University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Giving and taking feedback in higher ed By Sammie Johnson STAFF WRITER
With a new semester commencing, the prospect of new professors evokes excitement in some and anxiousness in others. As undergrads take to ratemyprofessor.com, peers and friends for any information on their new teachers, students seem to fit professors into one of three categories: good, bad or somewhere vaguely in between. In the process of evaluating a professor’s performance, students decide if and when to share that feedback with them. It can be difficult for students to believe confronting these wellrenowned experts’ teaching performances — outside of an anonymous course evaluation — is a good idea. “With respect to school and professors there’s a power dynamic. Yes, you can stand up and voice your opinions but they’re still your superior,” UW-Madison senior Haleigh Slack said. “It’s that respect thing that’s ingrained in us, so if we confront them it feels like we’re breaking the rules.” Giving feedback Students react to problematic professors in a multitude of ways. Some express their feelings during course evaluation season, others vent to friends or online. Overall, instead of addressing the problem head-on, students tend to prefer alternate ways of dealing with professor dissatisfaction. “I wouldn’t confront a professor unless I absolutely had to,” UW-Madison junior Trent Hopkins said. “If they were really really bad I would go to the department head instead of the professor.” Confrontation of any kind, let alone the kind within a teacher-student power dynamic, can be inherently difficult. “Confrontation is harder when it’s someone I’m trying to impress or someone who knows more than I do,” UW-Madison freshman Nina Breher stated. “Why do I have the right to confront them when they’re
more knowledgeable?” While many students delay filling out survey after survey at the end of the semester, these course evaluations are a long-standing way for professors to acquire student feedback. “The intention is to be able to get feedback from students to help improve teaching and learning,” said Mo Bischof, UW-Madison’s student learning assessment direc-
“I think a good pedagogical teaching practice is to be asking students how it’s going all the time, whether that’s a formal course evaluation or not,” Bischof said. However, this requires students to believe their feedback can lead to changes. Breher described herself as generally non-confrontational, but that she would consider speaking directly to a professor in
cumstance because she sat us down and made it a point to know all of us,” she said. “That was really scary and I didn’t give her a lot of harsh feedback, but I did say that my view [of her] changed,” she said. As an education major herself, Slack explained that being open to criticism and change are key pieces to being a good teacher. Common complaints, imple-
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Students react to their professors in course evals, online and to friends — but do they feel comfortable in person? tor. “[This] information from students about the overall courses is always helpful in restructuring and offering courses for students.” Evaluation surveys can influence tenure decisions and provide opportunities for professors to be nominated for awards. Though there tends to be a “heavy season” with surveys at the end of a semester, Bischof added that tools are available to professors for feedback all throughout the semester.
the future if she thought it would make a difference. “I can’t think of many conversations where me confronting [a professor] would actually help or change anything,” she said. There are circumstances in which professors go out of their way to get feedback, Slack countered, describing a professor who met one-on-one with each student to determine grades and course improvements. “I think that was a unique cir-
menting improvements Course evaluations offer a sense of what students experience in the classroom and feedback is taken seriously — especially when there is a set of consistent concerns, according to Professor and Political Science Department Head John Zumbrunnen. The most common trends tend to be a lack of professor’s accessibility and approachability, he added. On the other hand, many students additionally shared a fre-
quent issue with professors — focus on research rather than teaching. “They’re all insanely smart in their subject but you can a lot of the time tell they were hired to do research, not to teach,” Hopkins said. “The more specialized professors are probably doing some groundbreaking research and I think maybe teaching sometimes doesn’t get their full attention and isn’t as strong as it could be.” Zumbrunnen explained this could be due to a lack of training — not lack of caring. “Most UW faculty care a lot about teaching and their students,” he said. “One of the challenges for most of us faculty members is we were trained in our fields to be experts and top researchers, but many of us were not trained at all to be teachers.” Professors do not go through the same formal teaching training as K-12 teachers. As a result, they may structure their teaching after their own favorite teachers or how they themselves learned as students. “Sometimes that works really well and other times it can be improved on,” Zumbrunnen added. UW-Madison offers plenty of resources for professors looking to improve, through teaching and learning professional development. “We try to engage faculty in [this], not necessarily because they aren’t doing as well, but for all kinds of reasons to support students,” Bischof said. Some of these resources are guidance on specific classroomrelated skills — like improving discussions or the structure and grading of writing assignments. Zumbrunnen said he’s taken advantage of the university’s recent focus on professional development and believes that these opportunities should be capitalized on by UW’s faculty.
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Limited options lead transgender patients to seek care in Madison By Kylie Coffin STAFF WRITER
Madison and Middleton are the only Wisconsin cities with surgeons available for people in the transgender, non-binary and genderexpansive communities who wish to undergo gender-affirming surgery. Top and bottom surgery — which includes gender mastectomy, vaginoplasty and phalloplasty procedures — is offered limitedly in the state. Dr. Clifford King at Top
Surgery Midwest and Dr. Katherine Gast at UW Health are the only practicing providers. Still, UW Health has been ranked highly by prominent LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, as a health care system that provides its LGBTQ+ patients with the best practice and care. UW Health was named a “Leader in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality” in 2019 by the Human
Rights Campaign Foundation, according to the 12th edition of the Healthcare Equality Index. No other health care systems in the Madison area were recipients of the same accolades for their care. “We are committed to offering compassionate care and remarkable healthcare, so it is an honor to be recognized again,” UW Health CEO Dr. Alan Kaplan said in a press release. “Diversity and inclusion are critical to UW Health’s mission.”
UW Health Gender Services Navigator, Emily Smith, stated she is proud of the work being done in the city to provide care to those seeking gender-affirming surgeries. “There are so many great resources in the Madison area and within UW Health,” Smith said. “My hopes and goals are to bring all of these resources together to better help patients, as well as educate and empower employees and staff [on] gender-affirming healthcare.”
For those looking to surgically transition, UW Health offers several gender-affirming surgeries within its Surgical Services department of the Gender Services unit. Such surgeries can take place at Transformations, a facility in Middleton, or at University Hospital. According to Smith, UW Health is considered a high-volume facility for gender-affirm-
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“…the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”