The purpose of this column is to discuss the possibility of setting up a teaching award of the students, by the students and for the students. I want to call this award “The Students’ List.” I’m promoting this award because I saw the need to recognize professors who perform well on course evaluations. This would be parallel to each college’s Dean’s List, which recognizes students with high GPAs. Cornell already has many awards, but the teaching award that I am suggesting will be a supplement to the current prizes. It is a prize of our own. In addition to this “Students’ List,” we can also begin to devise other prizes based on other criteria and expectations that are important for students.
Some people have told me that they are afraid that such a Students’ List would be biased; that it would be a popularity contest. It is true that every prize has its own bias, but the best way to overcome that bias is to diversify the available teaching awards so that every voice of this university can be heard. We students may not be able to provide our opinions on certain issues, such as whether the content of the course is completely appropriate, but faculty members, department chairs and deans also have blind spots. For example, they may not know very well whether a faculty member is receptive to students.
Some teachers are poor teachers, while many others are good teacher on their learning curve. Receptiveness is one of the most important criteria in order to distinguish these two kinds. David Way, Cornell’s director of instructional support, gave me a vivid example: 17 years ago, a young professor at Cornell got extremely negative student feedback during the beginning of his course. He took this very seriously and turned to David for help. He distributed his own mid-term course evaluation and listened continuously to students’ feedback. Several years ago, he became the winner of a notable teaching award. I think we could have given him an award for his efforts and the results much earlier than that, and the prize called “Most Responsive Teacher” should recognize him for his continuous efforts to become a master teacher.
I also hope that the Students’ List can not only be an honor but also provide some prize money. All other things being equal, good teachers usually spend much more time on teaching than poor teachers. Prizes of $2,000 for each professor awarded would be a fair bonus for the extra hours they have spent preparing to teach. Also, while $2,000 is seven percent of a student’s tuition, a good teacher can influence hundreds of students, and may even help them to focus their career. You never know; a former student might eventually bring back a named professorship at the value of $3,000,000. The return of this investment is 1,500 times the original amount. Warren Buffett would be proud.
I have been in intensive discussions with University administrators about two plans for where to get money. I strongly prefer the latter but I will also bring the first plan to your attention.
The first plan is to set aside from some part of our tuition, say 0.03 percent, in order to pay Cornell to establish a teaching grant of $100,000 every year. We use that to award 50 professors with prize money of $2,000 each. Since we pay the tuition and share the cost of our education, this will allow us to have some control over the money we have spent. All the money is still within Cornell. Meanwhile, we have improved our education by maximizing our tuition.
I first thought of this plan when I began to campaign for student trustee, but soon I realized that this plan has a potential risk of increasing tuition by $9 per student. So I put forward another plan: fundraising for this award. I am currently working on this plan and the most important work to do is to convince University authorities that the prize would be a University priority.
This award matches our long-run initiative to become the best undergraduate institution in the world. Many of our peer schools also claim that they want to let their students “have the best undergraduate experience in the United States.” They are as strong as Cornell in research and endowment. Setting up a student-managed teaching award is an important step to move ahead of them by showing that we take student satisfaction more seriously.
I can already see the announcement of the winners of the “Students’ List.” We invite the prize winners to attend the award ceremony, a ceremony as fancy as the capital campaign kick-off last week, and give them a big $2,000 check. As Kent Hubbell, dean of students, suggests, this could be the highest prize of teaching at Cornell, for it is the prize awarded by the students. No matter what the day is, it will be a festival for us; it is the day when our voices get to be heard.
141 years ago, Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White came here with the dream to “found an institution where any person can find any instruction in any study.” To achieve that, we should reward any talent or effort that is most valuable to students. The “Students’ List” is still just an idea. That is the reason why I have come here to call for your attention and your help. Currently, I can only say it is a dream, but I am fully convinced it will come true, by us or by our successors one day, because a prize of the students, by the students, and for the students will let all of us express what we value in our Cornell experience, as well as helping to enhance the future of Cornell.
Mao Ye is a student-elected trustee. He can be contacted at my87@cornell.edu. Trustee Viewpoint appears alternate Tuesdays.