I’ve enjoyed reading your evaluation, and I just have to say one thing, “It’s a darn good thing you’re tenured because a non-tenured person like me couldn’t get away with writing what you do in your evaluation.” You’re right. You are well known within the college and you will pass your evaluation. In my humble opinion, it’s just a formality for you. But what you’ve said about the service that you give and your teaching style not matching with the check boxes on the evaluation is so very true. As a non-tenured person, I will be much more concerned about those check boxes than you are.

–Anonymous Colleague
14 March 2012

While putting together my evaluation packet, I could hear my mother sighing in Heaven, “Why can’t you just cooperate for a change?” And in many ways, it would have been easier for me to have been more cooperative. But, on one level, I hope that my lack of cooperation can be a service to my anonymous colleagues who need to be much more concerned than I am about the check boxes.

I am grateful that I am in a position to raise issues that my anonymous colleague and others in this person’s position cannot. That, I believe, is part of the role of tenured faculty members.

I know that I could have simply gone through the motions, checked the appropriate boxes, and submitted a packet that was “good enough.” But I am serious about continuous improvement and I wanted to learn something. Therefore, I do not totally agree with my colleague that my evaluation packet was just a formality. While the comment might be accurate at an institutional level, I took the evaluation process seriously.

I have learned a great deal while putting together my evaluation packet and I look forward to discussing it with my Dean and peer evaluator: Ms. Cheryl Hawkins and Professor Mark Harris. I also look forward to getting more feedback from colleagues, students, and others.

I take my responsibilities to my students seriously and therefore am serious about teaching, service, and professional development. While I know that I am good at what I do, I also realize that there are areas in which I can improve. While reflection and mindfulness are cornerstones of my day to day practice, to take a long term view of my life as an academic has been a valuable experience.

While my evaluation packet might not fit the check boxes published in the Faculty Evaluation Booklet, the process of developing it did fit my desire for making “continuous improvement” more than a cliché when it is applied to my growth and development as a member of Schoolcraft College’s faculty.

The Liberacki-Wilcox-Berg family has been associated with education even before my third great grandfather Lorenzo Mudge arrived in Michigan in 1837. By 1842, school was being taught in the Mudge district of Castleton County. A year later, in 1843, Lorenzo was elected as a school inspector. Then, in 1845, he and four other men built the first schoolhouse in the township. Since then, many of his descendants have worked to support quality educational opportunities to our state. I am proud to be part of that lineage.

Throughout her life, my mother wished for more cooperative children. But she also knows that we have never been a very cooperative family; especially when cooperation meant we had to sacrifice quality. While she sighs in Heaven, she has also likely pulled St. Stephen aside and boasted that his namesake is willing to speak truth to authority to help his students and colleagues.

Photo Caption (top): Dr. Julia A. Berg and her son Dr. Steven L. Berg show off their matching hair styles during the summer of 2008.

Photo Caption (bottom): Lorenzo Mudge (1809-1882)