SRI: Silly Revolting Indigestion? Spoiled Repugnant Insanity?

No.

Student Rating of Instruction. Spring Edition. 2012. Now coming to a university department near you. Watch as adjuncts, instructors, and tenure-track faculty squirm on theoretical stakes as students skewer them for various reasons real or imagined. Witness as administrators and supervisors carefully consider what students have to say as they weigh the professional fates of us feckless folk and determine whether, based on what students have to say, we should be reappointed for another year.

Have I dripped enough sarcasm into my introduction to sufficiently convey how horrifying these little written barbs are? The SRI…the bane of my (and fellow instructor and tenure-track faculty’s) existence. Why? Because our department heads, deans, and provosts actually take into consideration the OPINIONS of 18-20 year olds in determining our overall effectiveness, knowledge, and clarity as professors.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually value student input. I actively request it every semester in every class that I teach – but I expect my students to provide substantive feedback about what they learned, what they would change about the class, and an explanation or argument as to WHY something should change. I’ve used this valuable feedback to make changes…every semester. So why, might you ask, am I being so hard on the SRI? Simple. It is ANONYMOUS. Which makes it the equivalent of Rate My Professors where there are zero consequences for lambasting a professor because the student decides that it is the professor’s fault that he or she didn’t do well – that the professor wasn’t clear, knowledgeable, and available…not that the student wasn’t prepared, procrastinated all semester, didn’t listen or pay attention in class, and never asked a single question. In other words, the SRI encourages vengeance and utterly lacks any accountability.

SRIs are used to evaluate our overall performance as instructors by people who do not yet have college degrees, who do not have the knowledge that we do about writing, college level instruction, or rhetoric, who think (generally) that Facebook and Twitter are as worthy of their attention as their college coursework (even IN class), and who skip class because it is raining…or snowing…or windy…or sunny…or or or or or….and think that those are viable excuses for missing class. These SRIs make me distinctly uncomfortable and on edge every semester…and I know that I’m not alone in that feeling. The power that the students have over us is monumental and scary – they can literally make or break our careers, depending on how heavily weighted the department or university tenure committee decide to make the SRI.

I cannot force my students to listen. I cannot force my students to grant me more attention in class than they grant their texts and emails on their phones. I cannot force my students to begin assignments early, work diligently on them, and turn them in on time. But they can force my department head to note that I’m not clear enough, or give assignments that are too hard or weighted too heavily, or that I don’t turn graded work back fast enough. On this last one, I admit to taking up to two weeks to grade and return work, which I always figured was ample time, given all of the other responsibilities that I must attend to. If ALL I did was teach and grade, then the work would likely be returned within two class periods. But that’s not the reality of my job or my life. Sometimes I don’t work on weekends. And sometimes I don’t work until 10pm. So what do I do? Ignore my other responsibilities in favor of fast grading? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

These SRIs are the equivalent of your interns evaluating YOUR overall effectiveness as a boss and influencing your continued employment…can you imagine? Most people who work outside of academia who learn this (when I tell them) are floored and disgusted by this idea. Indeed. As are we.

But.

As students are now considered “consumers” of education and we are evidently cogs in the education delivery business, my job is to give the consumers what they want…easy, simple, and numerous assignments that spread the overall grade weights widely so that no one assignment carries a heavier load, a low amount of reading and writing, and an easy path to an A. Or at least that’s how these SRIs make me feel…they devalue what I do by allowing individuals who are distinctly unqualified to comment on my performance and to judge my effectiveness based solely on opinion and whether they like me or not.

You’d think that I have terrible SRIs, right? I don’t. My evals are usually pretty good, but if I try anything different, anything truly innovative, anything that goes outside the expected norm? I suffer with poor SRI ratings.

This contentious document makes it IMPOSSIBLE for me to bring my creativity, innovation, new ideas, and adventurous spirit to the crafting of composition classes. Why is that important, you might wonder? Well, being creative and innovative in a composition class actually helps the students who are paying attention and doing the work a whole lot more than a traditional, standard, expected, taught-from-a-textbook approach that gives purposeless, audience-less five-paragraph essay assignments. But that’s a gripe for another day.

If you are a professor or instructor in a similar position, how do you work to guarantee good student responses to the SRI (“excellent” and “good” ratings)? Do you explain things every single day (redundancies atop redundancies)? Do you give quizzes on what you explained? Do you provide pizza and cookies once a month? Do you start everyone at an A and give them ten assignments worth 10% each and make it almost impossible for them to fail or do poorly regardless of their level of engagement?

Any advice or ideas will be greatly appreciated, both for me and anyone who suffers the same heartburn every semester. Let the games begin.

