University of Portland

Institution Type: Master's Colleges and Universities
MSI: no

Policy Level: Institution

Policy Status Drafting

Keywords: inclusive teaching, effective teaching, evaluating teaching

Overview

The University of Portland has an institution-wide Rank & Tenure Committee of seven faculty members that evaluates faculty for tenure and promotion (to associate and full ranks). They also evaluate faculty for periodic review, which happens every eight years for faculty members. Every year, each faculty member prepares a self-evaluation and submits it to their Chair (College of Arts and Sciences) or Dean/Associate Dean (professional schools). The faculty self-evaluation template is not standardized across schools/colleges. The annual evaluation process is not standardized either. However, the documents required for faculty applications for tenure/associate rank, professor rank, and periodic review are standardized in terms of the set of documents. The narrative and summary of course evaluation documents have a few questions, but the content and structure is left to the applicant. The Rank and Tenure Committee, the Deans, and the Provost review these documents when evaluating candidates for promotion and periodic review. Because there is so much flexibility in how the candidate can produce the documents, evaluating files can be more burdensome for the Rank and Tenure members. The recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee address many of the concerns but will take some time to take effect.

The current (new) University of Portland Definition of Effective Teaching, proposed by the Ad Hoc Committee and adopted by the Academic Senate on January 21, 2025, is:

Effective teaching is Scholarly, Purposeful, Learner-Centered, and Reflective. Teachers are expected to consider their practices in relation to these values, acknowledging that we are always balancing these ideals as we revise and analyze our work.

• Scholarly: College teachers, as scholars and professionals, are experts in their disciplines who stay current with knowledge in their field. They draw on content expertise to convey central concepts and foster skills essential to their discipline.
• Purposeful: Effective teachers design courses to support student achievement of learning goals. Course materials and assessments are selected based on evidence of student engagement, the scholarship of teaching, or learning theory.
• Learner-Centered: Effective teachers analyze their teaching through the lenses of inclusivity and responsiveness. Their interactions with students and teaching practices are tailored to support students in achieving course goals equitably.
• Reflective: Becoming and remaining an effective teacher is an iterative process that improves current practices through continued examination of experience, research, professional development and critique from colleagues and students.

This definition remains broad enough to apply to all disciplines while providing specific language to guide faculty. In its final report of April 2, 2025, the Ad Hoc Committee on Teaching proposed changes in the evaluation process that integrate this definition, clarify expectations, improve procedures, and support faculty. In summary, these recommendations were:

1. Align evaluation processes for faculty and students to the Definition of Effective Teaching and associated Teaching Effectiveness Framework.

2. Support the development of a teaching portfolio approach.

3. Initiate a long-term implementation process to incorporate collegial observation for all faculty.

4. Support programs and units in developing teaching guidelines aligned to the Definition of Effective Teaching and analogous to scholarship guidelines.

While the committee proposed target dates and specific tasks to meet the recommendations, they also recognized that the timetables may not be consistent with meeting other demands and recommended that the provost council and senate weigh in on revised deadlines for completing the work. 

Theme 1: Align policy change with what matters

At UP, it is important for decision-making regarding academic policy to involve campus-wide buy-in. For example, all curricular updates (program changes, new courses, sunsetting programs) must go through three levels of approval (college/school, university-wide Curriculum and Academic Regulations Committee, university-wide Academic Senate). All academic policy changes, such as Rank and Tenure procedures, must go through the Academic Senate. STEM initiatives can help drive change, but STEM alone cannot make academic and policy changes at the institutional level. Therefore, it is important that buy-in include all academic disciplines, faculty and instructors at all ranks, and administrators.

Buy-in to establish a committee to define excellence in teaching happened through some efforts by HHMI core team members, a newly hired Provost, and the senators.

The HHMI core team had been working with administrators such as Associate Deans, Deans, and Chairs to learn how they evaluate teaching. Every year, all faculty members complete a self-evaluation, which is then reviewed by these academic leaders. In terms of holistic evaluation of teaching, a group of UP faculty members have led workshops to train faculty in formative peer evaluation.

