The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 58, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 28, 1971 Page: 1 of 6
six pages : ill. ; page 21 x 14 in.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Student ratings of courses and instructors are compiled
BY MIKE SMITH AND JACK MURRAY
The undergraduate Teaching Comittee has released its new version of the
SCEP report for last isiemester—t(he Rice Course Instructor Evaluation. The report
is a computerized compilation for each course of student response to the question-
naires distributed in class at the end of last semester.
Dr. Ronald Sasls1, chairman of the Teaching Committee, said copies of the
report have been turned over to (the Faculty Council, whose members are now
considering promotion and granting of tenure to facility. When that task is
completed, four copies of the report wil be placed on reserve in the library and
each department will receive the compilation along with the questionnaire them-
selves. The only copy presently available to students is in the Student Association
office.
All is well
Students may recall that the) questionnaires consisted of 19 questions. The
first nine probed the quality of the instructor's performance in class—whether
he was outstanding, good, fair or poor in such ai-eas as presenting material in a
clear, well-organized manner, or availability outside of class.
The responses to these questions were predominantly favorable. It would
appear that all is well with Rice's courses, generally speaking. But this may be
misleading. Students on the whole may have been especially charitable in their
evaluations. More importantly, the first section was weighted to produce favor-
able evaluations. Three of the four possible rating categories for questions in the;
first scetion can easily be regarded as positive. Only "poor" is unambiguously
unfavorable.
We have examined the report and attempted to trace general trends, and to
isolate the superlative and the egregious in courses and departments. We placed
emphasis, more or less arbitrarily, on the responses to two questions: (9) "In
comparison to all other faculty you have had at Rice, how would you rate the
instructor in this course;" and (18) "Taken as a whole, would you recommend
this course to another student?" We emphasize that the following statements
are only our own interpretations of the data presented in the report.
The following departments stand out as having a preponderance of excellent
rating's, according to our impressions: Biology, Chemical Engineering, English,
History, History of Art and Sociology. On the other hand, only the Math Dept.
received a generally unfavorable set of ratings on courses and instructors. And
even then, the Math Dept. does not look so bad in the report as the six depart-
ments listed above look good.
The light and the dark
Out of the 416 courses or sections of courses evaluated in the report, we
have selected for "special mention" those that stood out as especially superb or
as quite poor. We arbitrarily discounted courses ofr which fewer than seven
questionnaires were returned, although there were about a half-dozen highly rated
courses in that group. Since the questionnaire properly stressed the performance
of the instructor, it is highly probable that the instructor for an excellent course
was also an excellent teacher, and conversely. But it must be stressed that this
is not a necessary relation, since a course may fail for reasons other than poor
teaching.
Sapphires
Three outstanding courses were taught by Gilmartin: Classics 315, Latin 100
and Latin 300. Vandiver's History 495 was highly rated, although only about one
third of the class returned questionnaires. Another outstanding course in the
same department was Kapp's History 421, a seminar on modern China offered for
the first time this year.
Responses to English 100 were very favorable, and Doody's section ranked
particularly high. On the question, "Would you recommenr this course to another
student," 192 students1 enrolled in English 100 answered affirmatively, while
only 19 responded negatively.
Anthropology 400 and Psychology 410, seminars taught by Norbeck and
Wann, respectively, were both rated highly. A preponderance of "outstanding"
ratings was also given to Camfiled's History of Art 460 and Schorre's Architec -
ture 400.
Martin's course in criminology, a lecture class with 136 students, was an un-
usually large class to receive an extreme favorable rating.
(Continued on Page 5)
Excedriri
headache
volume 58, number 16
the rice thresher
rice university, houston, texas
number
sixteen
thursday, January 28, 1971
New directions in Selective Service found encouraging
By DeBOW FREED
Change has characterized the
Selective Service System's first
year under the new random-se-
lection, youngest-first method
pf selecting men for the armed
services, the lottery.
In addition to the radically
altered process of selection, the
draft has* new leadership: Dr.
Curtis W. Tarr, a former col •
lege president and Assistant
Secretary of the Air Force for
Manpower and Reserve Affairs,
was appointed Director of the
Selective Service in April of
last year. He succeeded Gen.
Lewis B. Hershey, who had been
head of the Selective Service
since 1941.
The lottery has been, on the
whole, an administrative suc-
cess. It was able to meet 99 %
of the 1970 draft call despite
the changeover in the machin-
ery of selection. But more im-
portant, the lottery has ended
the agonizing seven year period
of! dr-aft eligibility udergone by
most young men. The new sys-
tem allows those who are not
drafted during a period of pri-
mary eligibility, which does not
exceed twelve months, to drop
to a second priority, essentially
undraftable group. More than-
730,000 young men who were
in classes I-A, I-A-O, or 1-0
on Dec. 31, 1970 completed their
period of primary exposuro to
the draft in this way and will
not be called in tha future un-
less there is a major mobiliza-
tion.
Substantial gains have keen
made in the last year in the
equity of the draft. On April
23," 1970, President Nixon or-
dered an end to occupational,
agricultural, and paternity de-
ferments, except for those reg-
istrants holding such defer-
ments before April 23, as well
as those who may be granted
such deferments from pending recent Supreme Court division-
applications filed before that
date, except where extreme
hardship would result. At the
time, he asked Congress to re-
store his authority to end all
educational deferments and
asked for a uniform national
call, requiring I-A registrants
with the same lottery number
to be called at the same time
throughout the country.
