Lessons Learned: College Student Surveys as a Professional Development Tool

This abstract is for a Lessons Learned Paper type. Literature such as peer-reviewed research by Sorcinelli about faculty development indicates that excelling in teaching is one of the areas necessary for the well-being of new instructors and their professional success. Often, new instructors find that the traditional lecture they are accustomed to in graduate school is not appreciated in modern colleges where student-centered teaching is emphasized. A by-product of this disconnection is a well-intentioned new instructor who receives mostly bad student ratings about their teaching skills. These student ratings can be frustrating to new faculty and may be viewed as one of the unavoidable hazards of the profession. However, when the ratings are used correctly, they can be a guide for finding areas of weakness in teaching where a professional development plan can be focused. This paper is a presentation of the author's experiences as a novice professor through the lens of student surveys. The author discusses the impact negative teaching assessments by students have on an instructor, details how he worked with peers, his department chair, and his institutional leadership to develop a professional development plan that helped improve his teaching skills based on student feedback. The author discusses how student feedback can help improve teaching skills, relationship with his students, and eventually turn those feedbacks from low ratings to top percentiles within their discipline. The objective of this paper is to persuade new engineering instructors to view student evaluations as an asset that can make a better educator. The objective is met by presenting the author's experiences backed with a semester by semester analysis of student surveys and the actions taken by the author as a result of the feedback received from the students. The author's preferred presentation is lightning talk.