"I came to you first to complain, thinking that the department was lax leaving them around in the lecture hall. I or anyone else could have filled out any number of them, since we were told to leave our finished evaluations in the NERD office. I was disturbed that the students were not taking them seriously. It seemed to indicate to me that the nutrition course was not considered important enough to be properly evaluated. That bothered me.
"You assured me that the evaluation process wasn't unique to the nursing course and took me to the NERD office to see how the medical students evaluation was conducted.
"I was appalled. Throughout my training, it was stressed how important the process is. At the colleges I attended, they were taken seriously—a representative from the student government would sign out the required number of forms from the administration official and bring them to the classroom.
"All teachers or instructors had to leave the room while we filled out our evaluation. They were collected, counted and brought back to the administration official. The data was given to the instructor but never the evaluations themselves because student confidentiality was considered to be an important step in the process.
"In contrast, at Belmont the evaluation process is a joke—even the, er, enriched acronym, SmurFFs, this university has chosen to call the evaluation forms for student feedback attests to this."
"Were you ever given specific instructions relating to the evaluations?" asked Diana.
"Yes, Dr. Lyle Stone, at the beginning of the course, told us that there would be evaluations periodically and that it was very important for us to fill them out since they would provide feedback on the course content and the instructors. He also stressed that they would be confidential.
"I remember being impressed, thinking, Oh great! Then instead of a proper evaluation procedure, the forms were left in piles at the end of rows to be filled out during the lecture or taken home to do. Just get them back before the end of the week, they told us."
"Did you ever initiate a conversation with Lyle Stone regarding how you felt about document examiners and student confidentiality?"
"Yes, right after the lecture, the first part of this May, Roz Peel and a couple of other students and I went up to him after lecture.