A faculty member questioned the integrity of deans' evaluations last night after a committee determined some comments were missing from its report.
Journalism professor Joe Bernt announced to Faculty Senate that the Scripps College of Communication's deans evaluation committee was missing at least two sets of faculty comments.
Bernt and fellow professor Bernhard Debatin, who is on the evaluation committee, discovered their comments were missing when the committee received the forms from the Office of Institutional Research Friday.
The Post requested all forms and communications related to the deans' evaluations Feb. 7. An OU spokeswoman said the documents will not be available until late May.
Debatin contacted Marty Tuck, associate provost for Academic Affairs, to report the problem.
We have reason to believe that some (at least two) evaluation comments did not get forwarded to us
Debatin wrote in an e-mail. It is obviously unclear to us (why). However given the time constraints G? we would like to ask you to talk to Institutional Research have them go through their files
and send the evaluations back to us.
In his response, Tuck e-mailed that the deadline for the committee's report was the coming Monday, and did not address whether he would ask Institutional Research to forward the missing evaluations.
Debatin then contacted Mike Williford, associate provost for Institutional Research and Enrollment Planning, who said in an e-mail response that the office received several evaluations after the submission deadline passed. Those evaluations were not sent to the committees.
Bernt dismissed that explanation.
Two of these forms that were identified were sent well before the deadline ' a week and a half in one case
Bernt said. And if there's that much problem with the mail service G? there seems to be a problem that needs to be remedied. If it just got shuffled in the office and lost
sat in the basket and got stamped late
whatever. I want to know (if) these forms (are) going to be sent to the evaluation committee.
Williford said the late evaluations, about 20 of them university wide, would not be sent to the committees.
Bernt went on to express concern, particularly because the missing evaluations were negative assessments of Dean Greg Shepherd.
It makes me suspect it wasn't coincidental that a form that arrived in your office before the deadline didn't make it to the committee
Bernt told Williford.
Williford defended his department from Bernt's accusations, saying it followed the protocol used for all surveys.
I strongly resent any implication that we've done something nefarious here
Joe
but I can assure you folks that we got the forms out on time
we got the forms back on time
