nearly 27 years at CMU the drawbacks of the short answer section for student surveys.

"It could damage your ego or falsely inflate your ego," Johnson said. "I've seen colleagues who have been evaluated on their color, accent, height or gender. One of my colleagues is no longer here as a result of acting on these things."

Johnson also reflected on the differences in feedback in upper and lower level courses.

"With 100-level classes, you have a more diverse group of people intellectually," Johnson said. "You're trying to teach a group of people, some of whom only want to fulfill a requirement for something. On the other hand, in upper-level classes you're teaching people who are all on the same page, all there for the same purpose. They show genuine interest."

Students approach the evaluation process in varying degrees of appreciation.

"It doesn't let you fully elaborate on the professor themselves," said Midland sophomore Debora Ferreira.

She tries to give what feedback she can in the limited amount of time and space that is available for the survey. However, she remembers consistently running out of time during her surveys last semester.

"We sat their class for a semester and giving them feedback is important," said Midland freshman Alex Cress.