UW-Milwaukee students will soon be able to access grades professors have given in recent years, along with student comments about courses and professors through an online program called Pick-a-Prof.
By the end of December UW-Milwaukee students will be able to access Pick-a-Prof by logging onto the university's home page. From there, students have free reign on researching facts from percentages of \A""s awarded per class to the number of students dropped a particular class. The service, which costs $10,000, is funded by the Student Association, UW-Milwaukee's student government.
Mary Ryan, UW-Milwaukee junior and Student Association senator, said the student government saw a need for a course selection process that offered more and better communication between students and faculty.
""[Pick-a-Prof] increases the ability to understand who the professors are that are teaching your classes,"" Ryan said.
Pick-a-Prof is a solution that over 50 other colleges and universities with similar goals have chosen, she said. However, Bryan Gadow, chair of the Associated Students of Madison, said it is not being considered to replace the current system at UW-Madison.
""What we do with our program is collect the evaluations that students fill out from each department and compile them onto our online Web site so students have access to it,"" he said.
Though an organization of students and faculty members at UW-Milwaukee agreed that the university needed course evaluations, they suggested that faculty, students and staff collaborate to create an evaluation Web site without a third party involved, according to Ruth Williams, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at UW-Milwaukee.
""We didn't bless [the decision to use Pick-a-Prof] and we didn't condemn it because it was [the students'] choice,"" she said.
However, Williams said faculty input is lacking from Pick-a-Prof.
According to Raymond Duncan, UW-Milwaukee senior and academic affairs director for the Student Association, the university's current course evaluation system has many problems.
""Each department has different questions they use,"" he said. ""Each department has different ways of implementing them. The information itself is almost hidden from students. It's not advertised on the Web site where to get [evaluations].""
Nevertheless, Gadow said students have not expressed a need for change at UW-Madison.
""We've found some pretty good success with our professor evaluation system that we have currently,"" he said. ""I think when you add what type of grades are given out that sometimes will mar a person's opinion about a professor that may not necessarily be true.""
Gadow said he believes there is generally not a need for student access to grade history.
""I think at Madison, students don't typically take classes because of the grades they think a professor gives out, but they take it for the course material or what they've heard about professors,"" he said.
