Student evaluations of teaching: perceptions of faculty based on gender, position, and rank Lori R. Kogan*, Regina Schoenfeld-Tacher and Peter W. Hellyer Department of Clinical Sciences, Colorado State University, Campus Delivery, Fort Collins CO, USA (Received 2 February 2010; final version received 28 April 2010) The current study explores the feelings and thoughts that faculty have about their student evaluations of teaching (SET). To assess the perceptions of SETs, all teaching faculty in one college at a western Land Grant University were asked to complete an anonymous online survey. The survey included demographic questions (i.e. gender; rank such as assistant, associate, and full professor; and positions like non-tenure track, tenure track, and tenured) as well as questions related to faculty’s feelings while reading their SETs. While minimal differences were found in responses based on rank or position, several differences were found based on faculty gender. Overall, female faculty appear to be more negatively impacted by student evaluations than male faculty. These gender differences support previous research that suggests males and females receive and react differently to personal evaluation. Resultant suggestions include modifying surveys from anonymous to confidential and offering professional development training for faculty. Keywords: student teaching evaluations; gender; assessment; faculty Introduction The topic of student evaluations of teaching (SET) has received much attention in terms of reliability, validity, and potential uses. The emotional impact of SETs on faculty, however, has been largely ignored. The current studyattempts to explore the feelings and thoughts that faculty have about their student evaluations and if these differ for male and female faculty. Higher education has long placed importance on evaluating professors to ensure they are teaching in ways most conducive to learning. Increased accountability for faculty efforts has been recommended by the Spellings report (United States Department of Education 2006) and SETs have traditionally been the primary source of assessing teaching in higher education (Weinberg, Hashimoto, and Fleisher 2009). Given near the end of the semester, SETs are an almost universally accepted method of gathering information on teaching (Zabaleta 2007). It has been assumed that students are in the best position to know whether the teaching they receive is adequate and whether they are learning (Clayson and Haley 1990). This idea appears deceptively simple. Surveys are developed using five- or seven- point Likert scales (for example, strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree and strongly *Corresponding author. Email: lori.kogan@colostate.edu Teaching in Higher Education Vol. 15, No. 6, December 2010, 623636 ISSN 1356-2517 print/ISSN 1470-1294 online # 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2010.491911 http://www.informaworld.com