A Journey of Change Vigilance - Stewarding teaching evaluation transformation from faculty grassroots work to college-wide directives into a Center for Teaching and Learning

A long-standing department-level teaching evaluation change effort at the University of Colorado Boulder recently transitioned from opt-in to two top-down college-wide initiatives which are now in the process of transitioning from "Initiatives" into continuous support through the Center for Teaching and Learning. The initiatives arose from the need for transparent, equitable, and scholarly tools and processes to evaluate teaching and to support development of effective teaching practices and improved student learning experiences. Our work is informed by research on the scholarship of higher education (e.g., Glassick, 1997; Bernstein 2002, 2010), scholarly approaches to teaching and learning (e.g., Boyer, 1990; Fairweather, 2002; Beach et al., 2016), and institutional and organizational change (e.g., Kezar, 2013; Corbo et al., 2016; Reinholz et al., 2017). We are looking at the processes of expansion and sustainability critically in order to provide insight to others (e.g., change agents, departments, colleges, centers, and institutions) interested in making improvements to systems of teaching evaluation. We will share a detailed timeline of key events and explore institutional context and stakeholders, features of the initial grassroots work, factors that led to college-level uptake, contextual differences between the colleges that shaped on-the-ground change approaches in the transition to top-down initiatives, and challenges and opportunities related to sustained support in the Center for teaching and learning. We will also connect participants to a toolkit for supporting departmental teaching evaluation change efforts and a suite of departmentally-developed, evidence-based teaching evaluation materials. This work is a culmination of nearly a decade of collaborative efforts towards meaningful change in teaching evaluation, and provides opportunity for attendees to engage in substantial conversations around change in higher education.