With the Chancellor’s Awards packets due in early December, this is a good time to review the criteria for the Excellence in Teaching Award and contrast it with the criteria for the Excellence in Faculty Service Award. In a previous Tribune article we reviewed the overall criteria for Chancellor’s awards. As you read the requirements below, please keep in mind that these are SUNY requirements, and the decision to award or not to award is made by SUNY.
THE DEADLINE FOR NOMINATIONS IS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9.
You will also note that both awards require supporting evidence. The more specific and detailed that evidence, the better. They have provided significant detail as to what they expect of an Excellence in Teaching candidate in particular. This includes detailed evidence for example, of the mastery of a variety of teaching techniques, as well as grading distributions. Student evaluations may also be used as support.
The Excellence in Faculty Service is a newer award, and the criteria are not as detailed as they are for teaching, but they do make it clear that the service must be above and beyond that which is normally required by or compensated for by the work done as part of a candidates professional obligation.
Please note that the website is in the process of being updated to reflect the points below as well as to add the Faculty Service Award.
Excellence in Faculty Service
This award recognizes the consistently superior service contributions of teaching faculty. Please note that SUNY requires that the nature of the service must exceed the work generally considered to be part of a candidates basic professional obligation ( professional committees, for example) and must include service that exceeds that for which faculty are normally compensated.
There must be positive evidence of outstanding achievement and skill in providing leadership, outreach, or other University and/or extraordinary service and leadership in the nominee’s professional organization.
The scope of the service must extend over multiple years, must be geared toward effecting positive change and must involve the generous giving of personal time .
Eligible service contributions may occur in a variety of areas, including service to the campus, the State University, the local community or contributions at the regional, state-wide, national or international levels. Eligible activities may encompass a combination of service contributions to disciple or disciplinary and professional organizations and societies; and to leadership in local or system-wide faculty governance.
Candidates for this award must be full-time teaching/instructional faculty who meet, and preferably exceed, the selection criteria, and who also demonstrate initiative and creativity in exceeding these standards. See the SUNY website for specific detail, particularly as it relates to department chairs.
Excellence in Teaching
The primary criterion for this Award is Excellence in Teaching. It is designed to recognize consistently superior teaching directed at providing instruction of the highest quality. Additionally, consideration is also given to sound scholarship, outstanding service to students, as well as service to the campus and the State University system.
SUNY mandates the use of the following criteria in the selection of nominees for this award:
Teaching Techniques and Representative Materials. There must be positive evidence that the candidate performs superbly in the classroom. This includes:
1. Evidence of a flexible instructional policy that adapts readily to student needs, interests and problems.
2. Mastery of teaching techniques must be demonstrated and substantiated.
3. Consideration is to be given to the number of substantially different courses taught, the number of students per course, and the different teaching techniques employed in the various courses
4. When available, student evaluations presented for several different courses over a period of several recent years may be provided.
Scholarship and Professional Growth - Candidates must be teacher/scholars who keep abreast of their field and use relevant contemporary data. Evidence includes, but is not limited to, publications, grants, presentations at conferences, artistic productions. etc
Student Services - The focus here is the accessibility of the nominee to students outside of class. The nominee should be generous with personal time and demonstrate a continual concern for the intellectual growth of individual students.
Academic standards and Requirements, and Evaluation of Student Performance. Candidates must set high standards for students and help them attain academic excellence.
1. Quantity and Quality of work that is more than average for the subject must be required of the students.
2. Consideration is to be given to the quality, quantity, and difficulty of the tasks or work assigned to students.
3. Candidates must work activity with individual students to help them improve their performance
4. Evaluations of students’ work must be strongly supported by evidence.
5. For this category, grade distributions for all courses should be provided for at least two recent years. Since expert teachers enable students to achieve high levels of scholarship, it is possible that the candidates’ marking evaluation records may be somewhat above average.
6. There must also be evidence that candidates do not hesitate to give low evaluations to students who do poorly.
7. Evidence of student performance may also be assessed by the accomplishments of students, including placement and achievement levels.
Carmen Powers
Business Administration
11/01/2011 |