CUE Requests Evaluation Of Most Popular Courses

The Committee on Undergraduate Education has requested that specified departments solicit student evaluations of the University's most popular courses.

Reports based on the results of the evaluations will be made public and distributed University-wide.

In submitting its request the CUE rejected the concept of one evaluation standardized for all departments. The CUE tested that system on 17 courses at the end of last Spring.

The CUE decided Wednesday to ask the Departments of General Education, Biology, Economics, English, Government, History and Social Relations to issue their own evaluation questionnaires to students enrolled in full courses in the departments by the end of this year.

Heavily Enrolled Courses

If the departments accept the recommendation of the CUE, students taking courses which have a heavy enrollment of non-concentrators will be asked to evaluate the professors and course content.

Robert J. Kiely, associate dean of the Faculty for Undergraduate Education and CUE chairman, said yesterday. "The result of the polls taken last Spring are important only in that they prompted the committee to take compromise action. The departments not the CUE will run the evaluations."

The departmental system is modeled after a method the Chemistry Department uses annually, Kiely said.

William E. Forbath '74, Kirkland House CUE representative, said yesterday that the General Education Department has accepted the proposal.

Forbath said student committees in the seven departments will coordinate the efforts of the CUE to provide course data for all students interested. "We hope to be more accurate than the Confi Guide since we will be able to reach every class member," he said.

Marybeth Shinn '72, a former CUE member, tried to promote the project last year but said yesterday that she felt the Office of Tests moved too slowly by not publishing results of the few polls conducted last Spring.