Motivated by a desire to keep students from being put into an uncomfortable position, DePauw University professors up for tenure or promotion are no longer allowed to ask students for letters of recommendation.
“It avoids awkwardness, avoids the appearance of a conflict of interest,” said Meryl Altman, chair of the review committee
These letters, along with teaching materials and creative work, make up a file that is used to evaluate the professor. The change was announced at the October faculty meeting by Altman.
A student letter sent to the review committee spurred on this decision. The anonymous student expressed concern about students being directly asked for letters of recommendation. The fear is that professors requesting letters from students would put students in an uncomfortable situation with faculty members who want good reviews.
Altman said the student’s input revealed the flaws in what was an accepted practice, “It was one of those things that is just common sense until it’s actually not common sense,” Altman said.
Student letters of recommendation will be still be collected using ways in which students are contacted indirectly.
One such method is that students can volunteer to write a letter. The list of professors seeking tenure or promotion is released at the end of each semester through the DePauw Weekly email, and students are invited to write letters for those individuals listed.
A second way of collecting letters is reaching out to students indirectly. According to Altman, some departments create a list of all the students that have taken a class with a professor seeking tenure or promotion. The department will then send a message to those students about writing a letter.
Beth Benedix, associate professor of religious studies, sees the change as a positive adjustment.
“I think it’s a good, important change,” Benedix said, “because I think it could be read as an abuse of power for a faculty member to reach out to a student who may be in his or her class, to ask for a letter. There’s a power dynamic there that’s really uncomfortable and really inappropriate.”
Benedix added that when a student is directly asked for a letter by one of their professors, they might feel pressured to give positive feedback to prevent a negative effect on their grade.
Sophomore Natalie Bennett also thought the change made sense. “[The change] allows for there to be no unconscious bias, or just bias in general,” Bennett said.
The review committee also decided to adjust another platform of student input: the student opinion survey.
Starting in the 2017-2018 academic year, there will no longer be a section in which students can opt to enter in demographic information, such as their gender. Altman said the review committee learned that students were concerned that this section reduced the confidentiality of the survey.
“If people felt that way and that was preventing them from commenting honestly, that’s bad, and so we’re removing that,” Altman said.
Altman added that further changes are being made to the student opinion survey, such as a rephrasing of the introductory section. “We haven’t been happy with [the current] form for a long time,” Altman said. “One of the reasons we’re not very happy with it is that students don’t write very much.”
The professors hope these changes will be able to provide more honest student feedback. “We’re just making a couple of adjustments to see if we can get more student input,” Altman said, “A better quality of student input in terms of really being able to understand what the students are talking about.”
