|
UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ
|
AS/SCM/262
|
MINUTES
A
Special Meeting of the Santa Cruz Division
November
27, 2000
Meeting
A
Special Meeting of the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic Senate was held Monday,
November 27, 2000 in room B206 Earth and Marine Science Building. With Parliamentarian Allen Van Gelder and
Secretary David Koo present, Chair Roger Anderson called the meeting to order
at 3:40pm. The Special Meeting was
called by the Chair on 14 November 2000 to address the legislation
(AS/SCP/1271) originally submitted for the 31 May 2000 Spring Senate meeting.
This legislation would repeal mandatory narrative evaluations.
Chair
Anderson announced that Professor Ronald Henderson had passed away and the
Senate honored him with a moment of silence in his memory.
Chair
Anderson asked for and received approval without objection to start the meeting
with a series of pre-programmed presentations from different sides of the
arguments of six minutes apiece before opening the discussion for general
debate with two-minute time limits per person.
1. Minutes
Chair
Anderson asked for a motion to table the minutes of February 23, 2000. The motion was so moved and seconded and
carried by unanimous voice vote.
2. Repeal of the Divisional Senate Regulations
that Require Mandatory Narrative Evaluations
Professor
Maria Schonbek introduced legislation (AS/SCP/1271), which strikes out all of
9.2 Written Evaluations, i.e., 9.2.1 and 9.2.2, of the Regulations of the
Academic Senate, Santa Cruz Division.
The motion was seconded.
Professor
Manfred Warmuth read into the record a speech submitted to Secretary Koo. It is reproduced in full:
“Thanks to the Chair Roger Anderson for
arranging this meeting.
The narrative evaluation system has
always been one of the defining elements of this campus. There has been an
on-going discussion on how to modify the narrative evaluation system during all
of my twenty years here.
The founders of UCSC dreamed of small
class sizes and instructors getting to know their students personally in each
class. But after 35 years of budgetary
realities, we have to face the fact that small classes (though there are some)
are not the norm.
I strongly suspect that the distribution
of class sizes on this campus is about the same as on other campuses across the
country with around 11,000 students. It
has to be the same as within the rest of UC, because money is supplied in
strict proportion to student numbers.
Certainly, some of our classes are quite
large. In large classes it is not
feasible to produce personalized evaluations.
So instructors resort to templates summarizing measurable facts about
the students' performance. Students understand this, but the template summary
evaluations make little sense to outside readers of UCSC transcripts.
In the original NES system established on
May 26, 1966, an instructor could petition not to write evaluations for classes
with more than 40 students. And
departments, known then as boards of studies, were given the option of electing
that their upper-division courses be graded A-B-C-D-F for all majors. It was only later that narratives started
being an obligatory part of evaluation for all courses, and started to
overshadow grades altogether.
Opinions differ widely about what should
be done now with the NES. Each senator seems to have a slightly different
opinion. I would call this meeting a
success if we can clearly define today what the NES will look like in the years
to come. The campus needs to move on to
other pressing issues.
The original legislation drawn up by
Maria Schonbek and myself asks for a ``repeal of mandatory evaluations''. This is not abolition. What we proposed was the repeal of the
legislation making evaluations mandatory, that is, required of every instructor
for every student in every class whether the instructor thinks it appropriate
or not.
We have met with lots of Senate members,
who have expressed a wide range of opinions about the ideal future of the
system. We were urged to be more
explicit about our intent to establish a voluntary system. So we are presenting a modified version of
our legislation that we would like to submit to the Senate for consideration:
[PUT UP SLIDES OF BOTH ORIGINAL AND MODIFIED
VERSIONS]
Substitute legislation Submitted Nov. 27
by Schonbek and Warmuth
Amendment to Senate Regulations in order
to establish an optional performance evaluation system.
This legislation shall take effect
September 1, 2001. This legislation applies to all undergraduate students
entering the University of California at Santa Cruz after September 1, 2001.
