Sizing up the Faculty

W HILE each college president and dean wants a good faculty, he has at his command few systematic plans for finding out whether he has one or not. To size up a member of the faculty, he usually relies upon personal impressions, remembers remarks concerning him dropped by students, notes his publications, preserves the opinions of colleagues, and observes the member in action. In arriving at decisions about rewarding members according to their contributions, few attempts are made to assemble all data from all sources in orderly fashion. The reasons for failure to collect all data in orderly fashion are numerous. The most potent cause in cautious college life is that it is not done; in fact, some presidents of small colleges believe that it does not need to be done because the administrative officers can get ample data from informal observation. Another reason lies in the fact that many faculty members are sensitive about appraisal; they feel that they know more about their own subjects than administrative officers or college committees and know better how they should be taught. Others believe that with their years of experience, they know how to teach their subjects and that if the student does not learn, it is the student's problem, not theirs. Much of faculty objection, however, is due to distrust of the probable methods of collecting data. They fear too much reliance upon student opinion, the invalidity of class visitation, too heavy or too little weighting of committee services, and the like. While administrative evaluation of a systematic sort is rare, orderly self-evaluation by college teachers themselves is more common. Many

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• An evaluation schedule for academic ranking

  G M Norem, Wolfram Bublitz et al.•Peabody Journal of Education•1950

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