Sources at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) tell Legal Schnauzerthat President Carol Garrison sent word to faculty members that "student satisfaction" would be a key element in teacher evaluations.
That, of course, generates this question: Who is most likely to produce student satisfaction--(a) the teacher who gives high grades but maybe imparts little knowledge, or: (b) the teacher who is a tough grader but actually teaches students something?
At UAB, it apparently is better to be teacher "a." And the same now seems to hold true at LSU.
Homberger maintained her position and faculty status at LSU, but her removal from the course raised many eyebrows in higher education. Reports Scott Jaschik, at insidehighered.com:
To Homberger and her supporters, the university's action has violated principles of academic freedom and weakened the faculty.
"This is terrible. It undercuts all of what we do," said Brooks Ellwood, president of the LSU Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and the Robey H. Clark Distinguished Professor of Geology. "If you are a non-tenured professor at this university, you have to think very seriously about whether you are going to fail too many students for the administration to tolerate."
While a high percentage of students were failing in the early portion of the course, Homberger said many were making progress, and she accounts for improvement in final grades:
At the point that she was removed, she said, some students in the course might not have been able to do much better than a D, but every student could have earned a passing grade. Further, she said that her tough policy was already having an impact, and that the grades on her second test were much higher (she was removed from teaching right after she gave that exam), and that quiz scores were up sharply. Students got the message from her first test, and were working harder, she said.
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