For undergraduate students who enter before September 1, 2001, this legislation
shall take effect for all courses taken after July 1, 2004.
9.2.1 At the end of the term, each
instructor teaching a credit-granting course has the option to prepare a
written performance evaluation for any student registered the class. Each such evaluation shall describe the quality
and characteristics of the student’s academic performance in the class.
9.2.2 was struck in the original version
of the Call. Now it remains unchanged.
Edited
version that shows how original was modified:
Bold
type indicates new text.
9.2.1 At the end of the term, each
instructor teaching a credit-granting course shall has the option to prepare a written performance evaluation for each any student who receives a grade of P, A, B, C, or D registered in his or her the class. Each such The
narrative evaluation must evaluate shall describe the quality and characteristics of the student’s academic performance in the class.
Does everybody have a hard copy of the
substitute legislation?
Thanks to all the senators who helped us
formulate the legislation.
Let us be clear: by voluntary we mean
that the instructor decides which students in a class to write evaluations
for. The administrative mechanisms for
submitting narrative evaluations and distributing them from the Registrar's
office remain in place, but the writing of an evaluation is an instructor
option.
Why voluntary evaluations?
·
return to
the non-coercive philosophy of the late 1960s
·
recognize
the diversity of faculty approaches to student's evaluations
·
give
faculty control of their own grading process
·
largely self
editing system in that mostly meaningful evals will be written
·
good
students will be rewarded
·
templates
become largely superfluous
·
saves
resources
Why should we vote on the proposed
legislation?
·
Most
important remaining educational policy issue since grades have become mandatory
·
The campus
has to move on!
At the Kresge Student Food Co-op,
students have posted some examples of meaningful evaluations with a sign over
it saying ``OUR LEGACY''. I read some
of them. I would have loved to get one of these evaluations if I were a
student. They were all beautiful
examples of thoughtful assessments of the student's academic performances.
However, the problem is that for each one
of these finely crafted evaluations there are thousands of other evaluations that
--- to put it mildly --- we cannot be proud of. I noticed that none of the evaluations posted at the Co-op were
in template format.
In my opinion, evaluations in template
form, and evaluations that essentially just contain a repetition of the grade
--- when the grade will appear in the transcript anyway --- are bad
evaluations. Who will have the patience
to sift through the sea of computer-generated clutter in UCSC transcripts in
search of the few meaningful evaluations?
I empathize with the students who posted
the exemplary evaluations. If I try to
put myself into their position then the question might be the following: Which
system will produce a larger number of meaningful evaluations, a system in
which evaluations are mandatory for every student and every course, forcing
instructors of large classes to use templates?
Or, as we propose, a system in which evaluations are voluntary, with the
instructor deciding which students to write evaluations for?
We are arguing that the voluntary system
will produce a larger number of good evaluations.
In the voluntary system the task of
writing evaluation will be a privilege rather than a burden. I will know that I
don't have to do it --- but I will want to do it for the students about which I
can say something meaningful. I will
only write the evaluations I want to write.
Most likely these will be for students who deserve honors, though there
will be some other cases, such as giving feedback for College Provosts through
evaluations for borderline students.
The non-coercive system proposed in this
legislation respects the tradition of narrative evaluations, but also allows us
to respect each other in our differing opinions about when narratives should be
added to a grade and when they should not.
We should not be telling our colleagues
in other divisions what they have to write at the end of term, or tell them
that they have to write something even for a student about whom they have
nothing meaningful to say.
The voluntary system simply acknowledges
our academic freedom.
U C Santa Cruz is one of the few research
campuses in America where such detailed information about students' performance
is gathered and disseminated. We should
be proud of that. And we have an
administrative system for collecting evaluations in place. We should not destroy it. Making the submission of narratives
voluntary does not destroy it.
