Course Evaluations

At Colby, there is an unfortunate aura of confusion and mystery surrounding course evaluations. Below you will find (almost?) all my course evaluations. I am providing them to provide a snapshot of what one apparently successful Colby faculty member’s evaluations look like. In particular, I wish to emphasize that the existence of vicious comments and semesters or courses with significantly lower ratings is (in my view) completely normal. The obvious caveats apply:

  • I have no idea if these evaluations helped or hurt my tenure case, 
  • I am not representative of other Colby faculty, including those in my own department. Whatever conclusions you draw from my evaluations are likely not applicable to other faculty.
  • Student populations and college culture change over time.

I would like to encourage a culture of transparency and to do my part to allow junior faculty to read the course evaluations of senior faculty.  Evaluations from 2008 (when I started Colby) to 2010 were not electronic and I never got around to scanning them. Some individual comments have been omitted to protect privacy of students.