Descriptions by Students

Undergraduate students were asked to describe faculty members to whom they had given their highest and lowest ewaluations. Highest rated faculty were described in tenns of positiwe personal/ motiwational and interpersonal characteristics. Lowest rated faculty were described in tenns of classroom behavior. Charac-teristics of highest evaluated faculty, it is suggested, are not bipolar opposites of characteristics of lowest evaluated faculty. Students evaluate faculty, whether or not they are asked to do so. Most colleges and universities have adopted formal evaluation ~rocedures in the last 2 decades, and growing research interest has focused on student percep-tions of effective and ineffective teaching. What faculty characteristics cause students to give them high ratings for teaching? What characteristics produce low ratings? The considerable literature generated by these and other questions about student evaluation of faculty is, for the most part, reassuring (e.g., Burdsal & Bardo, 1986; Centra