Quick Reference: Teaching Excellence for Tenure Track Faculty
Key evidence (provided by the candidate):
• A CV in the IU Indianapolis P&T CV format. Hyperlinks to online versions or dois for key items are essential.
o Some disseminated scholarship is required in the "research" category.
o Most disseminated scholarship will go in the "teaching" category.
• Candidate statement.
o Within this, the candidate should describe their area of teaching expertise, including disseminated scholarship. Some description of a research agenda is required; it may be more or less connected to teaching scholarship but must be labeled independently.
• The rest of the dossier
o Evidence of teaching activities and excellence: syllabi, assignments, student accomplishments, curricular projects. Make a mini-dossier of key materials for external reviewers.
o More details (where details would disrupt the flow of the candidate statement)
o External confirmation of the candidate’s individual role in joint projects (grants, presentations, publications)
o Explanations of any awards
Elements that are like any other case:
• Independence and initiative. Regardless of any publication author-order conventions, readers must be able to understand the candidate’s personal and unique contribution to work. This is described in the candidate statement and should be confirmed, for at least the most important grants and dissemination, by statements from co-authors.
• Future plans. Tenure, especially, is based on confidence in future work.
• Satisfactory work in research and in service. At least some campus and some disciplinary service is expected.
Distinctive elements:
• The candidate must present a teaching philosophy; reviewers do not judge the philosophy itself but assess how it drives action and scholarship.
• The candidate should present evidence of an emerging (for associate) or achieved (for full) national reputation for their area of teaching scholarship.
• Teaching excellence must be manifested both internally (being a good teacher and contributor to learning) and externally (peer-reviewed dissemination; contributions to scholarship of teaching and learning).
External reviewers:
External reviewers should assess evidence of the quality of both disseminated scholarship of teaching and learning, and, what evidence is presented of teaching activity, such as syllabi. Personal experience of the candidate's teaching (such as at conferences) is relevant but not required. External reviewers may also comment on the research presented; IU rules require tenure track faculty to have scholarship in BOTH teaching AND research, although the division of items between those areas is dependent on the candidate's specific circumstances. Reviewers may assume that service is satisfactory, although they may remark on anything special. Explaining special disciplinary aspects is especially useful to IU Indianapolis committees.
Internal reviewers:
Internal reviewers should be able to determine quickly from the CV and statement that the candidate performs at least satisfactorily in:
• Research (requires peer-reviewed dissemination in venues appropriate to the topic)
• Service (both internal and disciplinary)
The division between scholarship that is "teaching" and that which is "research" is not something that external reviewers will be familiar with, so internal reviewers should overlook any confusion on their parts: at most universities, all peer-evaluated dissemination is considered "research," with a possible exception for textbooks.
It is especially important for the chair and the department committee to place the candidate's teaching-excellence achievements in the context of expected faculty responsibilities in research and service in the particular unit, as well as anything distinctive about particular teaching missions or initiatives of the school or departments, such as new program development, accreditation requirements, etc.
Reviewed and updated, 6/2023