We would like to know from the academic
legislative body of this campus whether evaluations should be compulsory or
not. We think that voting on this legislation is both timely and
constructive. Either outcome is a win
for this campus: either we will learn that the majority thinks voluntary
evaluations are an improvement, or we will know that compulsory evaluations
have majority support.
No matter what the outcome of the vote
will be in this assembly, there will most likely be a mail ballot on this
legislation.
The Committee on Rules and Jurisdiction
will count (and perhaps manually recount) the ballots and by next year we
should know whether evaluations will be voluntary.
(Seriously, many thanks to all the
members of the RJ&E committee; they have had a tough year.)
The alternative proposal by Senators
Rogoff and Ladusaw requiring mandatory evaluations still has a number of
coercive elements: First, timeliness reports are retained. Second, a minimum evaluation has a course
description as a new and additional requirement. And third, CEP is given the authority to issue guidelines on how
to write evaluations.
We advocate a system that does not have
these coercive or potentially coercive features.
We want to make writing narrative
evaluations a voluntary act by instructors who have comments on individual
students that they want to make part of the record.
With a firm promise not to go to the Supreme
Court if the vote goes against our legislation, we respectfully submit the
presented legislation to this assembly for discussion and voting.”
Professor
Warmuth then moved the substitute motion above, which would change the existing
regulations to make the writing of narrative evaluations optional at the
instructor's discretion.
Chair
Anderson clarified that during the debate, both the substitute and the original
motion could be addressed. He then
asked for presentation of the arguments for and against the motion from
Committee on Educational Policy Chair Carol Freeman, two faculty groups, and one student group.
CEP
Chair Carol Freeman:
She
urged Senators to vote so as to preserve the existing Senate regulations and thus
against the proposed or substitute legislation. She argued that unless or until experience proves otherwise, the
NES should be retained as it can work with the recently adopted mandatory
letter grades. Together, UCSC's system
of assessment meets and exceeds conventional needs and expectations to achieve
something far superior. Current
regulations already grant instructors the latitude to determine what
constitutes appropriate, useful and feasible narrative evaluations for any
class, depending on its nature and size.
Faculty who believe that it is best to submit a minimal summary
statement; to reproduce some form of their grade book electronically to show
how the grade was determined; or to contextualize a summary grade with a
multi-dimensional performance evaluation may do so. Given this flexibility, CEP believes that we can and should
attempt to address legitimate workload issues within the system before we
decide to dismantle it.
In
arriving at its decision to preserve the current regulations, CEP considered
and rejected several options that narrative evaluations be:
1)
required only in classes below a certain size
This was rejected because of the
reasons given by CEP last spring, including the lack of evaluations for
students in large majors (who will be taking many courses in their majors with
large class sizes); the evidence that many instructors of large classes
currently find it feasible to provide meaningful narrative evaluations; and the
enhancement of letter grades even with less-than-ideal, minimal, menu-driven
narratives.
2)
required only in upper-division courses
This was rejected because there
is no good reason to delay the beneficial effects of narratives, such as the
changes in students' relationships to their work, peers, and instructors when
students discover that multiple aspects of their performances may be commented
on rather than disappearing into the compilation of a summary grade.
3)
optional at the instructor's discretion
This was rejected because
leaving the production of narrative evaluations up to the instructor's
discretion removes the institutional commitment to providing a narrative
evaluation for every student in every class and removes much of the narrative's
value. This value comes from UCSC already having a formal incorporation of the
concept of multi-dimensional assessment into its pedagogy and educational
policy. Making narratives optional is
not so much a policy as a vague gesture with unpredictable consequences and the
potential for unequal treatment, as well as saying nothing about what UCSC
believes or stands for. The
institutional commitment will hopefully provide impetus for improving
technological systems and faculty support in a way that optional narrative
evaluations will never achieve.
