CT Panel Discussion Q & A

Question 1: Based on your experience, what was the easiest part of the process?  What was the hardest?

  • Start early
  • Think about the audience and appealing all who will lay eyes on it
  • Learning how to shamelessly promote yourself
  • Learning how to write in the best voice/tone; you need to learn how to write in this style

 

Question 2: How did you document teaching effectiveness?  How did you handle student feedback?

  • What’s good, what’s not so good. How did I grow?
  • Always showing how you’ve improved.
  • Visit CTAL! Affirmation and hearing someone outside that your ideas can be highlights
  • Mentioning your teaching effectiveness/development
  • Tackle recurring themes in student evals
  • Peer evaluation (FPOP)
  • How your philosophy has evolved?
  • What is it about you that is valuable?

 

Question 3: Were you required to use external reviewers and how did you choose them?

  • Asking people from events/conferences; acquaintances
  • You will see the final list of potential reviewers but not know who is eventually picked
  • Found and picked some who you served with (in a service/committee role)
  • Doing service for professional international committees
  • Visibility on campus is important to getting good letters
  • Outreach/community
  • Volunteer for national and international conferences

 

Question 4: What was the support like in your department?  Who helped you?

  • A fellow faculty member/peer support who was going up
  • Department support: Perhaps your department has a “Dossier” committee
  • Friends on campus NOT in your discipline
  • Folks who were promoted just before you
  • Folks who have a similar workload
  • You can’t write it alone; you need eyes on it.

 

Question 5: How did you address workload?

  • What are you doing and how does your workload parallel that?
  • Convincing folks that what you’re doing is exactly what you’re supposed to be doing
  • Visual expression of workload; a table; repeating it, over and over again!

 

Question 6: In getting promoted to full professor, do the requirements relate to your workload distribution and being exceptional in it, or something else? I have heard that being promoted to full requires publishing about teaching, but I’m not a pedagogy scholar (though publish in my areas of expertise). Can areas of effort not assigned as part of workload be required for promotion of a faculty member? If so, how is this consistent with the CBA section 11.4 “An individual’s workload shall be assigned with the expectation that the faculty member will have the opportunity to meet the criteria for promotion and satisfactory peer review. ” 

  • Publishing about teaching might be required by some departments for promotion to CT full professor, but it is not a University-wide requirement. If a faculty member’s workload presents a barrier to meeting the department’s promotion criteria, then I would suggest bringing that to the attention of the chair during the annual planning process.