A Few Bad Evals are a GOOD Thing

To follow up on yesterday's post about Course Evaluations.

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I have one coaching client who NEVER gets ANY negative course evals. 

Well, I'm exaggerating. The truth is that he gets *almost* no criticism whatsoever.  For example, in a decade of teaching, no one has ever gone to his chair and complained about anything.

He is also liked by *all* of his colleagues.  Even though the department is highly polarized and contentious.

This sounds good, right?  It sounds like you should learn his secret, right?

Wrong.

My dear client is so accommodating, and so worried about triggering confrontations, and so talented at pleasing people that he never offends or upsets anyone.  This ability to stay on everyone's good side ends up being self-destructive.  His accommodations backfire because he is so non-assertive that his colleagues walk all over him. 

Fortunately, he is paid as well as his junior, tenure track peers (because his institution has a good union) but  he has been stuck as a Contract Asst Prof for years and years.  Theoretically, he could lose his job this year.  He hasn't gotten a t-t position even though his department has hired new t-t faculty while he's been there, and even though he gets talked into doing more service work than anyone at his institution.  I'm convinced that someone willing to make a few enemies would have tenure already.   

Don't worry; he'll never get fired because he works so hard that he is indispensable!  He always ends up doing the dirty work that none of his t-t peers want to do.  Wouldn't you want to keep this type of fellow around?  Be honest now -- of course you would -- even if you felt guilty about taking advantage of him.

Moral of the story:  It is good to have a bi-modal distribution of evaluations with some negative comments.  If you please EVERY student, even the entitled few who are primed to complain, you're not taking care of your own career.

Now do you feel better about those few snarky critiques you get at the end of the semester?

(And don't worry, my goal is to get this coaching client a t-t job this year -- he's being interviewed for an open rank tt position in his dept next week.  Everyone keep your fingers crossed for him -- his dept knows that he'll stay even if they give the job to a less qualified outsider.)

Comments

[Alice]

I feel so sorry about people who accept anything and everything, serving everybody's needs while ignoring their own. It sounds so nice but, yes, it's self-destructive. I don't remember who said it but there is a great quote: "Pleasing everyone is a sure way to the failure."

While getting along is important, occassional negative comments are quite healthy, I think. They remind us that we are still stepping on somebody's toes because we demand what is right.

[Poo]

I really appreciate the comments posted here. I had some bad evaluations which were haunting me for some time now and when I read the comments shared here and some other columns, I feel quite rejuvenated. Thanks and I will work towards being a good educator though it comes with some compromise on the unit evaluations. Those students who are evaluating us doesnt have any teaching experience! We must understand that at all times!

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