Welcome to the Faculty Bearometer

Source: https://bearometer.berkeley.edu/page/2/ Parent: https://bearometer.berkeley.edu/

The Bearometer is an independent faculty project that poses a single poll question to the Berkeley senate faculty on issues of teaching and governance.

The Bearometer is not affiliated with the senate nor the administration.

The Bearometer is modeled on MIT’s Faculty Pulse. Like the Pulse, the Bearometer solicits questions from faculty. These questions are upvoted/downvoted and then ultimately selected by the Question Keepers (currently Chris Hoofnagle, Law; William Fithian, Statistics) for distribution to the faculty.

Senate faculty members receive links to the question nomination system, to surveys, and to results by their university email. For more information, see the FAQ below.

• Bearometer 10: Student Evaluations of Teaching

The Faculty Bearometer sent the following question on September 23, 2025 to 2,630 faculty senate members:

Has the use of student evaluations of teaching in faculty merit and promotion cases affected the difficulty of your course? If so, how? 238 responded.

Respondents could choose multiple responses:

• It hasn’t affected the difficulty of my course.
• Yes, it has led me to reduce course rigor/demand.
• Yes, it has led me to increase course rigor/demand.
• Yes, it has led me to award higher grades (more As or lenient distributions)
• Yes, it has led me to award lower grades (fewer As or stricter distributions)
• Other

September 24, 2025 - ## Bearometer Methods Fall 2025

All, here are some methods updates on the Bearometer for Fall 2025.

Our faculty changes, and so our N fluctuates. In September 2025, we added new faculty who have joined the campus this fall, and eliminated entries for those departed. Our N also decreases over time as faculty opt out of the Bearometer.

When we report units, we do so in an aggregated fashion. We aggregate units according to the table below so that all reported units have at least 50 members. Columns A and C are the most granular unit identifiers; these come directly out of CalNet and represent the respondent’s home department. To be clear, respondent identity is suppressed in Qualtrics; survey responses only carry the “Reported category” below.

We have also added an isStem flag based upon column A. We did this based on our own judgment. If you believe we should reclassify an entity, please email us. There are a few disciplines that could go either way, and departments that have subunits that are arguably stem, with others in social sciences and humanities.

Column B is what the Bearometer uses to report results in order to preserve respondent privacy. In some cases, we suppress results (e.g. Faculty administrators) because the number of participants is so small that reporting may identify the respondent.

Here are some interesting aspects of our categorization:

• We count 2,713 senate faculty members. However, our N will always be smaller because of email delivery errors, and opt outs.
• Our methods tag 1,414 members as STEM based upon their primary department categorization
• 1,017 have emeritus status
• This is our population breakdown by reported unit

September 6, 2025 - ## Bearometer 9: Student Preparation

The Faculty Bearometer sent the following question on April 29, 2025 to 2,564 faculty senate members:

Thinking about the students you teach, what portion of them are exceptionally prepared, adequately prepared, minimally prepared, or not at all prepared for the level of rigor you believe UC Berkeley coursework requires? 238 responded. The results are available at the link available to faculty.

May 3, 2025 - ## Bearometer 8: Getting Reimbursed

On April 22, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2567 members) via Qualtrics email contacts. 237 completed the survey. Results are available in the link circulated to senate faculty.

Over the past 12 months, approximately how much have you personally spent on work-related expenses without getting fully reimbursed, because of policy rules or because it wasn’t worth your time to seek reimbursement?

The choices were: $0-$50; $51-$250; $251-$1,000; $1,001-$5,000; >$5,000

April 22, 2025 - ## Bearometer 7: External Criticisms

On April 16, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2564 members) via Qualtrics email contacts. 291 completed the survey. Results are available in the link circulated to senate faculty.

In the current environment where our university’s mode of operation is being openly challenged by powerful outside forces, do you believe that some of the associated criticisms of higher education are valid and should be acted upon?

• The criticisms are invalid so we should not act on them
• Some criticisms may be valid, but we should not take action in the present environment because it would undermine university autonomy
• Some criticisms are valid, and we should take action deliberately through regular governance processes
• Some criticisms are valid and we should take action urgently
• Other

April 17, 2025 - ## Bearometer 6: Chancellor Vision

On April 8, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2579 members) via Qualtrics email contacts. 155 completed the survey. Results are available in the link circulated to senate faculty.

A new chancellor means a new vision for Berkeley. What are the most important issues the strategic planning process should address?

April 8, 2025 - ## Bearometer 5: Free Speech Temperature

On April 1, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2588 members) via Qualtrics email contacts. 335 completed the survey. Results are available in the link circulated to senate faculty.

Are you concerned about retaliation when you speak, or is your speech chilled by any of the classes of people listed below?

• Not chilled/not concerned
• Trump administration
• UC Regents / UCOP
• UCB administrators, deans, or department chairs
• Other faculty
• Students
• Social media
• Other

April 2, 2025 - ## Bearometer 4: Intercollegiate Athletics

On March 4, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2635 members) via Qualtrics email contacts. 341 completed the survey. Results are available in the link sent to senate faculty members.

What level of priority should Berkeley place on intercollegiate athletics?

