FAR-REACHING CONSEQUENCES
Among the unresolved questions to be addressed by the CUE Guide review was who should use its contents and what purposes it should be allowed to serve.
Administrators routinely used the CUE ratings to single out teaching fellows for official commendation or closer scrutiny of their teaching abilities, and concern was expressed that poor ratings could carry consequences for junior professors and teaching assistants.
In a 1960 article, The Crimson reported that Ozment sent letters to department chairs stating that a total of 66 section leaders were evaluated and ranked 3.5 or lower on the CUE Guide’s 7.0 scale.
“The Guide is certainly not an infallible measure. However, when taken in conjunction with other measures, a low ranking in the CUE Guide does seem to suggest that a teaching fellow might profit from some assistance, both for his sake and for the sake of the students that he teachers,” Ozment wrote in his letters.
Additional concerns were raised in noting that Ozment recommended a variety of possible remedies, which included removal from teaching positions, for deficient instructors and assistants.
POWER PLAY
Although Harvard administrators and professors had regulated the CUE Guide extensively since its 1973 inception, the belief that student staff members retained full authority over the content of the CUE Guide and its editorial materials was extensively widespread.
“What is and what is not printed on these pages is determined solely by the student editors and not by an administrative agency,” the editor-in-chief wrote in a preface to the 1977 edition of the Guide.
The Guide was routinely reviewed by officials and often involved collaboration between students and professors. A Faculty Council discussion in 1976 determined firm precedent for its regulation.
“That course evaluations should concentrate on average responses and interpretations and not include the direct quotation of individual opinions because they are often capricious and unrepresentative,” wrote Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Phyllis Keller.
According to the last restriction, this supported instructions that editors strike the terms from the descriptions of professors in the current edition.
“All of the editors were taken aback because we felt that this was a limitation on our freedom of expression, but we were pressured to comply because the Guide was ultimately funded by the University,” Okun said.
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences 18-member Committee on Undergraduate Education convened in mid-October 1985 to determine a clear editorial policy for student-run publications. After a month of deliberation, the CUE recommended that student staff members be granted substantial autonomy in determining the composition of the Guide.
The CUE also emphasized that the Guide was provided to aid students in selecting courses and not to evaluate the performance of junior professors and teaching assistants. The committee also voted to allow the associate dean for undergraduate education to play a role in the selection of the CUE Guide’s editor-in-chief.
In 2007, it was renamed as The Q Guide because it is no longer administered by the Committee on Undergraduate Education.
According to the FAS website, the Q system is used today to evaluate nearly 1,000 courses and more than 2,000 faculty and section leaders each term.
—Staff writer Barbara DePena can be reached at barbara.b.depena@college.harvard.edu.