Edit: This article just arrived in my university mailbox, forwarded by a fellow faculty member to all faculty. Given the content of my post, this is highly relevant. Note especially the VAST differences in the definition of an "effective teacher" between students and faculty.

Defending my salary: An easy target writes back

Imagine being the constant target of derision from the general public, disconnected people in authority positions, legislators, and your own customers. Imagine that your interns’ opinions count more than your supervisor’s in your annual evaluation. Imagine fielding emails filled with questions, concerns, and requests from customers, colleagues, and supervisors at 10:00pm on a Thursday night, 8:00am on a Saturday morning, and 2:00pm on a Sunday afternoon. Imagine the salary that would be attached to that job. Now think again.

As an easy target for everyone’s misconceptions and assumptions about what university professors do, as exemplified by David Levy’s recent missive in the Washington Post declaring that we don’t work hard enough (I evidently make six figures and work 30 hours a week – news to me, by the way), I decided to write back in another attempt to restore balance to this narrative battle that we faculty seem to be losing.

While our critics such as Levy and anyone who knows nothing about what we do, but who seem to embrace an ingrained fantasy as reality, would never agree to Jill Kronstadt’s call to “shadow a community college professor. Or come work as an adjunct,” perhaps the more rationally-minded amongst blogosphere readers will consider a typical day during spring semester in an effort to fill in the gaps.

Specifically, this was my Wednesday, March 28, 2012.

As a second-year, tenure-track Pennsylvania state school faculty member, my salary is $51,000 a year. I have been at Kutztown University since August 2010, and my salary has stagnated because we don’t have a contract.

8:00 – 8:30am – Respond to 11 student emails that arrived the night before. Gulp down coffee and banana for breakfast. Pet the cat.

8:30 – 8:45am – Get dressed. Confirm 10am meeting with Social Equity office.

9:00 – 9:45am – Arrive at school, visit English Department main office, sign three forms as the Temporary Hiring Committee Chair, discuss personnel matter with English Department chair in closed-door impromptu meeting, open newly arrived dossier materials for Department secretary to add to applicants’ files.

10:00 – 10:50am – (Notice I haven’t taught anyone anything yet?) Meeting with Social Equity office to discuss proper procedures for interviewing candidates, reasons for inviting applicants to campus, the specific language to avoid, as well as the order in which everything must happen. Take notes and ask questions as April 1 we begin reviewing applications for Linguistics temporary instructor.

11:00am – Arrive University Writing Center. As the director of the Center, my presence facilitates a more professional atmosphere, even though it is difficult to get work done because I do not have an office with a door. I actually sit in the waiting area of the Writing Center and work on my Netbook while tutoring and discussions are ongoing all day.

1:00 – 2:30pm – Students from Advanced Composition and College Composition classes meet with me to discuss progress on current projects. Several ask me to read their essays and provide feedback, which I do. One College Comp student realizes she is completely off-base and we discuss how to get her back on track. I offer to grant her a one-week extension to improve her chances at success.

2:30 – 3:00pm – Student who had previously asked me to be her advisor explains the latest problems/drama and that she was denied a change in advisor. I help her to understand the wisdom of the Department Chair’s decision and encourage her to focus her work and not let the drama get her down.

 3:00 – 3:30pm – Respond to students, Social Equity, colleagues, and my Department Chair via email as questions and requests are continuous.

3:30 – 3:45pm – Return to English office across campus, review incomplete applications for Linguistics position, ask Department secretary to compose reminder emails to applicants that their materials are incomplete.

4:00 – 4:30pm – Difficult conversation with student worker about reappointment.

4:30pm – Drive home.

5:00 – 10:00pm – Complete various me-tasks such as laundry, cleaning kitchen, enjoying two personal phone calls, and eating dinner, while intermittently responding to student emails, reading and commenting on student blogs, crafting a proposal to present at a national conference in 2013, emailing colleagues to drum up interest, writing a letter of recommendation for another student, and then creating Google doc for new panel.

10:30pm – Go to bed.

That’s a typical Wednesday. And Monday. In fact, today was close to this detailed description with the addition of a phone interview. My Social Equity meeting this morning consisted of certifying candidates that the committee would like to interview. And tonight I need to work on my presentation for a national conference in Boston this Saturday instead of crafting a panel for a conference next year.

 I teach three classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Notice how much research I completed? Notice how much grading I did? Notice how different this day is from your conception of what professors do? The requirements of my job are to teach, research, publish, present at national conferences, serve on committees (department, college, and university level), do community service, and (for me right now) run the University Writing Center. Much of the research, administrative work, and community service take place on weekends, over breaks, and during the summer.

If only my job just consisted of teaching. What a dream.

I take home $2600 net a month. Now tell me I make too much and I don’t work hard enough.