Hoya Staff Writer Friday, September 15, 2006 Lindsay Anderson/The Hoya

“You will hate yourself in this class, I promise.”Your experience at Georgetown is not complete without him.”The best thing about this class is leaving.” These are just a few strands of the ongoing, ever-growing conversation at RateMyProfessors.com, a Web site where the student-teacher relationship is reversed and everyone is – quite willingly – a critic. For students piecing together schedules during pre-registration periods, the Web site has become as valuable a tool as the Dean’s office or the Registrar’s listing of classes. Students say they prefer the site to course evaluations posted by the university, which some say are unhelpful and difficult to navigate. RateMyProfessors lets students do just that – rate their professors – on a scale from one to five in the categories of helpfulness, clarity and ease. The helpfulness and clarity ratings are then averaged into an overall quality rating. But for the subjects of this very public job-performance evaluation, the virtues of the site are less certain. Many professors know of the site, but most say that they do not ascribe much importance to the rankings. Assistant Government Professor David Edelstein said that many factors undermine the legitimacy of the Web site’s ratings. He noted that many faculty members have very few reviews, and that the students who visit the site do not represent a random sample. Still, those criticisms have not stopped students from teeming to the site, offering opinions on over 830 faculty members and relishing the opportunity to be honest, sometimes brutally so. “Jack DeGioia is unimpressive,” said one critic of the university president’s teaching (DeGioia has a 3.6.) “Don’t expect to learn much about women in politics in this course,” says one critic of former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile’s course “Women in Politics.” Brazile has a 3.2 rating. Arik Levinson, an associate professor of economics with a middling 3.6 overall rating, said he cares more about how much a student learns in his class that how popular he is. “I’d much prefer an evaluation that says, `Hated the guy, but really learned a lot of economics from him,’ than one that says, `Great guy, great class,'” he said. Maureen Corrigan, an adjunct professor of English with the same rating, agreed. She said she has never visited the Web site. “I doubt that Hannah Arendt or Gertrude Stein would have scored high on the congeniality meter,” she said, referring to the German political scholar and American writer. Other professors said they like the Web site for its entertainment value. Economics Professor Bezhad Diba, who has a 4.2 overall rating, said he’ll sometime visit the site for a laugh. “I’d say look at [the Web site] if you have fun reading comments and want to get a general sense of what the class is like, but don’t take it too seriously,” Diba said. And for still others, all that matters is the beauty contest. RateMyProfessors allows participants to assign a chili pepper icon to professors that they deem to be particularly good looking. DeGioia and Brazile both boast chili peppers. Edelstein has a stratospheric 4.8 rating and a coveted chili pepper. He says he’s flattered by both. Students like Daniel Gude (COL ’07) said they still rely heavily on the word-of-mouth approach in choosing classes. “I think the Web site is only valuable insomuch as a student believes it is valuable,” he said. “I have much more faith in first-person reviews from friends, and so I do not like using the site.” Michael Ryan (CAS ’74), and adjunct lecturer in the McDonough School of Business, agrees that the word-of-mouth approach is very useful, but he also offers his own approach to registration. He invites students to show up at his class and sit through one of his sessions so that they can be absolutely sure they like his class and teaching style. “Investing 75 minutes in one class before registering can be a very good use of time, especially if you figure that each class session at Georgetown costs roughly $100 for students,” he said. “There are certain things you can do to make a better, more informed decision. Better that than to suffer a bad choice.”

CORRECTION:The article “Go Ahead, Rate My Day” (THE HOYA, September 15, 2006 A1) misquoted Professor Arik Levinson. Levinson said, ” ‘I’d much prefer an evaluation that says, ‘Hated the guy, but really learned a lot of economics from him,’ than one that says ‘Great guy, easy class.'”