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Defining Faculty Work and Guiding Principles
Faculty work comprises many intersecting roles, chief among them instructor, scholar, and engaged campus and community partner. These roles have been a foundational standard for decades in higher education. However, as faculty respond to the changing needs and expectations of students, colleagues, and others, the nature of these roles has changed and continues to develop.
CLAS is a large academic unit that houses the foundation of human knowledge (arts, humanities, and sciences). Furthermore, we value the diversity within our programs and the contributions of each department. As such, it is essential that we establish guiding principles and values that align with and recognize the many ways faculty meet obligations and expectations tied to their roles.
Teaching and Pedagogy
Faculty in CLAS deeply value teaching as an essential and deeply valued act, encompassing a significant aspect of their professional identity. CLAS faculty provide the foundation of human knowledge through the arts, humanities, and sciences. Faculty engage students in the learning process through pedagogy that provides a fundamental disciplinary knowledge. Additionally, they often demonstrate connection points and applicability of concepts through an interdisciplinary lens and reframe concepts for contemporary audiences through equity-minded and inclusive practices.
As experts in their respective fields, faculty are evaluated on the effectiveness and impact of their teaching through quantitative and qualitative measures. While those measures are department- and discipline-specific, CLAS faculty should also strive to include, but are not limited to, several of the following goals and principles in their teaching:
Teaching and Pedagogy Goals and Principles
Well-designed courses that clearly align learning outcomes for the course, degree, program, and general studies category/course outcomes where appropriate.
Conveying their disciplinary expertise in an engaged teaching style, bringing enthusiasm for knowledge and intellectual inquiry to the learning environment. This is a faculty member’s most effective approach to attracting and retaining students to the discipline and institution.
Clear linkages between content, relevance, application, and practice.
Intentional alignment between assignments, activities, and experiences to the learning outcomes and purpose of the course.
Use of proven and effective teaching practices (High-Impact Practices as one example) when appropriate and effective.
Developing and enhancing students’ ability to demonstrate intellectual competencies and essential skills within and across disciplinary boundaries.
Broadening disciplinary foci to include diverse perspectives, historically minoritized voices, anti-racist practices, and/or addressing the absence of marginalized populations within historically homogenized primary sources and/or fields.
Modernizing and enhancing pedagogy with a focus on inclusive and equity-centered practices; use of new and accessible technology; high-quality low- and no-cost options for student materials (OER as one example); and intentionally designed educational experiences as it pertains to course delivery and modality.
Effective academic guidance and mentorship in the form of availability through regular, consistent office hours and additional connection opportunities (e.g. hallway conversations, before and after class, separate appointments, etc.). Students are then provided an opportunity not only to discuss topics specific to a class, but also major/career aspirations, course recommendations, and post-graduation pathways. This work complements the work of our institution’s professional advisors, with each department and/or discipline making determinations on implementation.
Research, Scholarship and Creative Work
The creation, acquisition, and dissemination of new knowledge is a hallmark of higher education. CLAS faculty are actively involved in creating new knowledge within their fields, integrating existing knowledge to share with new audiences, and applying disciplinary knowledge and expertise to address contemporary problems. Within a college as large and diverse as CLAS, scholarly and disciplinary impact is vast and constantly developing. The products, venues, and vehicles for distribution of research, scholarship, and creative work (RSCW) vary widely across CLAS.
Despite these necessary distinctions, the overarching foci and scope of research, scholarship, and creative work (RSCW) in CLAS includes one or more of the following assumptions:
Research, Scholarship and Creative Work Assumptions
Meaningful and recognized intellectual and/or artistic contributions to or across disciplines, typically involving a method of peer review and/or peer recognition through traditional publishing, invitations to prestigious venues, impactful disciplinary gatherings, or new and emerging modalities.
Development, creation, or establishment of new trends or discoveries within or across disciplines (cross-, multi-, and interdisciplinary), recognized by peers and/or external audiences for its impact, consequence, and potential to alter, enhance, support, or refute traditional or established assumptions within or across disciplines.
Interconnectedness between RSCW and the content and/or practice of teaching. This includes, but is not limited to, using RSCW to inform course content, pedagogy, undergraduate research, and attract students to the discipline.
Demonstrable impact of community-engaged scholarship that improves, enhances, or creates mutually beneficial outcomes for the public good (which may also intersect faculty work in their service category).
Contributions that elevate the public and intellectual reputation of the institution, college, or department and aligns with the mission, vision, and principles of the institution, college, or department.
