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

[Paul Beehler]

Thank you for working on this, Annie and Todd.

The language edits make sense to me. Feel free to include my name as you
see fit.

Best,

Paul.

On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 6:41 PM Annie Stanfield Ditta via
Professorsofteaching <professorsofteaching at lists.ucr.edu> wrote:

> 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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>
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