University Students Honor Professors with Excellence in Teaching Awards
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University Students Honor Professors with Excellence in Teaching Awards Beginning with the Spring semester of 1994, the University Chapter of the Materials Research Society (MRS) at the University of California—Berkeley has given an Exceptional Teaching Award every semester to the professor demonstrating excellent teaching skills in the classroom. The selection is determined by undergraduate and graduate students attending materials science classes, and the award serves as a means for students to voice their appreciation of outstanding professors. This feedback from students to faculty is often lacking. Although occasionally a professor may receive direct thanks from students for a well-taught course, more typically she or he will never hear such compliments. In fact, often the most verbose responses are constructive criticism which, while valuable, can be somewhat disheartening. We recall a professor from our undergraduate days who was distraught over the lack of positive comments on his teaching evaluation forms. While students admired this professor as an excellent teacher, who taught with seemingly limitless energy, enthusiasm, and patience, the message of their appreciation was lost. Now, with this award, this message is being made. One difficulty in implementing the award was maintaining objectivity in the selection process. We wanted participation from all students attending materials science courses in order to form a broad compilation of individual opinions. By assuring the participation of each student in the selection process, we felt that this compilation would come close to objectivity. Like many other universities, UC— Berkeley distributes a campus-wide evaluation form at the end of each semester which requests information regarding the quality of both the class and the professor. Because the completed forms are not generally available to the student body and because we had more specific questions in mind, a group of students in the MRS Chapter has designed and implemented a course evaluation questionnaire specifically for bur department. With the individual permission of each professor, this form is distributed by representatives from the MRS Chapter at the same time the more general University evaluations are handed out. The questionnaire asks students to rate their professors and the class (from 1 to 7) on six categories: * Course Quality; • Course Difficulty; * Quality of Lectures; • Text Quality; " Problem Sets; and * Exams. In addition, plenty of room is supplied for specific comments in each category. After
Ron Gronsky
Tim Sands
collecting the forms, a group of student volunteers (selected at the Chapter meetings ahead of time) compile the ratings, provide average ratings for each category, and carefully review the comments. In order to minimize the workload, enough volunteers are collected such that each student is responsible for only one class, with each class typically consisting of 30 to 40 students. The highest rated professor receives the Exceptional Teaching Award. This professor not
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