trojan
Volume XC Number 7	University of Southern California_Friday, July 10, 1981
Student ratings of teachers discussed
Photo by Ed Chin
ALMOST FINISHED— Construction continues on the addition to Founder's Hall. When the work is completed, the building will be renamed Taper Hall.
OLDER AMERICANS
Reauthorization of act urged
The Older Americans Act, up for renewal this year, should be reauthorized now and overhauled later, says the council charged with its evaluation.
“We recommend that no major changes be made at this time, that the curreent act should be given a simple extension,” explains Dr. Fernando Torres-Gil, an assistant pro-fesor of gerontology and public administration at the university and one of 15 members of the Federal Council on Aging.
The Older Americans Act, passed in 1968 and amended in 1978, was designed to create a network among agencies serving the elderly. Congress is tentatively expected to vote on the act’s reauthorization this summer.
Torres-Gil says a delay in revision of the act is advisable for two reasons.
First, it would allow time for representatives from the White House Conference on Aging,scheduled to meet in December, to submit additional recommendations about revising the act.
Second, it would give local Agencies on Aging additional time to implement the 1978 revisions to the act. The local agencies only recently received instructions for implementation of those revisions, Torres-Gil explains. The delay, he says, is due to routine “red tape” of the regulatory process.
The council believes that revisions are necessary, Torres-Gil reports, but that any changes can wait until the act again comes up for reauthorization several years from now.
When the act is revised, the council recommends that services be increasingly under local control and specifically targeted to needy groups.
Although the act’s original intent as to serve all of the eld-
erly, regardless of economic or social status, the council concludes that we can no longer afford that luxury. Instead, it recommends that the act be targeted to “those with the greatest ecnomic or social need.”
The council also recommends that more flexibility be given to local agencies on aging to determine those in greatest economic or social need.
Torres-Gil says the council also decided that local agencies on aging need more au-tomnomy to develop appropriate programs and should receive mainly federal guidance not the federal mandate currently required.
That decision is based on two factors Torres-Gil explains. One is budgetary. The other is the realization that it’s impossible for the federal government to mandate services effectively for every local community due to the diversity of needs among aging persons and different areas.
The only exceptions to local control, Tores-Gil suggests, should be in the areas of planning, technical assistance and perhaps, legal services—areas in which the council feels the government is capable of providing valuable expertise.
“Everything else would be left up to the local agencies,” Torres-Gil explains “Conceivably in some communities, that could mean the end of nutrition programs and Dial-a-Ride (two currently mandated programs). Or, if local agencies wish, it could mean a total focus on those kinds of services only. Local preservation of such programs would depend on greater involvement by local advocates.”
Offering his own opinion on the council’s recommendations, Torres-Gil expects Congress to concur with the local
control suggestion. He expects area agencies on aging to favor it, as the change would give them additional clout.
As for the recommendation to target services, Torres-Gil expects to see some congressional opposition based on the gounds that the act should continue to benefit all elderly people.
He believes most of the area agencies on aging will probably oppose targeting, because it will require additional staff time to obtain a more exact knowledge of what community needs are.
“Advocacy groups will not be happy with either recommendation,” he predicts. “Over the years, they have had a good relationship with congressional committees in Washington,involved in AOA
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At colleges and universities across the nation, faculty members have resisted administrations’ increasing use of student evaluations to grade the quality of teaching. Some faculty members doubt that student evaluations are accurate and fair.
Recent studies at the university indicate, however, that student ratings do provide a valid measure of faculty performance.
Jess Overall, an educational research specialist at the university, said that students ratings are among the most objective criteria a college administration can use. “The big debate,” he said, “has been over just how these evaluations are used.”
The primary bone of contention is when the ratings become a basis for promotion, said Overall, manager of evaluation and personnel at the university’s Office of Institutional Studies. Then faculty members tend to question whether students are an appropriate judge of an instructor’s performance. They question whether these ratings truly reflect effective teaching.
“Studies have shown that when evaluations are used for feedback purposes, teaching performance improves— particularity when an effort is made to analyze and discuss the results with faculty. Even the most experienced instructor wants to know how he’s doing.”
Students are surveyed at the end of the term. They are asked to rate such factors as learning gained in the course; the instructor’s enthusiasm, organization and attitude toward students; assignments and examinations.
Some critics of the evaluation procedures believe that end-of-term assessments are conducted far too early, Overall said. These critics argue that students need to gain emotional distance from the course, to gain a more objctive perspective, before a fair evaluation can be made.
To test this objection, Overall and Herbert Marsh, former head of evaluation services at the Offics of Institutional Studies, surveyed more than 1000 business administration majors at the end of the term and again a year later.
“Evaluations given at each time were remarkably similiar,” Overall reported, “suggesting that students' ratings at the end of the term can be considered a stable reflection of their perception of instructional effectiveness.”
Another common criticism is that students' assessments of teaching quality are biased by extraneous variables— such as workload, expected grade, teacher rank and reason for taking the course.
Studies into this issue show little, if any, correlation between most of these “background variables” and ratings of teaching quality, Overall said.
Research recently conducted by Marsh and an evaluation services coordinator at the university, Terri Cooper, shows that only one extraneous variable is significantly related to a student’s rating of a course and the instructor— the student’s interest in the subject prior to taking the course.
Overall pointed to some other research that tends to undercut faculty objections as well. In studies where faculty members were asked to evaluate their own teaching and were also evaluated by their students, considerable student-faculty agreement resulted.
“Some faculty members may disapprove of student evaluations when used for promotion decisions,” Overall said.
“But the validity of student evaluations has been more clearly established than the validity of some other factors that might be used— factors that don’t have research results to support them.”
PETROLEUM ENGINEERS AWARDED GRANT
Department receives $25,000
The university today announced a planned $25,000 financial commitment from the Sun Company to be distirbuted over the next five years to the school's petroleum engineering department.
The Sun Company program is designed to help selected universities develop and retain faculty members in key scientific disciplines.
“With the growing demand for technical graduates in the energy industry. Sun has a commitment to the dedicated educators who train our future employees,” said Sun recruiting representative George Schnerk, who presented the
first check on behalf of Sun operating units in the Dallas area.
“We are particularily pleased to award this grant to USC. Its graduates are continually among industry’s most productive and innovative employees,” Schnerk said.
In accepting the grant. Dr. Lyman L. Handy, chairman of the petroleum enigneering department, said: "We are most grateful for this generous grant by the Sun Compnay and appreciate that Sun shares our concern for retaining qualified instructors andd encouraging gifted students to pursue careers in petroleum engineering education.”
Terms of the grant stipulate that the $25,000 be used as salary supplements, awards and assistance to professors, for endowment of a chair in the petroleum engineering department or as financial assistance to qualified students seeking advanced degrees with the intent of becoming petroleum engineering educators in the United States.
Sun Company operating units participating in the program are Sun Gas Compnay, Sun-mark Exploration Company and Sun Production Company. All are headquartered in Dallas and jointly recruit for petroleum engineers at the unviersity.