Service
Service to the institution and profession is an essential facet of faculty work, it is expected of individuals in faculty roles, and much of service supports the academic institution’s foundation of faculty governance. At its most basic level, it ensures that the governance and operational aspects of running an institution are in place and the academy continues to function and thrive. At a more meaningful level, service is how we give back to our students, our colleagues, and our disciplines. Furthermore, building networks, partnerships, and community is a foundational part of faculty work that takes time, care, and reciprocity. Building networks and partnerships through attending and organizing events as well as contributing to a network’s communications helps actualize the university and college mission.
For service to be a consequential endeavor, the responsibilities should align with a faculty member’s interests and passions whenever possible. It is important to acknowledge that service is not always visible, nor is it always tied to committees. When making service assignments, department chairs should assure that the work is equally distributed and truly valued in the evaluation process.
Service is recognized and evaluated as a collection of the following factors:
Factors of Service
Estimate a proportion of time spent in conjunction with the service percentage expectation in a faculty member’s workload. This can then be broken down into hours per week, weeks per semester, etc. Acknowledging that most academic work is cyclical, there will be weeks when time commitment for service is great, and weeks when it is far less.
The nature of faculty governance and service lends itself to hierarchies among work that divides into groups: university, college, department/program; curriculum, policy, events; national, state, local; etc. Department guidelines should address scope of work when assessing service commitments and obligations.
Consider the product or outcome generated from the work and the impact on its intended recipients. Department guidelines should acknowledge impact through the lens of their disciplinary values, purpose, and common good.
Serving as a chair or leader of a committee, project, or engagement effort will typically increase the impact (and sometimes time commitment) of the service obligation for the faculty member. Defining roles on committees and in other service is an important element in establishing efficient, equitable, and meaningful service expectations.
Serving on an ad-hoc group to solve long-standing or immediate issues beyond the typical role of a service commitment (committee, professional organization, community engagement group) typically increases the impact (and sometimes time commitment) of the service obligation.
CLAS acknowledges that women, faculty of color, LGBTQIA+ faculty, and other historically minoritized faculty groups often find themselves with increased time commitments serving students that identify with them. This work often falls under the category of “Invisible Service.” Due to a need for service across the institution, a faculty member’s entire service component cannot be exclusively dedicated to this type of service. It is, however, an important part of faculty work and should be acknowledged in a manner that best suits the different departments and disciplines in CLAS.
Evaluating and Reviewing Faculty Work
The process for evaluation and review continues to be established, upheld, and governed by the Faculty Employment Handbook. As stated in this handbook, and in accordance with AAUP Guidelines, departments establish discipline-specific standards for teaching; research, scholarship, creative work; and service. Those discipline-specific standards are the fundamental tools used for our peer review and evaluation process.
Our guiding principles and values are intended to provide an overarching and aspirational view for faculty work in CLAS. Departments should view their own standards through the lens of these shared values as they continue to develop and enhance their specific quantitative and qualitative disciplinary expectations for faculty work standards.
The Promotion, Retention, Tenure and Post-Tenure Review Narrative
The teaching narrative portion of the Promotion, Retention, Tenure, and Post-Tenure review should move beyond the quantitative listing of courses taught, students enrolled, and SRI scores. These metrics, used broadly, can point to overarching themes and trends, but should not necessarily be used as the only indicator of effective teaching.
The narrative presents the opportunity for faculty to reflect on their teaching and report successes; highlight any modification or innovation in their classroom; describe the application of interdisciplinary approaches and connection points for students; or detail enhancements of current materials, experimentation with new approaches, and any tangible impacts the course might have had on the students, including aspects of DEI pedagogy and practice in these areas.
The RCSW narrative portion of the Promotion, Retention, Tenure, and Post-Tenure review is an opportunity to provide context for RSCW, not solely list activities. If we are to understand and value our colleagues work through peer review, it is important for the narrative to address the impact of work on a variety of audiences, including those outside MSU Denver; acknowledge academic work that may be forging new trends or ways of thought in our disciplines; recognize promising new mediums and modalities for the distribution of RSCW; and provide overarching reasons why the work is important and worthy of recognition.
The Service narrative portion of the Promotion, Retention, Tenure, and Post-Tenure review is an opportunity to provide context for faculty work, as well as how it aligns with a faculty member’s overall/future career trajectory and passions. If we are to understand and value our colleagues’ work through peer review, it is important for the narrative to address the complex and varied intersection of service commitments. This will be presented as a collection of service work that can be both quantified and qualified, culminating as an impactful and meaningful part of the faculty portfolio.
College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
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1041 9th Street Park
Mailing Address:
Campus Box 37
P. O. Box 173362
Denver, CO 80217-3362
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303-615-0600
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