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Student Opinion

At this point in the meeting, students
mentioned that the process for sampling
student opinion on promotions appeared to be
nebulous and asked faculty members to explain
if and how student opinion was sampled.

Alfred Fernbach, a professor of the
department stated that he had been asking
students to evaluate his courses but had found
that opinions were so variant that this process
had proved unrealistic.

Other faculty members indicated to the
students that they were usually able to sample
student opinion through general discussion and
through the course evaluation booklet.

In discussion on the content of the
department courses, students criticized the
structure of the introductory courses and the
load of teaching assistants in them.

Suggestions were made to divide the large
introductory courses into smaller lecture groups
with graduate students teaching them.