The Student Association is appealing to NIU students for help with an age-old problem: quality teaching.

SA President Abe Andrzejewski proposed NIU students try a new tactic to improve the quality of teaching general education classes at Sunday night’s SA meeting. The SA will ask students to request professors who teach “gen eds” for their permission to release the results of their teacher evaluations.

The SA has run into difficulties in the past getting NIU to release the evaluations. According to Andrzejewski, the university legal counsel has said that since the evaluations are used in personnel decisions involving employment and promotions, they were not allowed to release them.

Andrzejewski plans to put the evaluations in a booklet that students can use to help them make scheduling decisions. “We see the value in publishing teacher evaluations,” he said. “We’d learn from our peers who have had those professors.”

Andrzejewski said he would not ask staff or graduate assistant teachers for evaluations because of their high turnover rate. He also said he didn’t feel it would be fair. “They’re still learning,” he said.

“Hundreds of other colleges have these,” Andrzejewski said, citing the University of Illinois, the University of Michigan, Notre Dame and “all of the Ivy League schools.”

Andrzejewski said something has to be done because of all the complaints he hears from students. The most frequently voiced complaints include poor teaching, teachers who aren’t fluent in the English language and professors who show they don’t want to be teaching low-profile general education courses.

“We considered starting with one department or college. We decided it wouldn’t be fair to spend all that time and money only to evaluate one department and benefit only some of the students,” Andrzejewski said.

The proposal is going to require the involvement of a large number of students from outside the SA in order to succeed, Andrzejewski said. “This is going to be one of the biggest things we do this year. It’s going to take a lot of legwork back and forth between departments and professors. We need a lot of volunteers to run these things back and forth. We need people to talk to professors, talk to department chairs and talk to students. It’s going to take a lot of work, but it’s something that will improve the quality of our education.”

Andrzejewski invited any interested students to attend an organizational meeting at 2 p.m. today in the SA conference room in the Holmes Student Center, south entrance second floor. The next SA meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 6 in the Clara Sperling Skyroom of the student center.

“This is going to be one of the biggest things we do this year. It’s going to take a lot of work, but it’s something that will improve the quality of our education.”

Abe Andrzejewski

SA president