Documenting Your Teaching for Promotion and Tenure

Karl A. SmithCivil Engineering - University of Minnesota

ksmith@umn.eduhttp://www.ce.umn.edu/~smith

University of MinnesotaEarly Career Teaching Program: Pursuing

Excellence in Multicultural Education

March 2006

Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate Ernest L. Boyer

• The Scholarship of Discovery, research that increases the storehouse of new knowledge within the disciplines;

• The Scholarship of Integration, including efforts by faculty to explore the connectedness of knowledge within and across disciplines, and thereby bring new insights to original research;

• The Scholarship of Application, which leads faculty to explore how knowledge can be applied to consequential problems in service to the community and society; and

• The Scholarship of Teaching, which views teaching not as a routine task, but as perhaps the highest form of scholarly enterprise, involving the constant interplay of teaching and learning.

The Basic Features of Scholarly and Professional Work

• The activity requires a high level of discipline- related expertise.

• The activity breaks new ground, is innovative.• The activity can be replicated or elaborated.• The work and its results can be documented.• The work and its results can be peer-reviewed.• The activity has significance or impact.

Adapted from: Diamond R. & Adam, B. 1993. Recognizing faculty work: Reward systems

for the year 2000. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Basic Features of Professional and Scholarly Work

• It requires a high level of discipline-related expertise • It is conducted in a scholarly manner with clear goals,

adequate preparation, and appropriate methodology • The work and its results are appropriately and effectively

documented and disseminated. This reporting should include a reflective critique that addresses the significance of the work, the process that was used, and what was learned.

• It has significance beyond the individual context. • It breaks new ground or is innovative.• It can be replicated or elaborated on.• The work both process and product or result is reviewed

and judged to be meritorious and significant by a panel of ones peers.

Bob Diamond  (2002)

What Resources are Available?

• Early Career Colleagues• Early Career Resource Teachers• Center for Teaching and Learning

Services• Department Chair/Head• Senior Colleagues• Professional Organizations - Disciplinary• Books

New Professor Handbooks

• Davidson, Cliff I. & Ambrose, Susan A. 1994. The new professor’s handbook: A guide to teaching and research in engineering and science. Bolton: Anker.

• Reis, Richard M. 1997. Tomorrow’s professor: Preparing for academic careers in science and engineering. New York: IEEE.

New Professor Handbooks

• Wankat, Phillip C. 2002. The effective, efficient professor: Teaching, scholarship and service. Boston: Allyn and Bacon

Promotion and Tenure Guides

• Diamond, Robert M. 2004. Preparing for promotion and tenure review: A faculty guide, 2nd Ed. Bolton: Anker

• Diamond, Robert M. 2002. Serving on promotion and tenure committees: A faculty guide, 2nd Ed. Bolton: Anker.

Principles of Good Practice: Supporting Early-Career FacultyMary Deane Sorcinelli

Improving Tenure Process1. Good practice communicates expectations for performance

2. Good practice gives feedback on progress3. Good practice enhances collegial review processes4. Good practice creates flexible timelines for tenure

Encouraging Collegial Relations5. Good practice encourages mentoring by senior faculty

6. Good practice extends mentoring and feedback to graduate students who aspire to be faculty members

7. Good practice recognizes the department chair as a career sponsor

Easing Stresses of Time and Balance8. Good practice supports teaching, particularly at the undergraduate

level9. Good practice supports scholarly development

10.Good practice fosters a balance between professional and personal life

Paradise Lost: How the Academy Converts Enthusiastic Recruits into Early-Career Doubters

Cathy A. Trower, Ann E. Austin & Mary Deane SorcinelliAAHE Bulletin, May 2001

What We Can Do?1. Provide consistency, clarity, and communication of reasonable

performance expectations (throughout graduate school and the probationary years).

2. Ensure formal orientation, mentoring, and feedback.3. Offer flexibility and choice, and help scholars understand various

career tracks (Ideally, we need to legitimize those tracks outside of the tenure system).

4. Afford support for ongoing self-reflection and dialogue with colleagues about the kind of work and life we want to have.

Heeding New Voices: Academic Careers for a New Generation

R. Eugene Rice, Mary Deane Sorcinelli andAnn E. Austin. AAHE Inquiry #7, 2000

Three core, consistent, and interwoven concerns on the minds of early-career

faculty:1. Lack of a comprehensible tenure system

2. Lack of community3. Lack of an integrated life

Additional References• Boyer, Ernest L. 1990. Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities for the

professoriate. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

• Diamond, R., “The Mission-Driven Faculty Reward System,” in R.M. Diamond, Ed., Field Guide to Academic Leadership, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002

• Diamond R. & Adam, B. 1993. Recognizing faculty work: Reward systems for the year 2000. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

• Shulman, Lee S. 1999. Taking learning seriously. Change, 31 (4), 11-17.• Smith, Karl A. 2000. Guidance for new faculty (and students). Journal of

Engineering Education, 89 (1), 3-6.• Wankat, P.C., Felder, R.M., Smith, K.A. and Oreovicz, F. 2001. The

scholarship of teaching and learning in engineering. In Huber, M.T & Morreale, S. (Eds.), Disciplinary styles in the scholarship of teaching and learning: A conversation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.