Mandatory
narrative evaluations, in the context of mandatory grades, will result in a
system of assessment:
·
unique in
its ability to acknowledge the vast differences inherent in various
disciplines' modes of evaluation;
·
that
instructors can adapt to complement their pedagogical values and practices;
·
that
recognizes students and individual patterns of performance;
·
that can
meet the varied unpredictable preferences of fellowship and postgraduate
selection committees and prospective employers;
·
that can
deal with grade inflation;
·
that
doesn't exempt courses that students take pass/no pass from meaningful
assessment;
·
that
recognizes an assessment system can do more than provide graduate, professional
schools, and employers with student records;
·
that can
shape a student's relationship to his or her education and influence an
instructor's mode of teaching; and
·
that makes
a statement about the nature and values of the institution.
Professor
Joel Yellin:
Professor
Yellin pointed out that we appear to be approaching a consensus on our grading
system, since the practical effects of the proposed legislation making
evaluations optional are likely to be much the same as the CEP's interpretation
of the current mandatory system. He made the further point that recognizing
explicitly that evaluations are optional for instructors is consistent with the
history of the NES. He noted that a check of the Senate records shows that the
original narrative evaluation system set up by the campus founders was not
coercive. Every department had the option to choose conventional A through F
grading for courses that receive credit in a major. And the Senate records
further show, according to Professor Yellin, that from September 1, 1965
through January 24, 1979, there was an explicit exception from the NES for
large classes. In particular, the original NES regulations provided:
“Exceptions may be made when the class is too large for written evaluations to
be practicable.” Professor Yellin suggested that it would be helpful in the
debate if those with experience with the original non-coercive system would
discuss the lessons learned in its operation. Professor Yellin noted that in
1979, even though the campus was growing, the system was changed from its
earlier non-coercive form to one that relied upon coercion. As evidence for
that view, he referred to a letter he received from the Registrar in the mid
1980's announcing that the Registrar intended to edit Professor Yellin's
evaluations to delete any mention of conventional grades. Professor Yellin argued that the most
constructive outcome of the meeting would be a real consensus on the issues
that have divided the Senate. He posed the question whether, given the effects
of the current system on the reputation of the faculty and of the University, a
consensus ought to include an agreement that narrative evaluations should be
only for internal use, rather than being included on transcripts sent to the
external world.
With
the six minutes still not totally used, the Chair invited Professor Geoffrey Pullum
to use the remaining time to argue in favor of optional narratives.
Professor
Geoffrey Pullum:
The
analogy (originally made by Professor Michael Urban at the 3 December 1999
Special Meeting) that optional narratives, like optional taxation, won't work
is faulty. Faculty do a lot of work
that is not required or directly related to the criteria for merit and
promotion. Those faculty who believe
strongly in narrative evaluations will not stop writing if narratives were
optional. Moreover, their writing
narratives does not depend on their having the power to compel their colleagues
to do so. Professor Pullum then gave an
example of the difficulty and confusion posed by narrative evaluations to
review committees that must handle large number of files. The result is that
UCSC students do not fare well against other institutions which provide high
grades and a few strong letters of recommendation. Professor Pullum suggests that lowering the quantity and
elevating the quality of evaluations, which would argue in favor of the
proposed optional narratives, will be advantageous to our students.
Professor
William Ladusaw:
He
argued to retain the current evaluation system. He agreed with the proposers of
the optional narratives that instructors need to account for wide diversity of
situations in their evaluations. But he
disagreed
with them that evaluations should be optional if they cannot meet the ideal
quality of evaluations that Professor Warmuth saw on the Kresge wall. Even template evaluations, by putting the
grade in context, conveys more and relevant information. Professor Ladusaw also corrected Professor
Warmuth's assertion that coercive elements remain in the alternate proposal by
himself and Professor Rogoff. The part mentioning that certain kinds of course
descriptions would be used as reasonable minimal evaluations served merely as
an example, not as a requirement. As for the timeliness report issue raised as
another example of coercion by Professor Warmuth, it does not follow from CEP
policy nor from legislation presented here, though the alternate proposal
advocates examining what is that policy from elsewhere. Moreover, the institutional commitment from
mandatory narratives is important to assure students being recruited and their
parents that UCSC will be providing narrative evaluations over and above the
letter grade they receive from their instructors. If this substitute legislation passes, the uncertainty about if
or when they will receive evaluations places UCSC in a logically weaker position
from which to recruit.
