POLICY ON USE OF STUDENT EVALUATION NUMBERS IN PERSONNEL ACTIONS: I will not sign a report that is based on student evaluations to an equal or greater extent than it is on direct monitoring by senior faculty. The reasons are two-fold. (1) Research has shown such evaluations to be discriminatory against women. The effect size is large; see the references on this website. Pending further research into this effect, any possible effects on minorities, and any claims on the other side as to teaching effectiveness captured by these measures, I believe use of these constitutes prima facie gender discrimination and is legally actionable. (2) Our job as professionals is to make such assessments. Undergraduate students are not qualified to do so, Furthermore there is an obvious conflict of interest which will drive instructors to aim for popularity rather than effective teaching if the popularity ratings are used for purposes such as promotion and tenure. POLICY ON USE OF STUDENT EVALUATION NUMBERS IN TEACHING RECOMMENDATIONS: It is my policy not to base my evaluations of teaching quality on evaluation forms submitted by students. As you may imagine, we take student evaluations very seriously. However, when professional educators are asked to evaluate the quality of someone's teaching, I believe it to be a dereliction of duty to pass this job along to students of the candidate: students are inexperienced, immature, not trained in the profession, and have obvious conflicts of interest as well. Accurate evaluations of teaching take time. Since becoming Undergraduate Chair, I have greatly increased the number of faculty-hours spent on evaluation of teaching. Each lecturer visits each of their TA's every semester and submits a report. The report answers questions on a checklist. This checklist addresses not only the technical skills apparent on observation, but also whether the TA is easy to work with outside of class, responsive to e-mails from students, communicative about issues that arise, etc. The single most reliably informative question is whether they would want to work with that TA again. Self-interest in this regard (if they say no, we won't pair them up again) produces honest answers. I am in charge of collecting all this information and using it, not only to write letters at the end, but to fix problems along the way. Struggling teachers are given more training on the spot. Good teachers are named to Master TA positions where they help to train others. TA's are handpicked for various positions: assisting in new courses, TA-ing for rookie instructors, serving in the notorious Math 103 (remedial) and Math 170 (math for poets) courses. After monitoring a TA for four or five years in various positions, I have a good idea of the quality of their teaching. I keep records so that my successor will have access to the knowledge I have (or, more probably, I'll agree to write letters after I step down as Undergraduate Chair). The same is true of our postdocs: the weaker teachers receive more help and the stronger ones are chosen to help others. My letters are less boiler-plate and more honest than most I have seen, and I sincerely hope that this does not adversely affect our TA's and postdocs on the job market. A recent example: "In summary, [name withheld] has had good training and has skills making him potentially an excellent instructor for some populations, while still performing at a below average level in other situations." To those who feel a need to see the student evaluation numbers, we will make them available. All you need to do is to e-mail me and ask for them. However, I make it a point not to include them in the letter because for many people, an available number will eclipse any other information in the letter. This is wrong and is bad for the profession. Not only is it irresponsible, as I have said, to pass the duty of performance evaluation off to the student, but the conflicts of interest created thereby pose serious ethical problems. I encounter such problems every week: an instructor not covering part of the syllabus to be "nice"; an instructor teaching to the test because that's the popular thing to do; an instructor asking to change their teaching assignment because the student evaluation numbers are generally low in that course. Finally, in order to fulfill my responsibilities to our departing instructors, I ask you please to let me know if you feel that my policy has, in the end, disadvantaged them. Robin Pemantle Math Undergraduate Chair University of Pennsylvania