Policy and Procedures for Student Evaluations of Teaching - UTDPP1074

Policy Statement

Preamble

In order to provide faculty members and the University with information on teaching performance, all faculty will be evaluated by students pursuant to these policies and procedures.

Policies

1. The teaching performance of all faculty members is to be reviewed and evaluated by the students in each organized course, using, at a minimum, the procedures described in this document.
2. The reviews and evaluations submitted by the students are the property of the University and, within the limits of law and court decisions, Regents' Rules, administrative procedures, and this policy, are to be made available in a timely manner to the faculty member, to review committees, to administrators, and to other properly constituted functions of the University.

Procedures

1. At or near the end of each organized course, a machine-readable University questionnaire will be distributed to each student in attendance at the evaluation session. The questionnaire, The University of Texas at Dallas Course Evaluation form, may also contain additional course or program-specified questions and essay questions.
2. The Department, Program, or School responsible for the organized course may also request written student comment or response in addition to the required administration of the machine-readable questionnaire.
3. The following minimum standards govern the administration of all teaching evaluations by students:
   1. The instructor shall not be present.
   2. Any questionnaires or other materials are to be distributed, proctored, collected, and returned immediately to the Department, Program, or School office or to another designated office by non-faculty staff or students and not by the course instructor. The Department Head or Dean will designate a member of the Department staff or School to distribute and collect the evaluation materials.
4. The Department Head or Dean responsible for the organized course shall assure that a period of approximately thirty minutes in a class period within the last two weeks of the semester shall be allocated for the administration of the teaching review.
5. The University shall oversee the computer processing of the data and shall provide appropriate standardized statistical summaries to the administration and to the School Dean, who is responsible for the dissemination of statistical summaries to the individual faculty member and within the School. The faculty member shall not have access to student responses or comments that may identify the student until after the grades for the course have been submitted.
6. The statistical summaries and student comments (transcripts or originals) are to be kept by the School Dean for a minimum of three years, or as long as either the faculty member or the administration deems them valuable, except that for nontenured but tenure-track faculty and instructors all review materials related to teaching evaluations are to be kept until three years after a decision has been made regarding tenure.