Inside the Current Issue

Reports from the Front: The Adjuncting Experience

In this special section... The Tensions of Teaching Marriah Star Critical Adjuncting Kimora Reflections of an Adjunct Teacher Daphna El-Roy On Love, Hate and Adjuncting Dan Skinner Graduate Students: Sign your Union Cards! Andrea Morrell Against Tuition Remission, Against PSC Adjunct Unionization Spencer Sunshine The Value of Student Evaluations Jonathan R. Wynn Experts Ask: Do We Need Adjunct Pedagogy? Mark Wilson The New Proletarian Academy James Hoff Teaching Shakespeare with an Eastern European Accent Szidonia Haragos

The Value of Student Evaluations

Jonathan R. Wynn

I'm a sociologist, so I understand the importance of outlets for groups of individuals who find themselves at times disaffected and without recourse. And I also think that providing space for students to openly critique their institution and its faculty outside of its many bureaucratic mechanizations is a positive contribution to the public square that is the Internet. But all that being said, goddamn if it

doesn't burn me up that I don't have a chili pepper on ratemyprofessor.com. What, exactly, do I have

to do?

I'll tell you flat out: being a sociologist doesn't preclude me from being a narcissist. I mean, I don't have the steely blue eyes of Columbia's Duncan Watts or the avuncular charm of NYU's Craig Calhoun. (One the other hand, I possess neither the former's "misguided arrogance" or the latter's "soothing voice" which "will induce sleep.") I appreciate that students report that I'm a "nice guy," who is "down to earth" and "very cool, very smart, and very fair." One even writes that I'm probably the best teacher they've ever had. 'But still,' I think to myself in all those lonely office hours, 'why no chili pepper?'

The 'Rate My Professor' tagline tells us the website is "where students do the grading." My friends feign disinterest - but please, it's our own academic version of 'Hot or Not?' It's fun, just like looking in a Coney Island circus mirror, except this carnie reflection can be Googled by prospective employers for tenure track jobs.

My friend, Jeff, has a pepper. You can just read the obnoxious cooing from the comments: he's "a cool cat," and "so adorable." It's only a matter of time before Alex gets one too. His students gave him positive ratings before three weeks of the semester passed. Another peppered colleague of mine is described as "eye-candy."

I also love that the Graduate Center is on there. There are actually PhD students who gauge faculty hotness. Although only 17 faculty are rated, four (in other words, 23.5%) have chili peppers. So right there we can all agree that the pepper-bar is set pretty low.

I admit, as with the Academy Awards, it's just nice to be nominated. Some of the best in my field don't get acknowledgement at all, let alone a chili pepper. Better still, there is something gratifying about reading the eminent scholars being dressed down by students who complain about their 'superficiality.' It's Dickensian. I have nothing, for example, against sociologist Dalton Conley. He is, by almost all measures, an exceptional scholar. He just won the NSF Waterman Award (which comes with a three year, half million dollar budget) and has written a few of the best books to come out of the field, all before his 36th birthday. Still, you can't help but chortle when someone like that gets whittled down to this: "hard, boring but he's kinda hot to look at." Oooh, snap! He still gets a pepper, though.

Jonathan R. Wynn is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department.