March 20, 2009: Teaching in the life of the scholar
Chris Groscurth
Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) http://www.crlt.umich.edu/

How teaching fit into the research life and tenure? What is the role of teaching and gaining from it in academic life?

When you apply for the tenure track...
25-30% of Universities ask job candidates for the teaching philosophy, student evaluations, and teaching portfolios. Throughout the recruiting process, they also might ask for other documents to evaluate the candidates’ teaching effectiveness such as description of teaching interest and course syllabi. There are also other opportunities to communicate your teaching effectiveness when you answer the interview question on teaching, meet with the students, and give a teaching job talk (actually being asked to teach a class in front of the factuality members).

Description of teaching interests: a reflective statement on how research influences your teaching
Teaching philosophy: a value statement about how your values inform different learning objectives for the courses.
Sample syllabi: syllabi of courses that you have taught or your creative ones. Sooner you develop your own syllabi, more time you can revise. Produce syllabi earlier and get feedbacks!

Questions asked:
1. What is the role of teaching and career development?
Teaching is a critical component in almost any field and directly related to job satisfaction.
2. How much does teaching help you to get a job in research intensive universities? How much does teaching matter?
Different units weigh teaching differently, but all the public research universities advocate good teaching. How well you can perform in the classroom will be assessed accordingly.
3. How can I best differentiate myself from other applicants in those teaching related documents when I apply for the tenure tracks?
Align the schools’ philosophical values and your values on teaching. Especially, make them concrete (not just describing at the abstract level).
4. In SI, we don’t lead a course (we are TAs for master’s level classes). How can we be prepared for teaching undergraduate level courses?
You can pull out your GSI experiences as your strength for teaching undergraduates. Pull from those experiences such as your experience in course design and assessments of student works. You can also get some insights by getting involved in the process of course revision with the faculty members. You can also get some experience in SI undergraduate courses in the informatics certificate.

Dr. Beth Yakel
About her personal experience about how teaching has influenced the scholarly life…

Research is reflected on the syllabi. Syllabi continuously evolve by including new research papers and new systems. Those are also reflected in the selection of readings and assignments. Teaching courses requires her to keep up with current research and practice and that is why teaching courses related to research is beneficial.
Teaching and scholarship: you have to balance those two. Think about how you can incorporate your research into teaching. Think about why you are asked to teach certain courses.
Team teaching experiences: you need to be very careful about other teaching members. Beth has had very bad and very good team teaching experiences.
You need to build teachings more broadly, in a long term perspective. Think about how to develop the stable of courses.
Questions asked:
1. How to involve students in the research projects?
It is hard to make student being involved in the research project in the class context. Better to hire them as RA.
2. How does SI evaluate faculty members?
We see their teaching experiences, teaching evaluation (mostly written in the letters of recommendations) and get informed from their presentations (as proxy of teaching style).
3. What is the role of teaching in tenure process?
In teaching colleges, teaching evaluation takes over 75%, while it takes around 30% in research universities like Michigan. During the tenure track, you need to teach at least one course related to your research area. Advising, mentoring, and assisting on committees are also included.
4. What is the life cycle of course?
First time it’s difficult to teach, but, second time around you know what’s the narrative you want to tell through the course. It can be informed by the students’ evaluation and your own observations.