EX-HOSTAGE — Barry Rosen, former American press attache in Iran, spoke in Bovard Auditorium during the first anniversary of his release from captivity. "The feeling of captivity can't really be put into words," Rosen said. “It's something that eats away at you.”
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Volume XCI Number 8
University of Southern California Thursday, January 21, 1982
Student surveys affect teachers
Used in promotions, tenure
By Brenda Wong
Staff Writer
Student evaluations play an important role in determining whether a professor is given a promotion, a salary increase and, in some cases, tenure, according to representatives for the schools of Business, Engineering, Education and the Social Sciences Division.
These schools, said Jess Overall, manager of personnel and evaluation research, are the biggest users of the evaluations.
Jim Stevenson, chairman of the personnel committee for the Graduate School of Business, said the student evaluations are “used very, very strongly and from an important standpoint.”
In order to be considered for tenure and promotion, the professors must turn in dossiers containing their teaching evaluations from all the classes they have taught, Stevenson said.
“We will not even consider looking at it (without the evaluations). All teaching evaluations must be in it. In our school, they had better give those evaluations (to the students). We really give it high consideration,” the chairman said.
In reviewing the evaluations, the personnel committee considers whether the course was a required course where low marks are usually given, whether it was the professor’s specialty and what kind of textbook was used, Stevenson said.
The committee is made up of people who are chosen by the dean from a list of recommendations .
Stevenson said that if the teacher is not adequate, “there’s a high possibility that he will not be granted tenure.”
If the professor is tenured and does not pass evaluations
at the end of the class, the only possible penalty he will receive is when it comes to salary increases, Stevenson said.
Grayce Ransom, professor of education and co-chairman of the salary, promotion and tenure committee of the School of Education, said the evaluations are very important. “Student evaluations are an extremely important part of a teacher’s qualifications. That’s our major way of making judgments (of whether the teacher is doing his job).”
If the instructor fails to pass out the evaluations, “he or she would have to pay the price” of not having as high an evaluation as they could have received, Ransom said.
Evaluations are usually lower in required courses than in the elective courses. “They would just as soon not hear of it (the required courses),” she said.
In the tenure process, the salary, promotion and tenure committee makes recommendations to the dean of education, who can either reject or accept it.
The dean would then report to a higher university committee, and the university-wide committee makes the final decision whether tenure is granted.
Student evaluations are also used to determine salary increases. The amount each individual receives hinges on merit and the cost of living, she said. Merit includes teaching, scholarly productivity and university service.
Joe Kertes, assistant dean in social sciences and humanities, said evaluations helped considerably in determining whether a professor should be granted a promotion. “It is a factor, a definite factor. Evaluations such as these have made teaching a more visible pro-
“In any given individual’s dossier, teacher evaluations are given greater significance.” Kertes said.
He also said it was important to look at an individual semester and to scan a professor’s teaching record over a long period of time when reviewing the evaluations.
When a professor does not pass out evaluation forms to his students, he is “at a disadvantage. There’s no basis on which to judge his teaching,” the assistant dean said.
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Ex-hostage analyzes causes of Iran revolt
By Marc Igier
Staff Writer
Since his release one year ago, Barry Rosen, who was held hostage in Iran for 14 months, has proved he has rebounded well from captivity.
At an engagement Wednesday in Bovard Auditorium, Rosen spoke more as an expert on the Iranian revolution than as a grief-stricken hostage.
“Days go by now and I don’t even think back on it. It’s just too much baggage to carry around with you,” Rosen said at a press conference before the speech.
Invited by the university to speak on the first anniversary of his release, Rosen chose to outline the reasons for the revolution, and then after his presentation he answered specific questions from the anxious crowd concerning his captivity.
“The U.S. made many serious errors preceding the Shah’s overthrow. Our fate became intertwined with his. It was a case of misplaced optimism. We were out of step,” Rosen said.
