Organized efforts to provide for systematic evaluation of teaching by students date to the late 1960s. In 1968–69, under Student Government Association president Chris Whittle, the SGA helped to initiate a system of voluntary evaluations of faculty teaching by students in their classes. In November 1971 the Student Senate worked with the Academic Council to publish the first university-wide course and teacher evaluation book, which was sold to cover the costs of publication. In 1979 the Academic Council of SGA, working with faculty and administrators, instituted a mandatory system whereby students would evaluate teaching in all courses.
Course evaluations were first uniformly conducted in fall 1989, through the efforts of the SGA’s ad hoc Course Evaluation Committee and the SGA, whose recommendation was approved by the academic deans. In March 1990 the SGA produced a Student Evaluation of Courses catalog based on a 71.7 percent return rate of the 1989 questionnaires from 1,600 sections of courses. That system evolved into a faculty evaluation program, the Campus Teaching Evaluation Program (CTEP), but the results of the required evaluations were confidential, available only to the faculty member evaluated, and the program was designed to effect improvements in teaching.
In 1992 SGA published a collection of course evaluations, but it was not comprehensive because professors submitted their evaluations voluntarily. In 1993 SGA sought to add its own list of questions to the already mandatory Campus Teaching Evaluation Program (CTEP), in the hopes of publishing the responses to its questions. The Faculty Senate rejected adding the questions or publication of CTEP evaluations, opting to keep CTEP evaluations confidential, obtainable only by the evaluated faculty member. SGA then researched the Tennessee Open Records Law and ascertained that it covered the CTEP evaluations.
SGA then searched for a student evaluation program that would be compatible with the goals of SGA and proposed the process and results from the University of Washington to the Faculty Senate. The Faculty Senate approved the program and mandated the new evaluations be utilized in every course offered in fall 1995. Tennessee 101, a compilation of the evaluation results from fall 1995, was published in March 1996. Tennessee 101 information was later placed on UT’s website. The Student Assessment of Instruction (SAIS) system, administered by the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment, allowed for written or online evaluation, and Tennessee 101 was web-based. In 2011 evaluation of instructors was converted to a completely web-based, online system. Conversion of the program to the new system was estimated to save 1.25 tons of paper each year and to save also countless hours of staff time.