Assessment of Teaching

A Faculty member normally teaches 24 credit-hours of courses unless he/she has been assigned workload equivalency hours to perform other instructional or service duties.   Since there is significant variation in Faculty roles and responsibilities, disciplines, and departments, the following list consists of teaching activities that are expected of all Faculty during the merit cycle:

• Abiding by all University and Campus policies that define Faculty teaching responsibilities;
• Writing student recommendation letters.

Therefore, meritorious Faculty performance can be demonstrated in the act of teaching by:

• Designing and teaching course curricula that fully reflect the department/school guidelines and learning outcomes for all courses;
• Using appropriate assessment tools to measure student learning and to document the effectiveness of course curricula;
• Using the results of teaching evaluations (e.g., SSIs and peer evaluations) to improve the effectiveness of course curricula and classroom teaching practices;
• Keeping current with new knowledge and directions of inquiry in the discipline, learning about new teaching resources, and acquiring new skills;
• Engaging in curricular review/revision and improving classroom teaching practices;
• Fulfilling the terms of the workload equivalency policy, in cases when the Faculty member has received workload equivalency to perform other types of instructional service (e.g., service as coordinator), by making contributions that require an expenditure of time roughly equivalent to the time that would otherwise be devoted to teaching the course(s) and by demonstrating that these contributions are of a quality roughly equivalent to that expected of the Faculty member’s instructional responsibilities;
• Teaching independent studies;
• Assisting students with publications or presentations.

Any Teaching activities that were awarded a workload equivalency, payment/salary, or an honorarium included in the merit application must also include the amount of workload equivalency, payment/salary, or honorarium received.