The student evaluations of every professor on campus are listed on the Office of the Registrar’s Web site, but many students don’t know where to look.
“It’s not just a rating, it’s a collaborative effort in improving teaching,” said Russell Tomlin, vice provost for Academic Affairs and professor of linguistics.
Tomlin said the faculty evaluation system is used to provide individual faculty members with feedback about their teaching methods, to allow departments to review required courses’ effectiveness, and to serve as evaluation of faculty when they are up for promotion and tenure.
“The student evaluations are a significant component of those reviews,” Tomlin said.
Tomlin said they are also there to provide a summary for students to review before taking a course, and they are taken very seriously by faculty.
“I really feel it’s important that students take them seriously,” he said. “They’re important and they do play a role in faculty standing.”
The database can be found on the Registrar’s Web site, registrar.uoregon.edu, they are listed under “Faculty and Course Evaluations” in the “A-Z Index.” There, users can search by course or by professor and see how previous students rated their courses.
The rankings are compiled from the Scantrons that students fill out at the end of each course. Scores cover evaluations of instructor availability, class time organization and the instructor and course in comparison with other University classes of similar size and level.
Tomlin said that the broadness of the survey is what makes it the most accurate way to evaluate professors and courses. The fact that almost every student participates in the survey makes the faculty and course evaluations statistically sound, he said.
Sophomore Casey Radostitz was unaware that the University faculty rating system was even available to students.
“I didn’t know those existed,” he said.
Junior Aaron Parecki said he has checked the faculty’s ratings online, but said he didn’t find it too helpful.
“I’m kind of disappointed because they’re not up to date,” he said.
Tomlin said Academic Affairs is working on updating its site and making those ratings more available to students.
Radostitz was aware however, of another online professor rating system, RateMyProfessors.com, which he said he has used often and finds somewhat useful.
“It’s pretty consistent but somewhat biased,” he said. “If we’ve got a choice between a couple (professors), might as well pick one others have liked.”
RateMyProfessors.com lists 730 of the University’s instructors. They are ranked from a 1-5 scale for “easiness,” “helpfulness,” “clarity,” “hotness,” and “overall quality.” There is also a space for general comments about the course or professor.
Ninety-five University of Oregon professors on the Web site have a perfect overall quality rating of 5, and 95 are given a “poor quality” ranking with a score lower than 2.5. Individual professors have been ranked by as few as one student, or as many as 62.
David Dusseau, the senior instructor of management in the Business Department, has been rated the most out of all University professors on RateMyProfessors.com, for an overall quality rating is 4. Dusseau joked about being awarded a chili pepper for being rated as a “hot” professor.
“I think it’s funny,” he said. “If they think I’m hot, their lives are clearly pathetic.”
Dusseau said he didn’t consider RateMyProfessors.com to be a scientific way of acquiring student opinions.
“I don’t think it has much rating ability,” he said.
Although he is the most-rated professor on RateMyProfessors.com, Dusseau said he uses the University’s faculty rating system to make alterations to his courses.
“While limited, they are very useful to help me design my class,” he said.
Since the beginning of this year, 3,300 University students have registered with RateMyProfessors.com, said Katherine Coynor, administration program director for RateMyProfessors.com.
Patrick Nagle, the chief operating officer and co-owner of RateMyProfessors.com said that the RateMyProfessors.com’s creator, John Swapceinski, decided to create the site to warn other students about bad professors after he had a bad experience in a class.
“He was in a class where the professor left the students in tears,” Nagle said.
Dusseau said he talks to about five students at the end of each term to see what they think of his teaching, and he reads every course evaluation he gets.
“I study my course evaluations,” he said. “They truly are (important) to me.”
Dusseau said that 85 percent to 95 percent of his 1,700 students he sees each year fill out forms, and with that many responses, he keeps a “hall of fame” of the humorous ones.
Dusseau joked about one form that said, “Dave you’re a healer. I used to have insomnia before I took your class, now I think of you and fall right to sleep.”
Nagle said he thinks his Web site is the most accurate way to rank professors.
“The Scantrons are a joke,” he said.
Nagle said students have more comfort online because they are assured anonymity.
“(Our figures) accurately depict professor’s performance,” he said. “It’s been very effective just by the popularity itself.”
Tomlin disagrees. He said that usually the only students that go to sites such as RateMyProfessors.com are the ones who either absolutely loved the course or completely despised it. With that type of sample, skewed results are produced which are not statistically valid.
“Those kinds of sites have almost no merit,” he said. “Information on these sites are generally incomplete.”
Tomlin said that although the posts on the sites may be honest, two unhappy students can make up a professor’s entire review, which is not a clear sample of what all the students thought.
“From the point of view of serving the interests of students, I don’t think these sites do that,” he said.
 

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