Engineering School may implement TA evaluations

If Undergraduate Assembly leaders have their way, Engineering teaching assistants will soon receive some assistance with their teaching. Brandon Fitzgerald, chairperson of the UA's committee on teaching assistants, said last week that his group is trying to expand student-completed TA evaluations to the Engineering School to increase needed feedback to TAs. Currently, only students taking College classes evaluate their TAs. And after yesterday's meeting of the Engineering Undergraduate Affairs Committee, the main obstacles to the proposal seem to have been solved, with representatives from each of the school's departments agreeing that evaluations would be a benefit to the school, Engineering Undergraduate Dean John Keenan said yesterday. Fitzgerald said that the anonymous, semesterly reviews would be submitted to the TAs themselves, intended solely to give the instructors feedback from their students. "Students in the College have had the opportunity to give feedback to TAs in a non-threatening manner," he said. "It hasn't been available to students in the Engineering School." "The TAs dispose of them as they wish," he said of the College reports. "[That way,] bad reports aren't going to go to the department about them." The College's program, which has been in place for about five years, is run by the College office. For the new Engineering program, undergraduate officials, including Keenan, will have to approve it. And after some discussion yesterday, members said they wanted to pursue the project further. "We decided that we thought it would be a good idea for these TA evaluations to be done," Keenan said. "We like the idea of some direct feedback from the students to the TAs." The next step in the process will be to rewrite the College evaluations in a manner appropriate for the Engineering School. Fitzgerald said the evaluations will give students the opportunity to rate their TAs on a variety of criteria like "Does the TA present material clearly?" Students will also be able to offer written comments. He said that, after several consultations, his committee decided to target the Engineering School for initial expansion of the program. "We were considering expanding it to all the undergraduate schools," he said. The decision to begin with Engineering was reached since, "it seemed to us that students in the Engineering School have a lot to say about their teaching assistants." With the project approved, Fitzgerald said implementation should not pose too many problems. "It's the same way it works in the College," he explained. "We'll talk to various Engineering students and people in the Engineering school to see what changes need to be made to make [the form] more applicable to the Engineering School." Keenan said the school already has the mechanics in place to administer the project through the Engineering Student Activities Council. Fitzgerald added now that the project has been approved in principle, his committee will aim for its implementation before the end of the year. "We're definitely trying to do it this year," he said. "It's completely feasible." Fitzgerald said that his committee may also try to distribute evaluations more often in the College, rather than once just before final exams. "Ideally, we'd like to distribute it twice a semester," he said. "So if there are problems, a teaching assistant will be able to make changes before the final grades come in." "If there's a problem, you want to correct it as soon as you can," Keenan added.

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