As students continue to register for spring classes, one University official introduced a plan yesterday to elicit more reviews of professors and courses on the USG's Student Course Guide website.
Peter Quimby, the associate dean of the college, said that in order to boost the number of evaluations on the site, a program could be set up to prevent students from seeing their final grade in a course until they had accessed the guide and either written a review or selected the "no comment" option.
Quimby, along with site webmaster Joe Perla '09, spoke at the weekly USG meeting in Frist last night about recent improvements to the guide. The site is designed to help students gauge the quality of courses before they enroll.
Academics Chair Caitlin Sullivan '07 explained that the site was recently reopened in an improved form. In addition to eliminating letter grading for professors, "course evaluations from the registrar are available on the site, and professors can send responses and clarifications to reviews."
Due to the current dearth of reviews on the site, however, professors can receive a low grade or a critical review from one student that does not reflect the overall quality of the course.
"Professors have become more involved with the Student Course Guide," Perla said.
Quimby also said that a pilot program for broader changes to the guide will start this year. "We're hoping to create a database for searching and selecting courses that merges with feedback and reviews in an integrated search mechanism," Quimby said, adding that he hoped such a system would improve upon SCORE, which he termed "not friendly."
"We're hoping to create an interactive system where both students and faculty benefit," Sullivan said.
In other business, Public Safety deputy director Charles Davall and veteran patrolman Jim Lanzi said during the meeting that they hoped to foster discussion between students and Public Safety. Davall said the "Borough Council has been placing an increased emphasis on enforcing alcohol violations," which has "put pressure on the University," though not directly on Public Safety.
He added that Public Safety reinforced patrols at the beginning of the year and has increased enforcement in an effort to curb alcohol violations.
"We're caught between a rock and a hard place in our role of helping students and also enforcing violations," Davall said.
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