Brown and White Vol. 129 no. 23

              The Brown and White Vol. 129 No. 23
Tuesday, November 24, 2015 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Chris Barry/B&W Staff
Students storm the field to celebrate after Lehigh football’s victory over Lafayette College at Goodman
Stadium on Saturday. Lehigh’s victory over Lafayette is the first since 2012.
Response rates
higher for paper
course evals
than online
As the semester draws to a
close, departments debate
the efficacy of online versus
paper course evaluations
By CARLY NYMAN
Associate Lifestyle Editor
Campus climate survey first since 2007
The number of sheets of paper that
the Office of Institutional Research
consumed to conduct course evalua-tions
last spring is 25,842.
With only 22 percent of Lehigh fac-ulty
opting for the online evaluation
form, Institutional Research is left
with the lengthy and environmen-tally-
unfriendly process of mass pro-ducing
the forms and vibrant orange
envelopes that land on professors’
lecterns at the end of each semester.
This process has created a debate
between the use of online versus
paper course evaluations.
The Office of Institutional Research
Coordinator Debbie Hamann said
each semester, the office begins
around the middle of a term by
extracting course information includ-ing
course title, enrollment and
instructor, and sending out prelim-inary
listings to department coor-dinators
to confirm their accuracy.
After the listings are finalized, they
are sent back to the office for a three-week
printing process. Approximately
1,500 courses are evaluated every fall
and spring semester. Many courses
have various teaching assistants and
sections, which contributes to the
large number of packets.
Faculty members that use paper
generally believe they receive bet-ter
response rates because they can
administer the evaluation forms in
person to students who are already
sitting at a desk ready to fill them
out. Students, however, are left feel-ing
pressed for time and may not
provide as thorough feedback as if
they took it online at a different time.
Katherine Ries, ’16, is tak-ing
a course called Science of
Environmental Issues, which has
several online course evaluations
throughout the semester because
various professors teach the class
in short modules on environmental
issues.
“Handing out evaluations in class
ensures that all students will fill out
the course evaluation,” Ries said.
“However, I often feel like I’m being
rushed to fill it out at the end of class
and don’t put much thought into it.
Online evaluations give students the
opportunity to fill out the evaluation
on their own time, but I think it is
In the early morning of Nov. 6,
2013, residents of the Umoja House
woke to their home vandalized
with spray-painted racial slurs and
smashed eggs. After a complaint
was filed with the Office for Civil
Rights about the university’s han-dling
of incidents of hate on campus,
the office determined Lehigh needed
to officially understand its climate
in order to address it.
This fall, the university released
The Lehigh Survey, which aimed
to understand the experiences of
Lehigh community members as it
relates to race, ethnicity, national
origin, gender and sexuality. The
survey is one mandate in Lehigh’s
Voluntary Resolution Agreement
with the OCR to ensure the campus
By DANIELLE DISTEFANO
Editor in Chief
is compliant and inclusive.
From Oct. 10 through Nov. 10,
students, faculty and staff were
encouraged to participate in the sur-vey
— the first opportunity since
2006 for the collective community
to voice its opinion on the state of
Lehigh’s culture and climate. It gar-nered
responses from 41.8 percent
of the campus, with 65 percent of
staff, 53 percent of faculty and 36.5
percent of students participating.
The last time the Lehigh adminis-tration
asked its entire community
to weigh in on the campus climate
was in Alice P. Gast’s first year
as university president. In 2006-07,
the university distributed a cam-pus-
wide survey to identify and
address climate issues.
The results of the 2007 survey –
which was created, distributed and
analyzed by Rankin and Associates
Consulting – revealed “a stark real-ity
of the disgraceful experiences
of our friends and colleagues that
cannot be tolerated,” according to
an open letter from then-president
Gast. Overarching issues – offensive
conduct based on race, gender and
hierarchy – emerged in the survey’s
responses.
Mandating The Lehigh Survey
According to Karen Salvemini,
Lehigh’s equal opportunity compli-ance
coordinator, the OCR required
The Lehigh Survey to explore issues
of race, ethnicity and national ori-gin.
The university independently
chose to add questions studying gen-der
and sexuality.
After learning about the survey,
faculty from the psychology and edu-
See SURVEY Page 4 See EVALUATION Page 3
Bringing home the trophy
Lehigh defeats Lafayette 49-35 in 151st game