Teaching News: Provost’s Fellows & Awards, Williams Showcase, Student Support, and more

February 4, 2020

The Teaching Engagement Program and UO Online offer many resources to support you.

Colleagues,

This newsletter highlights opportunities to recognize and fund faculty’s inclusive, engaged, and research-informed teaching and your leadership in campus teaching efforts.

We’re excited to see you at this week’s Student Success Summit, “Inspiration to Realization: Partnering for Every Student’s Success.”. See the full schedule.

Finally, the Governor’s State Employee Food Drive is underway through February—learn how you can participate as the drive evolves to be COVID safe and meet heightened need.

Opportunities

New Provost’s Fellows Program
The Office of the Provost is launching a new faculty fellowship program to bring colleagues into university-wide roles related to teaching, leadership, and mentorship development:

  • The Teaching Fellow will help UO develop a pervasive culture of inclusive and anti-oppressive teaching across policy and practice.
  • The Leadership Fellow will help launch a faculty peer leadership development program and support an audit of leadership practices and opportunities across campus, with special attention to the opportunities for and needs of women and BIPOC scholars.
  • The Mentorship Fellow will deepen a rich, culturally competent mentorship culture across campus, supporting faculty in their work with undergraduates, graduate students, post-docs, and junior faculty. The fellowship includes information-gathering across units, workshop facilitation, and a final report that would propose ways to better define, develop, evaluate, and reward mentorship among faculty.

Each fellow will receive a package of three course releases–one per academic term–and a $5,000 summer stipend.

Learn more about the Provost’s Fellows program and apply here. Applications are due February 22. Interested colleagues are invited to an information session this Friday, February 5, 10-11:00 a.m.

Teaching Award Nominations
Nominations for Williams Fellowships: Due February 15 (Extended deadline)
Nominations for Distinguished Teaching Awards: Due February 15

Williams Instructional Proposals, Showcase
Tom and Carol Williams created the Williams Fund to support fresh thinking about teaching and learning at UO—especially ideas that push beyond the status quo and the faculty who do this exciting work. As we look ahead to the April 1 deadline for Williams Instructional Proposals, we invite faculty to learn about the proposal process and screening criteria. Judith Raiskin (Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and Mark Carrier (Biology) will give us a glimpse of their recently funded projects and what the application process was like for them.

Join us for the Williams Showcase
Friday, February 5, 1-2:00 p.m.
Register here.

Open Oregon Faculty Funding to Redesign Courses with Open or No-Cost Materials
Open Oregon is offering a funding opportunity for faculty interested in redesigning their course with open or no-cost materials in order to save students money. The course redesign sprint is a one-week online, asynchronous OER course training that will run March 1-5.

The training and course redesign should take ~12-15 hours to complete. Faculty participants may receive up to $750 for their participation ($250 upon completion of training, and $500 upon completion of course redesign).

Register here by Monday, February 22.
Questions? Contact Rayne Vieger (raynev@uoregon.edu).

Student Support

Tech Help for Students
Do your students know where to get tech support? Tell them about the Technology Service Desk, which provides remote tech support 6:00 a.m.–midnight every day, except university breaks and holidays:

Get Savvy: Winter Academic Skills Workshops
The Tutoring and Academic Engagement Center is in the midst of a vibrant workshop series to support students’ study skills, motivation, test preparation, and more. Let your students know there are resources to support the hard work of remote learning.  

Remote ‘Class Conflicts’
The Office of the Registrar has seen a steep increase in instructor-approved waivers for students to register for classes that have time conflicts. In many cases, students have reported that the faculty member approved the conflict because they were not having live classes during their remote classes or that the times on the schedule are “not real or correct.” Going forward, the Registrar has been instructed by the Office of the Provost to not approve time conflicts where the overlap is more than 15 minutes.

Instructors are reminded that remote courses must provide live engagement during the scheduled meeting times (“at least 50% of the live engagement should include planned and structured content delivery or discussion,” Academic Council specifies). While instructors are required to provide “reasonable ways for students to complete make-up assignments for missed class sessions or participation points without loss of credit,” they are not required and should not feel burdened to make fully asynchronous pathways through their remote courses (in which students complete all course activities though make-ups, watching recordings, etc.) Students are encouraged to look at UO's WEB course options, which do not require live meetings, for maximum schedule flexibility. See all of Academic Council’s Winter 2021 guidance here.

Invitations

TeachIN on Educational Equity & Anti-Oppressive Pedagogies
February 22-27, 2021

This is a week-long online series of workshops facilitated by scholars of educational equity in teaching and learning, including UO colleagues Anita Chari, Michelle Jacob, and Leilani Sabzalian. Events begin Monday and conclude Saturday afternoon with keynote speaker Dr. Bettina Love, author of We Want to Do more Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, and co-founder of the Abolitionist Teaching Network. Other speakers and sessions will focus on anti-oppressive pedagogies and anticolonial and Indigenous pedagogy. Details on sessions can be found on the website.

Lean More and register.

Reading Groups

TEP Pedagogy Reading Group: Small Teaching Online 
Wednesdays, 9:00 a.m. (Drop in any week.)
Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/94975804093See TEP’s blog for full details.

Science Teaching Journal Club: Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It
Thursdays, 9:00-9:50 a.m.Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/3594083859
See the Journal Club’s website for full details.

TEP Winter Common Reading Discussion Group: This is My America
Friday February 5, 11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.  (Feel free to join us even if you have not finished the book.)
Zoom: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/98861111634

Consultations
TEP and UO Online are here to support you in your teaching. Request an individual consultation.