• We should increase funding to pursue more national championships.
• Funding should remain at or near current levels to maintain nationally competitive Division I programs.
• We should reduce funding even if it means losing more games or moving to a weaker conference or division.
• We should only support athletics programs like physical education and intramural or club sports that directly benefit a higher proportion of our community members.
• Other

March 4, 2025 - ## Bearometer 3: SAT/ACT Testing

On February 20, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2635 members) via Qualtrics email contacts. 430 completed the survey. Results are available at the link sent to senate faculty members.

Should UC Berkeley go back to using standardized test scores (e.g. SAT or ACT) in undergraduate applications?

February 20, 2025 - ## Bearometer 2: Union

On February 11, 2025, we distributed the following question to senate faculty (2635 members) via Qualtrics email contacts: “As the University prepares to renegotiate the graduate student union agreement, what is the most important insight you want negotiators to understand about how the current agreement impacts your teaching or research?” 179 responded. Results available by email link.

February 14, 2025

FAQs

Who is behind the Bearometer?

This is an entirely faculty-led project. The Bearometer is not affiliated with the Senate.

Chris Hoofnagle and Will Fithian started the Bearometer and are looking for collaborators.

What is the Bearometer?

The Bearometer is a one-question survey posed to the senate faculty. The results will be private to the University of California community (that is they are not published).

The Bearometer is based on MIT’s faculty-led Pulse Survey.

Its goals are simple:

• Empower faculty to shape campus discussions by contributing their questions.
• Amplify the perspectives of the broader faculty community—especially those too reticent or busy to participate in the Senate.
• Deliver timely insights to the Senate and administration on faculty opinions.
• Address the infrequency of university surveys

MIT’s Pulse has surfaced interesting campus dynamics. Some are related here.

Why did you start the Bearometer?

The Faculty Senate has many principal/agent problems. Leaders must intuit faculty sentiment, yet the Senate does not have good tools to communicate preferences. Existing tools, such as FBF and TeachNet, are intimidating to use. Other tools, like the pervasive use of “telephone,” risk misrepresenting others’ reviews. More broadly, some campus leaders have misalignment and are spending University resources pursuing goals untethered to research and teaching.

The Bearometer makes it possible to hear from the reticent and the too busy for Senate service.

The Bearometer will also be more democratic, because faculty themselves will propose questions.

Is the Bearometer private?

To ensure that responses come from senate faculty members and prevent ballot stuffing, the survey will be delivered using Qualtrics’ email system, which creates a unique URL for each participant. However, rest assured—Qualtrics’ anonymous mode is on, so the Bearometer will not receive any identifying information. The leaders of the Bearometer also pledge never to attempt to identify any Bearometer participant.

This is how the privacy works:

• We have uploaded a list of Berkeley Senate Faculty to Qualtrics, current as of September 2025.
• Qualtrics distributes individual emails
• The UID is not passed on to the collected results, nor is GeoIP information.
• We have programmed the system to transmit an aggregate unit code. This unit is aggregated at the >49 level (that is, the response is put into a bucket where the smallest group are units with 50 FTE. For example, a large unit such as English or Economics is reported. However, a unit with 49 or fewer FTE, such as French or Music, is aggregated into L&S – Arts & Humanities.

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What gives you the right to do this?

The Bearometer is an experiment in democratization of faculty voices. We would love to hear whether and why one might object to the Bearometer, feel free to reach out.

At MIT, the Faculty Pulse is administered by two elected “question keepers.” If the Bearometer is successful, Hoofnagle and Fithian pledge to hold an election and hand off the project to colleagues who will adhere to the principles and goals of the Bearometer.

Hoofnagle was the PI of several, national survey research projects that are, combined, cited over 1,000 times and covered in both the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Fithian is a professor of statistics!

The Bearometer is not human subjects research.

What are the Bearometer’s Methods?

The Bearometer has a two step process:

1. Questions are collected using Poll Everywhere.

In this step, faculty can submit questions and upvote/downvote them. We do not have the ability to put Poll Everywhere behind CAS authentication yet, and we do not want to turn on “registration” because that will undermine the privacy of users.

Once a question gets sufficient upvotes, the Question Keepers advance the question to stage 2.

1. The Question Keepers distribute the question to Senate Faculty using Qualtrics’ unique email link system.

Will you censor the Bearometer?

The Bearometer solicits free text responses. We will redact responses where they mention people by name, where responses undermine anonymity, where responses degrade or attack others, where private or other inappropriate information is revealed, or where a response is incompatible with our standards of collegiality. This has to be a flexible standard.

We will always indicate a redaction and attempt to communicate the intent of the respondent.

Is the Bearometer public?

We upload the Bearometer using a link only available to the Berkeley community.

We mark Bearometers with “UCFEYES: UC Faculty Eyes Only.” By this, we mean that you are welcome to share the Bearometer with others in the UC system. Please ask us before distributing it outside of UC.

We cannot guarantee that Bearometer recipients will not circulate the results outside the institution, and this is among the reasons why remove material identified above.

Feedback, praise, complaints, or become one of us?

If you have feedback, want to join the effort, or prefer not to receive further communications, don’t hesitate to email Chris Hoofnagle.