The Student Association has made progress in its effort to have teacher evaluations published by next spring, although the group hasn’t received overwhelming support from NIU faculty.

The first batch of teacher evaluations were completed last week and students will continue to fill out evaluation forms until finals week.

So far, 105 teachers have responded and are giving permission for their classes to be evaluated. Because these teachers have more than one class, 216 classes will be evaluated. There are about 1,300 instructional faculty members.

“The turnout is what I expected but it’s not what I wished for,” said SA Academic Affairs Adviser Colleen Halliman. “I was hoping for each course given here to be evaluated.”

The evaluations differ from department evaluations.

“The difference between these evaluations and the ones given by the department is that they are given for and by students,” Halliman said.

She said the evaluations ask students questions that aren’t in departmental evaluations. For example, one question asks the type of exams given.

“Departments don’t ask that, because it’s irrelevant to what they want to know, but I think students want to know what type of exams are given,” Halliman said.

The most responses are from the math, foreign language and science departments, she said.

Halliman said she has made six revisions since she took over the project from former adviser Willie Fowler.

Fowler was planning to ask five questions, add them to each department’s evaluations, making them mandatory, and publish them in bar graph form.

Halliman said she is having students answer 10 questions, which are not distributed with department evaluations because they have to be voluntary and cannot be mandatory. She said the results would be published in percentage form.

The evaluations will be published, but will not be distributed directly to students, Halliman said. Copies will be placed at the main desks of the residence halls, the Holmes Student Center, Founders Memorial Library and the SA Office.

Halliman said she also plans to have the evaluations posted at the add/drop tables in the spring.

She said students should encourage their teachers to participate.