G.6 Teaching | (a) BC/EC Statement

The BC/EC must provide a statement that addresses the candidate’s contributions to undergraduate and graduate student learning in organized courses. The names and signatures of the members of the BC/EC who prepared the statement must be included.

The assessment should:

  • Reflect familiarity with the candidate’s teaching portfolio. Identify areas of distinction and potential weaknesses in performance, contributions, and trajectory related to teaching.
    • Discuss any innovations the candidate introduced to existing courses or any new courses the candidate developed (if applicable). o
    • Contextualize any awards, grants, honors, and/or other recognition the candidate received for teaching innovation and excellence.
    • Compare results from course evaluation surveys with norms of excellence within the department/college/school.
    • Evaluate the candidate’s teaching performance at a prior institution if the candidate elected to combine years of service.
    • The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant changes in teaching modalities across UT Austin beginning in spring 2020 and continuing through spring 2022. Discuss the unique challenges the candidate faced in their courses during this time and their relative success in adapting to those professional challenges.

  • Review and summarize the student comments from all course evaluations included in the dossier.
    • Discuss whether the students expressed the same concerns in multiple semesters, whether the candidate implemented changes to address these concerns, and whether the changes were successful.

  • Review the peer observation reports and discuss if the candidate implemented any of the recommendations made by the peer observers for improvement.
    • Discuss the similarities and differences between the comments from the peer observers and students.

  • Contextualize the candidate’s teaching load during their time in rank, including the number of course preparations, typical class sizes, number of classes taught per term, the balance between undergraduate and graduate courses, and any courses that were co-taught.
    • Discuss the candidate’s willingness to teach courses for which there is need and strong student demand (if relevant).
    • Discuss any deviations from the normal teaching load expectations for faculty of the candidate’s rank and program.
    • If the BC/EC considers grade inflation indices in the evaluation of a faculty member’s teaching contributions, note that grading policies were relaxed for Spring 2020, Fall 2020, and Spring 2021 due to COVID-19.