Improving Evaluations

The College of Arts & Sciences’ biology department is one of five STEM departments nationwide to receive a $100,000 award from the Association of American Universities that will establish a teaching evaluation demonstration project. This award is part of the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative, established in 2011 to encourage the use of teaching practices proven to maximize student engagement in STEM. The demonstration projects are made possible by a $570,000 gift to AAU from the Sarah Gilbert & Carl Wieman Charitable Fund.

The goal of this new AAU program will be to create, demonstrate and disseminate better models of evaluating effective and equitable STEM teaching that could be implemented at other institutions The Carolina project team includes Kelly Hogan, associate dean of instructional innovation in the College of Arts & Sciences and a teaching professor of biology; Christina Burch, professor of biology; and Mara Evans, STEM teaching associate professor.

“Effective teachers don’t plateau; they are always improving. Yet, we, and most departments across the country, don’t do a very good job encouraging everyone to use the tools available to us to evaluate and reflect on our own teaching routinely,” Hogan said. “If we only take a look under the hood during times like reappointment, tenure and promotions, we miss opportunities for regular growth. I’m excited that part of our project will be to build this kind of routine, low-stakes evaluation that is personalized to each educator. As we do things like reflect on student outcome data and observe each other more frequently, the real winners will be our students.”

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