Changes to Course Evaluation, Credit Requirements and More Addressed at Queens College’s Academic Senate April Meeting

On April 10th, members of the Queens College Academic Senate came together for their monthly meeting in Kiely Hall room 170 to discuss changes to existing policies and resolve matters from previous meetings.

The Academic Senate is a 60 member governing body composed of 40 faculty and 20 student members, responsible for creating and voting on policies relating to curriculum, admissions and retention of students, and campus life, among other areas. At their most recent meeting, the senate voted on changes to course evaluations, the minimum credit residency requirement at QC, and received a report from QC Chief Information Officer Troy Hahn about how the library website went down.

At the April meeting, the Senate voted on changes to student course evaluations for the first time since 2008.

Student course evaluations are the surveys emailed to students at the end of the semester to assess the course they have taken that semester. Their purpose is to give instructors feedback, provide data for chairs and promotion committees to use and to allow students to have a voice in their educational experience.

Although the purpose of student course evaluations is to provide teachers more detailed feedback from students, there’s still one major aspect that garnered attention.

“Studies have shown that student ratings of teachers are biased by grade expectation, by time demands of the course, by the age of the instructor, gender, race, appearance, even accents,”said Peter Liberman, QC Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching Excellence and Evaluation at the April 10th Senate meeting.

The revisions to course evaluations adopted by the senate removes questions that are most prone to bias.

Another feature is customization for instructors as they can add up to three of their own questions to the evaluations if they choose. This would allow instructors to ask students directly whether or not new content or new additions to the course have significantly improved the student’s learning experience.

Kenneth Lord, science chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, presented the change to the number of credits transfer students need to complete in residence at QC from 45 to 30 credits.

QC’s adjustment to ease up on its 45-credit residency requirement also comes as a resort to boost transfer enrollment, as QC Provost Patricia Price has been trying to increase enrollment to QC by making course equivalencies for all transfer students entering QC.

“Right now, Queens College accepts the lowest percentage of credits as transfers into the major of all of the CUNY colleges, not just the senior colleges, but all of them. We have a very high residency requirement. Only Queens College requires students to spend 45 credits in residency here. All of the other colleges are at 30, with the exception of York [College], which is at 40,” Provost Price said during the Feb. 13th Academic Senate meeting.

This new policy change now puts QC’s residency requirement in line with other CUNY schools such as Hunter College and Brooklyn College.

At the beginning of the April 10th meeting, the Academic Senate received a report produced by QC Chief Information Officer Troy Hahn on the shutdown of QC websites and the QC server outage that occurred at the start of the semester.

Hahn failed to provide the report according to the terms of the first resolution which was originally passed on Feb. 13th.

Per the request of the first resolution, the Academic Senate wanted to obtain and provide the Chief Librarian with a written report from Hahn, who has a detailed report from CUNY Computing and Information Services (CIS) about the security weaknesses of the server that hosts the Queens College Library and Queens Memory websites.

Because Hahn didn’t share the report according to the terms of the first resolution, the Academic Senate passed a second resolution on March 13th that requested that all records and any communications connected to the Rosenthal Library and Queens Memory Project websites’ disruptions, must be released to the Chief Librarian or their designees within 10 days.

“The Academic Senate expresses its deep disappointment with the College administrative leadership for failing to provide an accessible and functional website during the end of the January term and the beginning of the Spring term, causing immeasurable negative impact on enrollment, registration, accreditation, and day-to day functions of students, faculty, and staff,” said the Feb. 13th Academic Senate meeting minutes.

Now that the Academic Senate obtained the CIO report, the details of the report will be discussed in length at its next meeting on May 8th.