In 1970 a number of new
guidelines and directives for
local boards were issued, clar-
ifying administrative and pol-
icy changes, including interpre-
tations of the draft laws ami
affecting the Draft. An agency
was established to insure uni-
form interpretations of policy
by state and local boards, and
regional service v-tutiij were
created to provide them logistic
and administrative support.
Another evidence or t!v
changes taking place within tin-
Selective Service is its new ac-
tive role in educating the pub-
lic to the intricacies of the draft.
Last week more than 23,000
copies of an 85-page "Curricu-
lum Guide to the Draft" were
mailed to high school admin is
(Continued on Page 4)
State of the Union keys on economy, omits foreign affairs
By MURVIN AUZENNE
Vice-President Agnew in his recent
visit to Houston promised that the Presi-
dent's- State of the Union address would
be long on substance and short on rhe-
toric. Relative to other Nixon speeches
this one fulfilled the criteria in the Vice-
President's promise.
One cannot but come away from the
address feeling hopeful, for the proposals
outlined by the speech are on the whole
excellent. Specifically, it is possible to
cite the welfare reform proposal, the
commitment to more and better public
parks, the commitment to some decen-
tralization of government powers and
the proposal for some ameloriation of
the cost of medical car6.
But the speech was conspicious for
what it omitted almost as much as for
what it included and it included more
than just good proposals. Judgement on
the individual proposals themselves must
await the presentation of the specific
pieces of legislation as the program in-
cluded in Nixon's address was, as is cus-
tomary, only skeletal. Regarding the
matter of omissions and nuances no such
period of grace is necessary.
Foreign policy omitted
Perhaps the most important omission
was that of any discussion of foreign
policy. Because of the intricacy of for-
eign policy and the length of the do-
mestic program, the president may have
felt that he couldn't treat both subjects
in the same address. I don't think that
this was the case. It is practically im-
possible to discuss the state of the union
and not mention foreign policy, es-
pecially Cambodia and Vietnam. One
must feel that the omission was an at-
tempt to avoid an immediate confronta-
tion on these hard issues and to build
up a short-term favorable climate of
public- opinion by giving the people the
good news first.
I commented at the start that the
president',? speech was i-elatively free
of rhetoric, and it was. Nevertheless
there was at least some low-key but still
superfluous rhetorical verbiage. I really
do not think that length was the reason
that foreign policy was omitted. The
speech itself with its significant omis-
sions and its accent of positive pro-
grams would appear to be an attempt to
regain the confidence of public opinion
that Nixon has seen gradually eroded
since he took office. This is further evi-
denced by the rhetorical tips of the hat
to young people (at one point paraphras-
ing J. F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your
country can do for you . . etc.) and
minorities (specifically blacks and Mex-
ican-Americans). Here, in these rhetori-
cal tips of the hat one_fimls two things—
1) Nixon's attitude of how much these
groups can be ignored has been shifted.
2) But still, in terms of specific pro-
posals, he has not reached out for their
support, directly (another significant
emission).
Power to the people
While not reaching out for these new
groups, Nixon's stand on economic pol-
icy and his new welfare proposal have
already received criticism from the
President's conservative supporters and
these proposals may cost him political
support. Another indication that the
speech was intended to bolster public
opinion was Nixon's rhetorical allusion
to returning power to the frustrated lit-
tle man and also his accent on closing
the gap between performance and prom-
ise in government.
There is a disturbing note in some
of the President's rhetoric, specifically
with respect to his conception of the phi-
losophy and design of the new welfare
system. Here one can see that he re-
mains a conservative Republican at core.
One of the national networks (NBC)
carried a special ye port on the back-
ground for this proposal. From this dis-
cussion the viewer learned that 75r/o of
the welfare payments in the U. S. went
for aid to dependent children. Thus 75%
of the welfare recipients were, by any
standards, truly dependent. To this 759c
one must add the percentage of old
people and the totally or partially dis-
abled on the welfare rolls, surely a
significant number of people. Yet the
President could still speak of "those
who are able to help themselves but
refuse to do so" as if it were a serious
problem his new plan would solve. The
entire concept of work incentives is
geared to tHfcse same lines of thought.
Unless work incintives are implemented
with sound technical training programs
and long-range comprehensive projects
to improve educational opportunities for
the children on welfare they are useless.
In an age of disproportionately high
unemployment these people are the
hardest hit.
Also obvious is the fact that the eco-
nomic program advocated by the Presi-
dent is no guarantee of an upturn in the
economy or the lessening' of unemploy-
ment. The success of the welfare re-
forms, tied as they are to the work in-
centive concept, necessitates an expand-
ing economy, one where jobs are readily
available. Thus the success of the wel-
fare proposal hinges on the success of
Nixon's economic program.
Past experience with the Nixon ad-
ministration would tend to suggest that
for all the apparent value of these pro-
grams one must remain skeptical. The
means to these worthy ends are still un-
known. An important questions remains:
Can Nixon re-establish credibility with
that amorphous body called the Ameri-
can public? An affirmative answer-
hinges on success in passing and imple-
menting his domestic program. The divi-
sive issues of foreign policy also loom
large. Can the President in his forth-
coming* foreign policy address--succeed in
closing the credibility gap in this area
and also at least smooth over some of
the deep divisions here? An affirmative
answer to thi.^ hinges on a successful ex-
planation of our role in Cambodia and
the favorable prospects for an end to
our Vietnam involvement before too
much longer. The administration is at a
crossroads.
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Mauldin, John. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 58, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 28, 1971, newspaper, January 28, 1971; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245098/m1/1/: accessed April 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.