Take the time to rate your professors

The Issue: Online course evaluations now available What we think: Student feedback improves BC's faculty

Did you have a professor that changed your worldview, broadened your perspectives, and inspired personal growth? Or was your professor an unfair grader, disorganized, and uncommitted to teaching? The answers to these questions are at the heart of Boston College's latest initiative to gauge the strength of its teaching base. And the University needs your help.

BC thrives on its professors' commitment to student learning. The health of BC's faculty, one of the University's most valuable resources, requires a comprehensive student diagnosis to dissect its academic vigor. As the semester comes to a close, the Office of Student Services has launched a new campaign to motivate students to review their professors.

As consumers of the BC education and stakeholders in the University's future, we are enrolled with a duty to voice our opinions on the teachers who had a tremendous impact on us - for better, or for worse. Similar to upper-level management appraisals by employees and resident assistant evaluations from residents, professors should be subject to the same intense scrutiny of their students.

Last semester, after months of planning, organization, and implementation, the University developed an online course evaluation system to streamline the process and provide higher quality assessments of its faculty. Despite this major overhaul, however, less than one-third of students completed online evaluations, limiting its ability to create meaningful change. To boost the response rate for a more accurate, sweeping assessment, BC is rewarding students who complete evaluations with the early access to their grades online, starting Dec. 12.

We applaud Student Services and the University for looking to boost student involvement in their decision-making processes. The online evaluations offer students the opportunity to reflect on course curriculum, critique professors' teaching skills, and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. The assessments help faculty to spend less time deciphering student handwriting and more time reading evaluations to prompt future improvements.

While the added incentive of early grades should encourage more students to complete the evaluations, the far-reaching effects of these evaluations should be reason enough. Deans of the various schools analyze student opinions to provide meaningful encouragement and criticism to professors. This flow of information enables positive reinforcement to the most dedicated professors, while highlighting opportunities for development for weaker teachers.

These course evaluations remain a fundamental element of an educator's curriculum planning. Meticulous professors absorb this data as a guidebook for next semester, tweaking their courses accordingly. Professors change course material, sharpen teaching styles, revamp assignments, and have a heightened sense of student needs, based on student opinion. Administrators draw on evaluations to review faculty performance and make major promotional decisions. In short, these evaluations matter.

One of the University's most important responsibilities is to hold its faculty accountable to the highest teaching standards. After all, BC's consistent upward trajectory, as one of the nation's most prestigious schools, depends on its renowned faculty.

It's time to make a difference by exercising your right as a student. BC's top administrators and deans are listening.