A proposal to make the results of teacher evaluations available to students could face approval by the University Senate in December after a committee implements changes to bring the policy into accordance with state law, officials said.

If the university’s most powerful policy-making body approves the proposal this year, it would resolve a years-long process of revision and grant students a free venue to help them choose their classes by viewing how their peers rate individual faculty members.

Senators assumed they would advise administrators to formulate a standardized set of questions for students to fill out at the end of each semester, which could be viewed by departments deciding which faculty members deserve tenure status and salary raises and also by fellow students. Under Maryland state law, however, it is not legal to release information departments use to make those decisions without the individual faculty members’ permission.

The senate will likely advise administrators to develop two sets of questions – one for students to peruse and another for departments to use in faculty reviews, said Adele Berlin, chair of the executive committee, which sets the agenda for the larger senate body.

The senate has been considering a proposal to make the results of teacher evaluations available to students to help them choose their classes – in the same spirit as the popular commercial rating service Pick-A-Prof – since 2002. The senate charged a special task force with the proposal in 2003. During the drafting process, the university’s lawyers determined the need for two sets of questions.

The latest draft of the proposal, submitted to the executive committee earlier this month, referenced “universal questions” and “student information questions,” which confused senators on the executive committee, Berlin said. She invited a representative from the university’s legal department and Dennis Kivlighan, head of the task force and a professor in the counseling and personnel services department, to yesterday’s executive committee meeting to explain the legal aspects of the issue.

Some committee members said they thought the senate should concentrate on just a set of questions for students. Others, however, said the information should also factor into department reviews.

“It is part of our professional responsibility,” said Ellin Scholnick, an ex officio senator on the executive committee. “We want to know how our teachers are doing in the classroom. If we really believe teaching is an important endeavor, we must use the data evaluatively.”

Under current university policy, students fill out teacher evaluations at the end of each semester, which departments use when reviewing faculty. Only a few colleges, such as the college of computer, mathematical and physical sciences, allow students access to the results.

Over the next few weeks, Berlin and Kivlighan will work together to refine the proposal before they reintroduce it at the next executive committee meeting on Nov. 29. The group will then decide whether it will appear before the full senate body for a vote on Dec. 12. If the full senate passes it, the proposal will go on to the president’s office for approval. The provost’s office will then have a year to formulate the specific questions.

“If it gets voted on and shot down, then I think it won’t be dealt with until the next academic year,” Berlin said. “My sense is it’s not going to be that scenario. It seems to me people do think we need something like this.”

After reviewing a set of sample questions included in the proposal, students on the executive committee said the evaluation needs to be brief and contain the information students really want to know.

“You don’t want to ask too many questions because that will deter students from actually going online and filling it out,” said Ellie Sepehri, an undergraduate senator representing the college of life sciences. “The bottom line is students want to know whether they will do well in a class.”

Contact reporter Kate Campbell at campbelldbk@gmail.com.