Misalignments: Challenges in Cultivating Science Faculty with Education Specialties in Your Department
Misalignments: Challenges in Cultivating Science Faculty with Education Specialties in Your Department This paper describes the role and potential contributions of science faculty with education specialties within ...

Aligning Practice to Policies: Changing the Culture to Recognize and Reward Teaching at Research Universities
This is an article about how to align University practices with policies. It offers three examples of how institutions have begun projects to achieve this. It overlaps with the TEval resources, as two of the examples are TEval participants.Abstract: "Recent calls for improvement in undergraduate education within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines are hampered by the methods used to evaluate teaching effectiveness. Faculty members at research universities are commonly assessed and promoted mainly on the basis of research success. To improve the quality of undergraduate teaching across all disciplines, not only STEM fields, requires creating an environment wherein continuous improvement of teaching is valued, assessed, and rewarded at various stages of a faculty member's career. This requires consistent application of policies that reflect well-established best practices for evaluating teaching at the department, college, and university levels. Evidence shows most teaching evaluation practices do not reflect stated policies, even when the policies specifically espouse teaching as a value. Thus, alignment of practice to policy is a major barrier to establishing a culture in which teaching is valued. Situated in the context of current national efforts to improve undergraduate STEM education, including the Association of American Universities Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, this essay discusses four guiding principles for aligning practice with stated priorities in formal policies: 1) enhancing the role of deans and chairs; 2) effectively using the hiring process; 3) improving communication; and 4) improving the understanding of teaching as a scholarly activity. In addition, three specific examples of efforts to improve the practice of evaluating teaching are presented as examples: 1) Three Bucket Model of merit review at the University of California, Irvine; (2) Evaluation of Teaching Rubric, University of Kansas; and (3) Teaching Quality Framework, University of Colorado, Boulder. These examples provide flexible criteria to holistically evaluate and improve the quality of teaching across the diverse institutions comprising modern higher education."

Shaping the Future of Higher Education: Practical, Community-Driven Initiatives to Improve Academic Climate
In this Editorial, we present the history and details of a collaborative effort to improve the academic climate of the Department of Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley.

Benefit–Cost Analysis of Undergraduate Education Programs: An Example Analysis of the Freshman Research Initiative
Rebecca L. Walcott; Phaedra S. Corso; Stacia E. Rodenbusch; and Erin L. Dolan
The authors comprehensively describe how to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of an undergraduate education program, using a detailed real-life example to illustrate the process. Principal conclusion: the university's investment in Freshman Research Initiative generates a positive return for students in the form of increased future earning potential (p. 1).

Grassroots Efforts To Quantify and Improve the Academic Climate of an R1 STEM Department: Using Evidence-Based Discussions To Foster Community
Here, we present the outcomes of a graduate-student-led initiative that sought to assess the issues affecting inclusivity, diversity, and wellness within the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. We report how the results of a department-tailored academic climate survey were used to develop a method to foster open, productive discussion among graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty.

Curators and sojourners in learning networks: Practices for transformation
× Curators and sojourners in learning networks: Practices for transformation In this article Risien provides a framework for examining structures, roles and practices of networks, and particularly of roles ...

Improving Learning and Reducing Costs: Fifteen Years of Course Redesign
Carol A. Twigg

America's Overlooked Engineers: Community Colleges and Diversity in Engineering Education
America's Overlooked Engineers: Community Colleges and Diversity in Engineering Education Summary of findings from Engineer of 2020 surveys to capitalize on community college as fruitful grounds for ...

Increasing the use of evidence-based teaching in STEM higher education: A comparison of eight change strategies
Increasing the use of evidence-based teaching in STEM higher education: A comparison of eight change strategies Borrego, M., & Henderson, C. Builds on work by Henderson et al., further analyzing the four ...

Exploring the dynamics of organizational learning: identifying the decision chains science and math faculty use to plan and teach undergraduate courses
Exploring the dynamics of organizational learning: identifying the decision chains science and math faculty use to plan and teach undergraduate courses Hora and Hunter. Describes organizational learning theory as ...