Professor
Barbara Rogoff:
She
and Professor Ladusaw represent 186 faculty who endorse streamlining and
strengthening the NES and urged a vote against the motions. Software has been identified which will facilitate
the writing of narratives by eliminating the need for unnecessary typing,
cutting, and pasting. The Registrar's
Office is creating a concise and professionally formatted transcript to replace
the current cluttered 16-page transcript.
Even with current cumbersome transcripts, UCSC students have already
developed an outstanding record of selection for graduate schools, employment,
and fellowships. A new streamlined
transcript will further enhance their advantage. Performance evaluations address problems with grades and grade
inflation and provide a more learning-focused environment. For these reasons,
other institutions are interested in adopting them and look upon UCSC as a
leader.
Professor
Rogoff asked for a ruling on whether it would be in order to present a reform
resolution to be considered later if the main motions are defeated. Chair Anderson asked the body for a vote to
be decided by a majority on whether the reform resolution should be considered. Professor Phokion Kolaitis rose to state
that the only thing to be considered was the legislation introduced by
Professors Schonbek and Warmuth and, because the resolution was not part of the
agenda, unanimous consent would be required.
Chair Anderson responded that whether the meeting was broadly conceived
to consider issues related to the narrative evaluation system or narrowly
conceived to consider only a single piece of legislation is debatable. Professor Robert Meister pointed out that
the reform resolution could be considered independently of the passage or not
of the motions and thus may be in order. Professor Joel Yellin rose to a point
of parliamentary information stating that the systemwide bylaws specify that a
special meeting is called only for whatever item is on the agenda and that any
other non-legislative business can only be undertaken by unanimous
consent. Chair Anderson stated that the
systemwide bylaw uses the word "business", which is not specifically
defined; ruled the vote in order; and proceeded to call for a voice vote. That the resolution should be considered
later was carried by voice vote.
Student
representative Susan Vilayvanh (Student Union Assembly):
She
spoke on behalf of the undergraduate students at UCSC. Although NES has been claimed to be out of
date due to increased class sizes and changing conditions, the spirit of NES is
renewed with each incoming freshman class.
Narrative evaluations motivate students to excel in a different way than
cramming for grades. Students are
encouraged to express themselves through communication and interaction with
teaching assistants and professors in spite of class size and find NES a
refreshing change from the orthodox grading system in high school. NES benefits more than liberal arts majors.
Testimony of women in the sciences, a field in which women are commonly
underrepresented, demonstrates that narratives, among other factors, have
contributed to excellence in UCSC's science departments. NES enables students to learn about their
own academic abilities; to narrow down areas that need improvement; and to
recover an interest in learning for its own sake.
Student
representative Manuel Schwab (Kresge College):
He
spoke in support of retaining mandatory narrative evaluations. Such a system is an institutional commitment
to an educational environment that maintains learning as the motivation of a
student's interactions with their teachers.
Narrative transcripts communicate the specific vocation and aptitude of
students rather than their generalized ranking. There has been no demonstration of the effects of having a dual
narrative-grade system and so it is premature to reduce the use of the
narrative component at this time by making it optional.
Chair
Anderson then opened the floor for debate on the main and substitute motions.
Points made for the motions
for repealing narratives or for optional narratives:
With
optional narratives, quantity will go down and quality up. 35 years of experience with narratives show
that between 10 and 35 percent deviate from the ideal. Currently more than 100,000 narratives are
written every year, with probably between 20,000 to 30,000 of these being badly
written, not being done, being done very late, evaluating something other than
performance, or being in conflict with the letter grade. There is no way to monitor what people
write. Evaluations should not be part
of the transcript, the official permanent record, because if they are, they are
not written for the students, but instead for readers of the transcript and
this distorts the whole process.
