School of Engineering & Applied Science

Background:

In January, 1997, Carl Herakovich, Chair of the SEAS Faculty Council (composed of the senators from SEAS), ask me to coordinate "Teaching Conversations" with the various academic units of SEAS. The general aim of these conversations, as set forth in an undated memorandum from the Academic Affairs Committee of the Faculty Senate, was to discuss the evaluation, development, and reward of good teaching. This charge emerged as a major theme of the exhaustive self-study conduced last year [1996] at the University.

On February 5, 1997, I sent the attached memorandum to all academic units in SEAS: Biomedical Engineering (BME), Computer Science (CS), Chemical Engineering (ChE), Civil Engineering & Applied Mechanics (CEAM), Electrical Engineering (EE), Materials Science & Engineering (MSE), Mechanical, Aerospace & Nuclear Engineering (MANE), Systems Engineering (SYS), and Technology, Culture & Communications (TCC). All units except BME, CS, and EE responded to me within two weeks. A second copy of my original memo was then sent to these three departments along with a personal note asking for a meeting. As of February 26, only BME had responded, but the date they suggested for a meeting was beyond the March 1, 1997, deadline. (However, I have since received a copy memo from that department dated February 5, 1997, and addressed to Carl Herakovich, in which the issues initially raised by Mr. Herakovich are addressed. These remarks are generally in accord with what other units have reported.)

All other units held meetings devoted primarily to the teaching conversation.

Each of these meetings was attended by at least two senators and, except in two instances, by myself. When I could not attend (MANE and SYS), I asked the senators who were there to supply me with notes.

In what follows, I make no attempt to identify either specific units or specific individuals. Rather, I summarize several recurrent themes and, where there were clear differences of opinion on key topics, I try to give the opposing views.

"Evaluating Teaching"

At the outset, let me mention a fundamental observation raised several times: What we really want to measure is what students have learned, but to so properly (if it can be done at all) would probably be time-consuming, expensive, and uneven. (Conduct exit interviews with graduating, fourth-year students? With alumni/ae? With instructors in follow-on courses? Administer comprehensive tests by impartial outsiders?) Thus, what we try to measure instead is good teaching, that is, the delivery of the message but not its ultimate impact.

There was nearly universal agreement that the present 13-question "student evaluation form" (with a box for comments at the bottom) is severely flawed and woefully inadequate. Many faculty scoffed at the idea of using a single number (the instructor rating) to represent such a multifaceted, multi objective enterprise as teaching, especially when some of the questions and statistical measures were felt to be inappropriate or shallow, or when other more relevant questions were not asked. Revision of this instrument seemed to be a top priority among nearly all faculty.

Other suggestions included handing out the student evaluations the following semester (after final grades have been posted!) and supplementing the student evaluation forms with exit interviews (as at least two units do now).

"Peer review" was also discussed extensively, but here there was a fairly broad range of opinion. Some units had formal procedures in place; others had informal procedures or were thinking of initiating something. A few faculty felt that peer review would be an infringement on academic freedom.

Peer review of junior rather than senior faculty was more common, an obvious motivation being to provide eyewitness evidence for the dossier of someone up for promotion and/or tenure. Many faculty felt that peer review is useful, but that any report (moral or written) should be shared only with the teacher being observed.

Still others questioned if one visit a semester to a class was sufficient. Finally, several faculty members pointed to the old problem of the observer(s) disturbing the observed; video taping a class was suggested as a possible compromise.

In summary, some form of peer review seems to be potentially valuable in evaluating teaching, but it has drawbacks and may not be the panacea it is sometimes claimed to be.

"Portfolios", though strongly embraced by one unit, were given a mixed reception by others. The skeptics (cynics?) pointed out that preparing an impressive portfolio is one thing, but acting on it effectively in the classroom is another. In summary, most faculty remain to be sold on the idea.

"Other"

In addition to the (nearly universally required) beginning-of-course memo, it would be useful, for several reasons, to have an end-of-course memo for each course describing what went right and what went wrong, and what should be changed in the future. Sometimes a teacher who tries to innovate is given low marks on the student evaluations. An end-of-course memo would be an appropriate document in which to explain and to justify such innovations (which all departments interviewed agree is to be encouraged)

"Improving Teaching"

There was much interest in improving teaching effectiveness and many concrete and novel suggestions were put forward. These included:

Require new faculty (or even all faculty) to take courses and/or to participate in workshops offered by the Teaching Resources Center (TRC). (Some units already make much use of the TRC.)
Before the beginning of the fall semester, hold a common teaching reading discussion for the faculty, similar to what has been done for several years with incoming students in SEAS.
Make more use of peer review (see above) and mentoring.
Pair junior faculty with senior faculty. Because SEAS has a strong male orientation, it may be especially important to pair new female faculty members with older female colleagues.
Form junior-senior faculty teaching teams. Though resource intensive, this strategy can provide an invaluable two-way flow of suggestions for improving the classroom/laboratory performance of each partner.
Get good TAs (these are essential to the smooth running of any course with substantial enrollment.)
Reduce class sizes so that an instructor has a reasonable chance of getting to know each student's strengths and weakness. (Because of finite resources, implementing this might require the merging of some of the smaller undergraduate classes in SEAS.)
Encourage junior faculty to sit in on classes taught by senior faculty.
Bring in outside educational experts for advice, evaluation, and workshops.
Make a list of what seems to make a good teacher and have the chair of a unit use this as a check list in annual evaluations of faculty.
Coordinate with and make more use of the TRC.
Link and coordinate classes more closely.
Make sure, at the undergraduate level at least, that no faculty member has a lock on a course.
Support faculty during the summer to develop new courses and to learn how to use new electronic teaching tools.
Take advantage, "when appropriate", of new technologies.

Remark:

Almost every faculty member who has made a serious effort to do this reports frustration, embarrassment, and loss of valuable in-class time because of repeated equipment failure and general lack of technical support by SEAS. Indeed, one technician who recently joined SEAS from VCU was reported to be appalled at the primitive level of classroom technology in SEAS.

Finally, it was noted that while the "case study method" has been quite successful in the Darden School (and elsewhere), it is simply not appropriate in those SEAS courses (the majority) that have a dense scientific content and which concentrate on imparting the kind of knowledge of which students have little prior experience.

"Rewarding Good Teaching"

The general feeling was that good teaching is not sufficiently rewarded. And younger faculty, although virtually all enthusiastic and serious about their teaching responsibilities, are realistic about the current criteria for tenure. Two typical comments were: Good teaching doesn't seem to count for much, but bad teaching can sure hurt you and, Look, my time, like everyone else's, is finite; I'd love to spend more time improving my teaching, but if I don't publish and bring in money, I've got no chance at tenure.

Most faculty, junior and senior, would like to have the time and encouragement to improve their teaching, but the pervasive feeling seemed to be that they are in a zero-sum game where teaching isn't given nearly the weight as research and proposal success. Moreover, there is a strong sentiment that out-of-classroom work, e.g., advising of 4th-year theses, gets little or no recognition.

In summary, while SEAS has many good teachers and a few great ones, it will never achieve a uniform level of excellence until the criteria for tenure, promotion, and merit raises and the algorithm for distributing resources give substantial weight to vigorous, inventive, labor-intensive teaching. There must be a serious investment in the upgrading of classrooms and personnel support. Ringing declarations that we are foremost a "student-oriented" School are not enough: rhetoric must be backed by administrative action.