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Up until a year ago the Finance Department had for a period of about three years run a peer review program within the department. Tom Finucane is the chairman of the committee that runs this program. Participation in the peer review process is voluntary to faculty members and works in the following manner. Instructors provide two peer reviewers syllabi of their classes and invite the reviewers to monitor one of their classroom presentations. After observing the instructor's performance for the bulk of the class session, the instructor excuses him/herself and the reviewers are free to interview students in a confidential manner. Students are assured that they can speak candidly, and experience has shown that this is indeed the case. After these interviews, a meeting between the instructor and the reviewers takes place. In specific cases where particular student concern is voiced as to the conduct of the class, a second classroom meeting between the reviewers and the class occurs. Emphasis in the second meeting is placed upon the determination of whether adequate improvements (as recommended by the reviewers to the instructor) were implemented.
As the result of this peer review process, a higher degree of coordination within our various departmental course offerings has been achieved. In addition, while this is difficult to measure, student satisfaction appears to have improved.
Confidentiality and reliability in this process is maintained by not allowing any two faculty members to operate as reviewers for each other.
While it should be noted that our peer review process has been suspended for a year and a half in order to assess its efficacy, we intend to begin this process anew starting with the fall semester 1999.