Students should be concerned more with what they are learning and the
intellectual experience than with the evaluation of it.
The
cost of NES is substantial - based on ten minutes per evaluation, approximately
12 faculty appointments -- and not worth it.
Optional narratives would allow for a cost-effective redistribution of
resources so that faculty can do narratives in a way that they consider to make
sense pedagogically.
For
many, the information provided on a narrative evaluation is not different from what is already provided as
feedback on homework and exams, so they don't provide anything new to the
student.
Optional
evaluations would be beneficial for untenured faculty who come to the
university and must quickly get new teaching and research programs going. The flexibility of optional narratives
without penalty in the academic personnel process would reduce workload and
avoid concerns on how the administration will handle enforcement of a mandatory
responsibility.
Points made against the
motions for repealing narratives or optional narratives:
When
work of a ten-week record is boiled down to a single point on a six or seven
point scale, a lot of information useful to the student or readers of
transcripts who make decisions based on them, is lost. An informal survey of five top-ranked
programs of American linguistics in North America indicates that four out of
five believed that narratives gave UCSC students a competitive edge. UCSC students currently do much better going
on to Ph.D. programs than students from any other campus in the UC system
except Berkeley; thus UCSC should retain narratives so that their students are
not deprived of the competitive advantage of narrative evaluations in their
applications. From narrative evaluations, students learn how to be better
students. Some Regents Scholars are
attracted to UCSC because of the learning environment created by narrative
evaluations. Transcripts with narrative
evaluations can be extremely helpful to reviewers, like those on the NSF panels
selecting graduate research fellowships, especially when the number of
qualified students far outnumber the number of fellowships or when GPAs are
distrusted.
Professor
Darrell Long called the question to vote on whether the substitute motion would
be adopted in place of the original motion.
Calling the question was passed by unanimous voice vote. Professor Ladusaw rose to a point of
clarification regarding the preamble to the legislation as it appeared in the
CALL of the meeting. Professor Warmuth clarified that the substitution was for
the legislation only and that the conditions in the preamble regarding
effective dates would remain.
Chair
Anderson stated the question as voting to accept the substitution or to vote on
the main motion.
Professor
Pamela Roby rose to a point of information asking which way would one vote, if
one wanted to support the arguments presented by the CEP Chair? Chair Anderson clarified that it would not
matter, since this was a vote on whether to replace the main motion by the
substitute motion, and not on either motion itself. The Chair then recognized Professor Charlie McDowell, who said he
would not provide an answer but stated that this vote on substitution did
present a calculated risk. If one didn't want either motion to pass, then one
might choose to vote for whichever motion one thought least likely to pass.
After
an inconclusive voice vote, Chair Anderson called for a rising vote. The motion to substitute failed a majority
by a vote of 64 in favor of substitution and 102 opposed, thus retaining the
main motion for consideration of a vote.
Professor
Michael Warren called the question on the main motion which was seconded and
passed by unanimous voice vote.
Chair
Anderson then stated the main motion as a repeal of mandatory narrative evaluations (AS/SCP/1271). After an inconclusive voice vote, the main motion failed a
majority by a show of hands.
Chair
Anderson then recognized Professor Rogoff.
Professor Darrell Long rose to a point of parliamentary information
quoting the bottom of page 92 of Robert's Rules of Order: "With the
possible exception of details of very minor importance, only business mentioned
in the call of a special meeting can be transacted at such a
meeting." Before the
Parliamentarian could respond, Professor Yellin rose to a point of order
against considering the resolution, quoting Senate bylaw 315: "Special
meetings. The order of business shall
be: Business stated in the call", and then, "Other matters authorized
by unanimous consent of the voting members present."