Academic senators have been discussing the procedures for evaluating faculty for promotion and tenure. Rank and tenure application procedures have not been updated for several (10+) years. The current documents define the roles of a faculty member in terms of teaching, scholarship, and service. However, there are no rubrics or explicit criteria for candidates submitting files for promotion for the roles of teaching and service. Each program/department creates their own criteria for scholarship in terms of what counts and any metrics regarding publication/public dissemination rates, so evaluating scholarly work has more specific guidelines. The current advice for junior faculty members is to ask senior faculty members for their advice regarding "Did I do enough to achieve promotion?". This can create confusion for junior faculty members, especially if the advice is inconsistent.

In late 2023, the Academic Senate voted to create an Ad Hoc Committee for Inclusive Teaching (Ad Hoc) with the charge to draft resources for inclusive teaching practices, draft criteria and rubrics for evaluating teaching, and propose strategies for more holistic teaching evaluation which may include peer observation. Ad Hoc was formally constituted in December 2023 and began meeting in January 2024. The Academic Senate's original charge to the committee was:

• To define the components of effective teaching at the University of Portland. One of these components must include inclusive teaching
• Create a process for the schools, the college, and programs to generate guidelines of what effective teaching is for their disciplines that utilizes the work completed in the first two (sic) charges and is analogous to scholarship guidelines.
• To propose new models of faculty teaching evaluation that includes a format and process for peer evaluation and removes the sole method of faculty teaching evaluation from the students. 

In November 2024, the third part of the charge was replaced with "To propose new models of faculty teaching evaluation that includes a format and process for collegial observation and removes the sole method of faculty teaching feedback from the students."

As Ad Hoc met, they realized that communicating with all faculty was critical for the success of potential changes to Rank and Tenure policies. The structure of the Ad Hoc supported this because it consisted of faculty at all ranks, one Dean, and one Associate Dean from all Schools and the College of Arts of Sciences. These representatives regularly communicated with their home units about the progress of the committee and to gather feedback. An initial model for defining effective teaching was shared with all departments for discussion and comments were returned to the Ad Hoc Committee.

Every year, the University of Portland holds a Faculty Development Day in May, after the spring semester ends. Faculty can propose topics/themes for the morning keynote session and working group session. Ad Hoc created a proposal for the morning sessions and it was chosen by the University's Teaching and Scholarship Committee. The morning session included some introductory remarks by Ad Hoc members about how this work to update how we define and evaluate effective teaching is the work of all faculty. Austin Hocker from the University of Oregon gave the keynote, describing how UO updated their policies and procedures for evaluating effective teaching. Then, the Ad Hoc members led break-out working group sessions with faculty to give them an opportunity to try out the proposed model of effective teaching. The Ad Hoc members gathered feedback from these working groups through discussion and through individual surveys.

Yet another way the Ad Hoc engendered buy-in was to work with all academic programs in Fall 2024 as they draft documents to contextualize effective teaching practices within their disciplines. For example, practices for teaching voice lessons are likely much different than practices for teaching chemistry labs. Collectively, the fact that many stakeholders have been a part of this process, including 33 Academic Senators, 9 Teaching & Scholarship Committee members, 15 Ad Hoc Committee members, and 10 HHMI Core Group members, aligns well with UP's value of campus-wide buy in.

Theme 2: Be strategic about policy content

The University of Portland previously defined "excellence in teaching" as follows: "Since excellent teaching is creative, both in teacher and student, there can be a variety of signs of excellence in teaching, such as: presenting subject matter with the clarity that arises from a deepening grasp of the central facts and their vital interplay; exhibiting enthusiastic commitment to seeking, possessing, and sharing knowledge; bringing subject matter, when appropriate, to bear on the present human situation; consciously creating the atmosphere that will draw students on to develop and use their powers of invention and discovery; creating the desire in students for further education." This broad definition represented the sole criteria on which teaching effectiveness was judged. In embarking on policy change work, one of the first steps was to articulate a vision for teaching that identifies the facets that distinguish excellence from non-excellence in teaching, leading to the new definition (quoted in the overview) which has been incorporated into the faculty handbook. Language from the HHMI cluster's work, including the three voice model and explicit reference to inclusive teaching, is evident throughout the committee's report.

In order to operationalize this vision, the Ad Hoc Committee split into three working groups based on the charge from the Academic Senate: 1) policy and criteria for promotion, 2) holistic evaluation of teaching, 3) defining inclusive and excellent teaching. The three working groups submitted their work to the larger committee and the full committee did a content analysis in jigsaw groups (members from each original sub-group worked together). The full committee then reviewed the posters of the content analysis and found that all jigsaw groups had elements of these three themes: scholarly (evidence-based, professional), learner-centered (inclusive, responsive), and reflective (iterative, developmental).  At the Faculty Development Day, a framework with these three themes and examples of the practices within the three themes were shared with all faculty. All faculty used a draft worksheet to see if they could articulate their own teaching practices within the three themes.