The 37-year-old New Yorker said the primary reasons for the violent revolution were the late Shah’s elitist modernization program, the 1976 recession and the repressive tactics used by the former leader to strengthen his hold on the country.
“In reality, the Shah’s power as early as 1978 was more illusion-ary than real. It was only a matter of time,” said Rosen, who is currently studying under a fellowship by the U.S. government at Columbia University. He is preparing a dissertation on the changing social and political values in Iran since the 1979 revolution.
Rosen, who indicated that he might return to foreign service someday, said the approach that the United States should take in dealing with Iran now is one of isolation.
“It’s best to just leave them to their chaos. Iran will wake up one day and realize that a relationship with the United States is necessary,” said Rosen, the former press attache at the American Embassy in Teheran.
But Rosen said that in Iran today, there is no opposition strong enough to topple Ayatollah Khomeini’s rule.
Rosen said his feelings toward Iranians are not bitter. “I don’t paint them all with one brush,” he said.
Not suprisingly, Rosen said that the day of his release was the “greatest and happiest” moment of his life.
“When I left Iran I could tell immediately that my whole body relaxed for the first time in over a year,” he said. “I can separate my life with the experience in Iran now. It no longer dominates my thinking.”
Rosen said that for the first five months as a hostage, he spent days bound and isolated. “They (the guards) were very intelligent about how they held us. They made sure we couldn’t communicate so as to organize.”
During March of 1980, five months after the November embassy seizure, Rosen said he w'as put into a ceil with two other hostages. “It’s important to regiment your day when in a cell. You have to get your mind off your predicament.”
To do this Rosen said he would exercise constantly and dream “about other times and situations.”
“We did a lot of walking — probably eight miles a day. That was all within the cell, of course.
“The feeling of captivity can’t really be put into words. It’s just something that eats away at you,” he said.
Rosen firmly denies that he or any of the other hostages should be recognized as national heroes. “The hero label is definitely misplaced. We were just victims of the situation.
“The eight marines who tried to rescue us are the real heroes.”
NEIGHBORHOOD RELATIONS
Group searches for leadership
By Alan Grossman
Staff Writer
Leadership for the many community groups in the University Park area and the boundries of their influence became the focal point of discussion at the University/Neighborhood Relations Commission meeting Tuesday.
The purpose of the meeting was to review the plans of the Greater University Parish, University Security and the work of the Neighborhood Youth Programs. As each speaker explained his or her group’s progress, questions of what each group considered the neighborhood boundaries — and how all of the groups could one day merge into an association “that the university could discuss community matters with” — were raised by members of the commission.
Dallas W'illard, chairman of the commission, agreed that there was not a clear representative community group, but said, “The university does not want to be in the position cf organizing this group.”
Among the most vocal of the community leaders was James Bates, who said that each time he asked a particular organization what it considered the community boundary lines, he received a different answer.
Bates received the same type of responses from the Greater University Parish, the youth programs which aid groups in the so-called Central Park Five area, and University Secu-
rity as well.
Betty Carmichael, speaking for the Greater University Parish, said the eight major areas of concern that were discussed by citizens who attended a November meeting would be further addressed at a community conference scheduled for early April at the Davidson Conference Center.
These problems include small business and its survival, housing, crime,'employment and business, USC / City Redevelopment Agency plans, public services, the 1984 Olympics and cultural and recreational activities.
In answering Bates, Carmichael said she expressed the hope that “an entity or spokes-group would come out of the conference” and that final community boundaries could be set.
Barbara Gardner of the university’s urban affairs program stressed that her group, which mainly assists the number of churches, clubs and schools in the Central Park Five area (Pico Park, Pico-Union. Normandie Park, Maple Park, North University Park and University Park), cannot solve community problems alone.
“The university does not have the resources or the responsiblity of solving community problems on its own. We work to build partnerships with the community to be sure what we do is beneficial to both sides,” said Gardner, who is also director of the Joint Educa-(Continued on page 6)