The
Chair then invited the Parliamentarian to speak directly to the Senate to
clarify the point of information. A
viewgraph from pages 112 and 113 of Robert's was presented:
"5)
If the general problem posed by a main motion might be better dealt with by an
alternative measure which cannot conveniently be proposed as an amendment in
the form of a substitute (see above), a member speaking in debate can urge
rejection of the pending main motion, saying that if it is voted down he will
offer a different main motion which he can describe briefly and which deals
with the general problem in a substantially different way (see, however,
paragraph (2) on p. 108). If the pending motion is thereafter voted down, the
chair immediately recognizes this member again for the purpose of making his
alternative motion, even if another member rises to claim the floor first and
addresses the chair."
The
Parliamentarian said this excerpt indicates a procedure whereby, when there is
something that is not appropriate as an amendment that is offered as an
alternative, this is the mechanism by which it can be brought before the
body. He said that he thought there is
a reasonable argument that this resolution is the same part of the business for
which the meeting was called. It is
like an amendment to deal with the same problem that the original motion was
brought up to address. If the resolution is considered to be part of the same
business, then it appears to be in order, per this procedure in Robert's. Because of uncertainty over the correctness
of this interpretation, earlier in the meeting Chair Anderson had asked the
body to vote on whether to consider this issue.
The
Chair ruled that the resolution would be considered after adding that, besides
approving consideration of the resolution if the main motion failed, the body
had earlier considered a substitute motion which was also not in the CALL.
Professor
Rogoff then rose to state that the compelling reason to consider the resolution
at this meeting is that it will provide closure so that the institution can
proceed forward on reforming NES.
Professor
Yellin rose to appeal the Chair's ruling on his point of order against
considering the resolution. Chair
Anderson stated that he accepted the Parliamentarian's reasoning that the body
may vote to determine the appropriateness of considering a matter as the same
part of the business for which the meeting was called. The Chair then called
for and received approval by a majority voice vote to sustain his ruling that
the Senate consider the resolution.
Professor
Rogoff moved the following resolution, which was seconded.
Resolution:
Whereas the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic
Senate has been committed since the
founding of the campus to providing a rich and challenging educational
experience for its undergraduates, including multidimensional assessment of
student performance;
Whereas the campus has grown to the point where
new guidelines for student performance evaluations are needed that will
reaffirm UCSC's commitment to its educational goals while allowing for
flexibility in the range and extent of student assessment;
It is Resolved:
That the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic
Senate affirms its commitment to
multidimensional assessment of student performance whenever practical;
That at the discretion of the instructor,
student evaluations may range from a coursework description plus a simple
summary of the quality of student performance, which may be a grade, to more extensive
multidimensional assessment (usually fewer than 150 words);
That the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic
Senate affirms its commitment to maintaining the status of student performance
evaluations in the official transcript;
That the transcript be formatted concisely
and professionally to provide an easy-to-read report of the student’s
evaluations;
That this resolution serve as the basis for
the UCSC administration and Academic Senate committees to provide the
infrastructure support and fair policies to implement this intent.
Professor
Richard Hughey rose with a question on the wording of the resolution regarding
evaluation content. Professor Rogoff
clarified that a resolution is, unlike legislation, advisory and non-binding.
The
question was called by an unidentified Senate member, seconded, and passed by
voice vote. The motion to accept the
resolution then passed by a majority with a voice vote.
Professor
John Isbister rose to a point of order requesting clarification on whether a
mail ballot may be undertaken on the further existence of narrative
evaluations, since no new legislation was adopted. Chair Anderson stated that the Parliamentarian believes a mail
ballot can be conducted on things that fail as well as things that pass, but
that the final determination for this lies with the Committee on Rules,
Jurisdiction and Elections. The Chair
also expressed his belief that the main motion which was defeated would likely
become subject to a mail ballot.
Adjournment:
A
motion to adjourn was made, seconded, and approved without objection. The meeting was adjourned at 5:20pm.
ATTEST:
David
Koo, Secretary
December
28, 2000 Recording
Secretary: Mary-Beth Harhen
