A new tool intended to replace student access to course evaluations launched on March 27, just in time for Fall 2025 course registration.
The syllabus repository is available to anyone with a Lafayette College ID and gives users access to the syllabi, schedules and required materials of Lafayette courses. But participation in the repository is optional for professors and only a small proportion of courses display a syllabus as of Wednesday.
The new addition comes almost a year after the faculty approved the creation of the repository and marks the end of a three-semester period without a central student course selection resource since access to student-generated course satisfaction evaluations was restricted in Spring 2023.
“We started working on it immediately when the motion passed,” said psychology professor Susan Wenze, the chair of the faculty committee tasked with finding an alternative to course evaluations.
“It’s hard to predict when a project can be done before you’ve started,” she continued. “I am confident that there’s no way a good product could have been ready sooner.”
Economics professor Christopher Ruebeck echoed this sentiment. He chaired the faculty committee that spearheaded the original motion to remove campus-wide course evaluation access.
“In a perfect world, it would have been done already, but we don’t live in a perfect world,” Ruebeck said, adding that the committee had gathered enough “serious stories” to motivate restricting course evaluation access before an alternative was in place.
In addition to voting to terminate access to the evaluations, the faculty also voted to investigate alternative ways for students to learn more information about their courses prior to registration, with the goal of having the alternative ready in time for Fall 2024 course selections.
Ruebeck also said that the reshuffling of the faculty committees may have contributed to the year-long delay of the repository’s launch.
When asked about the delay for student course registration, Wenze emphasized that this was not about “taking something away from students so much as protecting people’s privacy.”
One concern that spurred the restriction of course evaluation access was the potential for discrimination, bias and workplace toxicity among faculty, according to the motion.
“I know that when I talk to pre-tenure faculty and historically underrepresented faculty, they are very appreciative of the fact that this is not a part of their life anymore,” Ruebeck said.
Another challenge in deciding on an alternative to course evaluations was the complication of syllabi being considered intellectual property, according to the Lafayette College Faculty Handbook.
“Everybody has autonomy about whether to upload anything and what to upload if they want to upload something,” Wenze explained.
Both Wenze and Charles Mann ’25, a student representative on the Student Affairs committee, said they have not heard much conversation about the repository. Both also expressed a hope that it will grow in popularity as more students discover it.
“We were pretty sure that the first year was going to be sort of a rocky start,” said Mann, adding his prediction that faculty will start to upload more of their syllabi once they see the “success” of the site and that it is “harmless.”
Other members of the Student Affairs committee, Christa Kelleher and Megan Rothenberger, declined to comment.
Information Technology Services Project Manager Mike Nass did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
