At the end of every semester, students walk into their classes to find a stranger bearing No. 2 pencils and Scantron forms. Professors then wait in the hallways as students reduce teaching performance for the semester to carefully filled-in bubble dots. Unfortunately, the excitement in the room is usually the response to the loss of 15 minutes in class time, not the chance to provide feedback to professors.

The reason -- it's too late in the semester for evaluations to be taken seriously and sometimes, too late in a professor's career.

In order for students to commend or see change in professors' teaching techniques while they are still in the class, evaluations should also be done mid-semester by all professors, tenured or not. Such a plan, being drafted by the Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly, could ultimately help students and professors to communicate better during the semester. Office hours aren't enough, especially if students don't feel comfortable criticizing an instructor to his or her face.

Anonymous forms that would assess teaching technique and classroom situations should become a routine part of the careers of every instructor and student. Unless an instructor is afraid of negative feedback, there should be no other excuse for not participating in such a mid-term evaluation. Under the current, end-of-the-semester process, students are given the shorter part of the stick. Although students are made more aware of their shortcomings throughout the semester, it is much harder to assess whether their instructors are part of the problem until the last week of classes.

In the future, mid-semester Scantron forms will indicate a time when students whip out No. 2 pencils not only to prove their knowledge about subject material, but also to give professors insight about their own classroom performance.