[Professorsofteaching] REQUEST FOR INPUT: Wording about Professors of Teaching (PoT) for The CALL

[Annie Stanfield Ditta]

Hi Professor of Teaching Colleagues,

*TLDR: *
Below please see a proposed email to be sent to the VPAP’s office regarding
proposed changes to The CALL. Todd Sorensen (PoT in Economics) and I would
like to suggest some wording to strengthen the degree of choice for PoTs in
terms of what type of Professional and/or Scholarly Achievement and
Activity to engage in. The deadline for changes to be sent to their office
is end of business, Wednesday Feb. 25th. If you have any suggested changes
to our email and/or other any changes you want to make to The CALL that you
haven't passed along yet, could you please send them to us by end of day
Tuesday 2/24 (sorry for the short turnaround!)?

--

If you have a little more time and want to read more about this request:

*Some background:*
We were happy to see that the VPAP sent out some FAQs (attached) to better
inform chairs about the roles of Professors of Teaching and of our review
process. One concern we had was that some of the language could be
interpreted as de-emphasizing the option of disciplinary research as a
contribution to "Professional and/or Scholarly Achievement and Activity”.

Specifically, the second page of the FAQ (FAQ1) has a bullet list of
examples of "What types of scholarly or professional activities are
valued?” Initially, disciplinary research was not included as an example.
However, in an updated draft of this document (FAQ2), "Traditional
disciplinary research or presentations” was added to this list.

In addition, we feel that the last paragraph on the first page
de-emphasized this path for PoTs:

"Traditional disciplinary research is not required. However, Professors of
Teaching are expected to engage in scholarly or professional activity
related to teaching, such as pedagogical scholarship, curriculum
development, or educational leadership."

We felt that the spirit of valuing traditional disciplinary research would
be better expressed by the paragraph below; we have gone forward with the
spirit of “what we wish the FAQ had said” to make our suggested changes to
The CALL. We are not trying to get the FAQ document edited, but wanted to
note this for possible future use.

"Professors of Teaching are expected to engage in *scholarly or
professional activity*, which may take different forms. Traditional
disciplinary research is *not required* but such work is valued in the
merit and promotion process. Additionally, activities such as pedagogical
scholarship, curriculum development, and/or educational  leadership are
valued in this category."


*Proposed Email Draft:*

Dear Dan,

Thank you for valuing the role of PoTs, and the broad set of potential
contributions to Professional and/or Scholarly Achievement and Activity”
that is valued in our roles. We especially appreciate the intentionality in
sending around an FAQ document on this, and on adding "Traditional
disciplinary research or presentations” as a bullet point item in the list
of “What ˚types of scholarly or professional activities are valued.”

We would like to suggest the following changes to The CALL to reflect the
spirit of a broad interpretation of Professional and/or Scholarly
Achievement and Activities (including traditional disciplinary research or
presentation) that will be valued in our review process:

Page 37; 4b: add in parentheses at end of line “(this includes both
pedagogy-related and discipline-specific research)”.
Similar wording being added to #2 on pages 1-2 of the "UCR Guidelines for
Professor of Teaching Series” would also help emphasize this point.

Best and thank you for your consideration,
Annie Ditta & Todd Sorensen
[and anyone else that wants to add their name!]

-- 
*Annie S. Ditta, Ph.D.*
Pronouns: she/her/hers (what's this?
<https://www.mypronouns.org/what-and-why>)
Associate Professor of Teaching
Distinguished Teaching Professor
Department of Psychology
University of California, Riverside
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/anniesditta
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