Elisa looked around her new office in mid-August and felt excited. She had recently graduated with her PhD in business and was eager to begin her first full-time academic role. She was determined to be the best professor she could possibly be.
Elisa was particularly enthusiastic about her new teaching responsibilities. She had taught as a sessional instructor at other institutions while completing her studies but had been fulfilling shortterm contracts where she had had little control over the course content and teaching approach. Now, as an assistant professor, Elisa could be more creative when deciding how to approach her classes.
She worked very hard in her first term to create the best educational experience possible for her students. She recorded each of her lectures and watched them again later to see where she could improve. She held extra office hours to be more available to her students. Experiential learning techniques and hands-on activities were introduced and seemed to help her students to better understand course content.
All in all, Elisa felt that she had really excelled and she looked forward to seeing her efforts reflected in her course evaluations. Her evaluations when she was a sessional instructor had always been excellent, and she felt that with her new academic freedom there was no place to go but up.
Elisa secretly coveted the recognition of a teaching award and wondered if the evaluations might be her first steps in that direction. Other than test results, the evaluations were her sole means of getting feedback on her effectiveness.
But Elisa had never seen the forms before, and when she did see them for the first time she was dismayed to say the least.
She had been accustomed to getting detailed student feedback at her previous institution, when working as a sessional. Those forms had asked a series of 12 questions about the instructor’s knowledge, teaching style, approachability, and fairness of evaluations. This being so, it was easy to determine where one was lacking and how to improve. But these forms were nothing like that. There was an open area to write in feedback, but that section was optional and she feared that many students would not bother filling it in. Only two formal questions were asked: (1) Is this course an elective or required? and (2) Select from the following two choices: Was the instructor satisfactory or unsatisfactory?
The second question distressed her most · · · satisfactory or unsatisfactory?
What about excellence? Was it actually impossible to earn “excellent?”
She had strived for excellence her entire life. Now that formally achieving it wasn’t even an option, she began looking back on all those hours spent perfecting her lectures and providing one-on-one help to students. She was still glad the students were supported, but suddenly she didn’t feel the same way about all that extra work. She looked over her newly purchased book of experiential learning exercises. A part of her couldn’t help asking: Is the extra effort I’m putting in really worth it?
Discussion Questions 

1. What seems to be important to Elisa? Put another way, what seems to drive job satisfaction for her?
2. Use expectancy and equity perspectives to explain why Elisa’s job attitudes changed so dramatically after she saw the student evaluations.
3. If you were Elisa’s manager (department chair) how would you address this issue? What might help improve Elisa’s job satisfaction?