Students will have access to course evaluations during course electionfollowing a faculty vote at Monday's faculty of arts and sciences meeting.
At the meeting, presentfaculty voted overwhelminglyto support the abolition of the Greek system, anda motion that would have made peer-reviewed faculty articles freely availablewas tabled.
Students willhave access to peers’ answers to three questions regarding the instructors’methods, the class structureand the course’s influence on individual students’ Dartmouth experiences. Faculty will have the option to review answers that students provide to the open-ended questions and to raise concerns about specific students’ responses to their associate deans before the material becomes available to students.
A hand vote approved student access to quantitative evaluation data on course quality, the amount of effort students put into a course, the intellectual engagement that students felt, the clarity of a course's objectives andcourse organization, among other categories.
Biological sciences professor Ryan Calsbeek, the chair of the committee on student life, motioned to proceed with a “vote that the College should abolish the Greek system.” The motion carried 116 to 13, with three abstentions.
The motion will have no immediate impact. Similar motions have not led to the abolition of the Greek system. In 2001, for example,the faculty voted 92-0 in favor of abolishing single-sex Greek houses.
A letter calling for abolishing the Greek system that circulatedamong faculty members late last month attracted 232 signatures.
A proposal that would have required faculty to either submit their published articles into a College-wide repository or receive a waiver from the provost’s office was tabled after faculty members raised objections related to the proposal’s wording and the potential burdens its requirements placed upon faculty.
The “Moving Dartmouth Forward” presidential steering committee also reported to faculty on its progress at the meeting.
This article will be updated as more information is available.
