Several senators maintained that the data collected in the evaluations are unreliable and that information collected for one purpose should not be used for another.

The issue was brought before the committee at its Nov. 19 meeting by Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In a letter to Faculty Senate Chair Peter Nickerson, professor of pathology, Malone noted that in the past, evaluations had been compiled in book form to be used by students when choosing classes. However, he said, while some faculty members accepted the idea of making available the numerical grades for course instructors, they found publication of student comments unacceptable.

"The question is then, under what circumstances should students have access to these written comments? With or without the instructor's permission?" he wrote.

Nickerson asked senators whether the issue should be referred to the senate's Committee on Teaching and Learning.

Thomas Schroeder, associate professor of learning and instruction, said he did not support releasing the information to the public, stressing that "it was not appropriate to use information that was collected for one purpose for other purposes."

However, if the information was released, it is important to present the data in relative, as well as absolute, terms, Schroeder said, noting there are many people who do not know the difference between percents and percentiles, for example.

"I see too many difficulties in providing information in a way that it will be used responsibly and where the data that is presented is presented sensibly," he said.

He added that he would not like to see verbatim student comments released, as they are "highly unreliable."

Cedric Smith, professor of pharmacology and toxicology, noted that the evaluation process is administered differently across the university, even within a given course.

"I think that unless one wants to really implement a major, uniform, administered and well-understood-almost a contractual kind of-relationship, I think this is really very hazardous," he said. "It certainly should not be public information because it invites abuse of the most terrible kind."

Jack Meacham, professor of psychology, agreed that the specific procedures, traditions and expectations for students and faculty members regarding teaching evaluations vary among units.

"It would be virtually impossible for a Faculty Senate committee to come up with a standard recommendation (regarding teaching evaluations) that would be useful or accepted" by the various units, said Meacham, a former associate vice provost for undergraduate education with responsibility for course evaluations. "This is not the road to head down," he said, adding that he would recommend not referring the issue to the Committee on Teaching and Learning.

Melvyn Churchill, professor of chemistry, pointed out that most of the numerical evaluations of members of his department fall in the middle range; "they're very similar to each other," he said.

And, despite the fact that evaluations are given out in class to be turned in immediately, replies usually are received from only about 25 percent of the class, with a maximum return from about 50 percent, he said.

Claude Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science, cautioned senators to examine the norms that have been established for the percentiles used in the evaluations.

The norms, Welch said, must differentiate such things as level of class, size of class or whether the class is in a major or an elective. "All three of those are very significant variables," he said, noting that a large, required class is "quite likely to have a very different distribution of feeling" than a class taught to majors in a much smaller setting.

Smith added that there are "vastly different" results when students are required to fill out evaluations to receive a grade than when they "volunteer" to submit an evaluation, or when evaluations are given out at exam time rather than several days before or several months after the exam.

"There are lots of ways of skewing this," he said.

He noted that teaching evaluations are important as a "piece" of the broader issue of faculty productivity and assessment that Provost Thomas E. Headrick is addressing in his academic planning process.

Nickerson suggested that the issue of teaching evaluations may be addressed on a broader level than is raised in Malone's letter. The issue, as defined by Malone, was not referred to the committee.