PAGE 4 Teachers Tested A new program that allows students to evaluate the performance of their teachers has been developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS). Besides allowing students a chance to express their views anonymously about courses and teachers, it also gives instructors an objective way to monitor their own performance and progress. Called the Student Instructional Report (SIR), the program is an effort to improve instruction based on responses to an ETS-designed questionnaire supplied to students by the colleges themselves. The questionnaire was developed by ETS researchers with the aid of college faculty members and students. It is composed of questions about specific teaching practices and more general topics including such queries as: Did the instructor encourage students to think for themselves? —Were the course objectives made clear? —How much effort did students put into the course? —Were students informed of how they would be evaluated? Seminar on Women A credit seminar examining the social roles of women will be offered at Guilford College next fall semester. Titled "The Role of Women in Society", it will be coordinated by Vicki M. Curby, Associate Dean of Students. Several members of the Guilford College faculty will serve as lecturers and resource personnel The seminar will be held twice a week: tentatively from 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. Monday and Thursday. During the semester, the seminar will view the changing role of women in contemporary society. Theories of behavior and personality of women and current questionings of these theories will be examined. In investigating women's images, life styles, and participation in major societal institutions, the students will look at economic, educational, legal, political, and religious systems as well as the institutions of marriage and the family. The history of the feminist movement and the current women's liberation movement's goals, methods, and issues will also be discussed. This seminar is intended as an interdisciplinary survey and not an in depth study into any area. One part of the requirements involves research or action projects. For example, media projects may include television, women's magazines, ads : children's literature and sexual stereotyping. Other projects may involve looking at female experience in special areas class, regional, ethnic groups; viewing the function of norms and "normalcy" in female life and the meaning of "deviancy;" a survey of local businesses to The ETS questionnaire also includes questions about a student's reasons for taking the course and the grade he expects to receive. In addition, an instructor is free to include questions of his own to learn more about factors unique to his particular class. The questionnaire results are reported for each class as a group, not for individual students. Student evaluation of teachers is not a new concept. The procedure has been used for some time at various institutions, but ETS says SIR should provide an instructor with information to compare his performance with others in his discipline on a national scale. The program is available to institutions throughout the United States and Canada. More information about SIR may be obtained by contacting: Institutional Research Program for Higher Education, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, New Jersey 08540. Initiated by ETS in 1965, the Institutional Research Program provides colleges and universities with a variety of methods to use in evaluation and self-study programs. determine the number and percentages of women in management positions; and investigating the legal positions of women in North Carolina and other states. Many women's studies courses have been started in the U.S. during the past six years. Why "Women's Studies?" It has been observed that higher education in the United States was designed almost exclusively for the White, upper or middle-class male. Its procedures, its procedures, its content, its uninterrupted timetable, and its cost all but prohibit its use by women despite well-meaning, sometimes desperate, twentieth-century attempts to provide appropriate schooling for every qualified American citizen. According to Lucille Kuehn, University of California at Irvine, " Women's Studies courses are a beginning in the necessary reconstruction process whose goal is an examination of the totality of the human experience male and female, men and women of all races and ethnic backgrounds, of all economic groups and classes. If successful, Women's Studies will outlive its usefulness, having accomplished this goal and will no longer be required after having restored the necessary ingredient of women into the study of history, literature, anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics and the laws and relationships which govern society. "lit the past women students have been estranged from their own experience and unable to perceive its shape and authenticity, in part because THE GUILFORDIAN x / X A \ J 1 1 ,'v t-• \ „i dfiiflßH^JnHlHH^R^HlflHi Photo by Clawges Serendipity Surprises Serendipity Weekend, Guilford's reception for parents and alumni to be held April 28-30, plans entertainment for all guests and residents of Guilford. True to the spirit of serendipity, which is the art of finding pleasure in the unexpected, the weekend is they do not see it mirrored in their academic pursuits. The masculine culture, reinforced by the male author, and, usually, a male professor, is so all-encompassing that few women students can sustain the sense of a positive feminine identity in the face of it. They have been expected to identify as students with a masculine experience and perspective which is presented as the human one. "In view of this academic history, Women's Studies will provide more than a compensatory function, i.e. an admission of inequality and the need for remedial work. It will have an impact of consciousness raising and feminist cultural restoration at the same time that it serves to stimulate a new body of comparative research which leads to change in educational process and content as well as structure, methodology and curricula. An additional goal is the changing socialization of women which influences their career aspirations, choices and opportunities to assist them in reaching their fullest professional potential." Sue Cox of the University of Cincinnati believes that "Women's studies is concerned with power struggles, political, social, psychological and economic independence for all women. It is concerned, on the one hand, with female power the power of every woman to control her own life. Alternatively, it is concerned with human liberation, because as women change the entire structure of society will also change .. being advertised by assorted surprises. Wednesday a fire truck arrived on campus to hang a huge Serendipity banner, complete with a surprise misspelling, between Founders and Milner. Surprise candy has been sprinkled around liberally. The surprise joints under the doors of Milner one morning, although not a part of Serendipity promotion, certainly did not detract from the spirit of pleasurable surprise. Serendipity festivities begin Friday, April 28,. with a buffet dinner in the dining hall, followed by a concert by Josh White, Jr., at 8 P.M. in Dana. After the concert, the College Union will honor White by presenting him with a lifetime membership in the Guilford College Union. The concert will cost $1.50 per guest and $.50 per student. The buffet dinner is $1.50 per guest. Saturday's activities begin at 9 a.m. with a Continental breakfast for guests at the president's home followed by a discussion in Dana involving APRIL 21. 1972 students, parents, and alumni. A carnival, with twenty booths, including cotton candy, snow cones, and ticket booths, plus hay rides, will run Saturday from 11:30 to 4:30. A luncheon for parents and alumni will begin at 12 noon. In the afternoon, an arts, crafts and music festival with displays of student's talents will be held in front of Founders and Cox. The Guilford 500, faculty-student bike relays, will take place at the track at 3 p.m. An Italian dinner will be served in the dining hall, with a charge of $2.00 per guest. The baseball game starts at 8 in the Greensboro Stadium with a $ 1.00 admission charge. The film Good-bye Columbus will be shown free of charge Saturday night at 11:30 in Dana. A breakfast will follow the film at 1:15 a.m. in the dining hall. A contemporary worship service will be held in Dana, Sunday at 11 a.m. The Bluegrass Experience will present an outdoor concert Sunday afternoon on the lawn between Milner and '6B dorms at 2 p.m.