Theme 3: Make policy change someone's job

The current policy work has mostly been driven by faculty members of the Academic Senate. The Faculty Handbook is reviewed and updated every five years. The Academic Senate also constituted an ad hoc committee to review the Faculty Handbook in 2023-2024 to make suggestions for edits. While the timeline for the Ad Hoc Committee's work does not allow for major changes to the 2024-2029 edition, revisions, such as the new definition of effective teaching,  can be approved off cycle. The Academic Senate is the governing body for policy changes and any proposals coming from this work will need to go through the official approval process. The Ad Hoc Committee was convened to draft a framework for effective teaching. Although there is no explicit incentive for the Senate and Ad Hoc Committee members to do this work, serving in these groups counts toward service expectations. These groups happen to include individuals who are personally motivated to make the evaluation process more transparent, equitable, and consistent.

Although there were no formal change frameworks being used to guide our process and inform decision-making, it has been important to strive for broad and inclusive representation among the groups doing the work. For instance, the Ad Hoc Committee includes representatives from the professional schools and the College of Arts of Sciences. It also includes faculty at all ranks (instructor, assistant, associate, full, associate dean, dean). The chairperson for the Ad Hoc Committee is Dr. Julie Kalnin, a professor in the School of Education, whose scholarly expertise is in frameworks for evaluating teaching practices. She introduced the committee to several educational frameworks to provide a wide landscape about how effective teaching can be defined. This has been accomplished by the work of the Committee on Committees, which formed the Ad Hoc Committee based on faculty self-nominations and peer-nominations.

Theme 4: Approach policy change as a process

The timeline for the Ad Hoc Committee illustrates how UP is approaching policy change as a process.

Spring 2024: The Ad Hoc started by gathering resources about teaching frameworks, definitions of inclusive teaching practices, and sources of potential evidence for documenting effective teaching. Three working groups within the larger Ad Hoc Committee worked on these tasks in Spring 2024. This resulted in a proposed framework for evaluating teaching, which was shared with all faculty through program meetings and at Faculty Development Day in May 2024.

Fall 2024: The Ad Hoc used feedback from Faculty Development Day to draft a proposed framework for university adoption (Senate). The Ad Hoc COT also presented its draft definition of effective teaching and associated teaching effectiveness framework to the Senate for discussion. This discussion offered the full senate the opportunity to review the materials updated with feedback from Faculty Development Day and the senate Teaching and Scholarship committee. The Ad Hoc Committee was also in regular communication with the Senate and with their academic units throughout the development of these policies.

Spring 2025: With endorsement from the Rank and Tenure committee, the Senate adopted the Ad Hoc's definition of effective teaching in January for inclusion in the faculty handbook. The Academic Senate's Executive Committee reviewed draft evaluation recommendations, after which the Ad Hoc finalized its recommendations for the second and third parts of the charge. The final report was presented to the senate in April.

Fall 2025 - Spring 2026: The Ad Hoc committee's recommendations identified specific action items for the Provost's council, the Senate Teaching and Scholarship Committee, the Senate  Rank and Tenure committee, and individual academic units. UP aims to have updated policy and procedures for the Academic Senate for consideration which, if approved, will be added as revisions to the Faculty Handbook. If approved, each program/discipline will then draft more detailed and contextualized versions for effective teaching in their unit. This is similar to what programs have now in terms of Scholarship Guidelines. The Ad Hoc Committee envisions a similar document being created by each program for Effective Teaching Guidelines.

A longer timeline is anticipated for a long-term project that would, over the course of three to five years, lead to campus-wide, yearly collegial review.

While there are no definite plans at this time to establish a regular timeline or process beyond the Ad Hoc recommendations to implement and revisit policy, the Senate is considering establishing a body to do just this, either as a subcommittee of Teaching and Scholarship or as a standalone committee.

References

University of Portland. 2024. University of Portland Faculty Handbook 2019 – 2024. https://www.up.edu/provost/files/2019-2024_faculty-handbook.pdf. [no DOI]