Excellence in teaching is an important factor in promotion and tenure at the University of Oregon. Fortunately, the university offers many resources and support services for faculty teaching courses. The list of resources below is a good starting point for faculty wanting to improve their teaching.
Teaching Support and Innovation
Teaching Engagement Program
The Teaching Engagement Program is UO’s professional teaching development office. It works to define, develop, holistically evaluate, recognize, and leverage teaching excellence to achieve the fullest promise of a UO education. TEP supports teachers across rank and discipline, building an inclusive, engaged, and research-informed campus-wide teaching culture. It creates occasions for faculty and graduate student instructors to develop and refresh their pedagogy in dialogue with one another and to engage with campus, national, and scholarly conversations about higher education teaching and learning.
UO Online
UO Online provides support to ensure faculty members and GE instructors have the tools and resources they need to successfully facilitate technology-enhanced teaching and learning. Some specific areas of support include individual and group instructional design consultations for online and hybrid courses, technology support for using Canvas and other UO-supported tools, and media studio and production service.
Canvas Support
UO Online’s Faculty Canvas Support Services is available to help instructors navigate the landscape of technology available at the UO. Support is available for Canvas, Panopto, and other technology applications through consultations, workshops, and trainings. Just-in-time help for specific tech questions and issues is also available.
Tutoring and Academic Engagement Center
The Tutoring and Academic Engagement Center helps UO students enhance their learning and success through tutoring, classes and workshops, individual consultations, graduate school test prep and supplemental instruction.
UO Libraries
The UO Libraries offer a variety of support services to faculty, students, and staff.
The Knight Library and branch libraries provide the UO community with a variety of environments for individual and collaborative research, study, and instruction. Faculty may access reservable classrooms, presentation rooms, wired classrooms and labs, active learning classrooms and meeting spaces.
Our librarians have expertise in a variety of academic disciplines and research services. They are listed below along with links to further information about their specialties. Please contact them for assistance with your research and teaching needs.
The Office of the Registrar
The Office of the Registrar is responsible for academic and classroom scheduling, student registration, enrollment verification, grading and academic records maintenance, transfer credit articulation, degree audits, monitoring undergraduate general education requirements, degree awarding, and course evaluations, among other things. Guidance on many academic matters can be found on their website. In particular, Faculty & Staff and the A-Z Index are very useful resources.
Following are a few select topics (found in A-Z Index) relevant for faculty teaching UO courses:
- Academic & Classroom Scheduling
- Course Syllabus, Recommended Format
- Deadlines, Academic
- Final Exam Schedule
- Grading System
- Student Experience Surveys
- Student Engagement Inventory
In addition, the Student Records Privacy Policy is found on the Registrar’s website. Faculty teaching classes or otherwise accessing student records should be aware of the Student Records Privacy Policy and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
Accessible Education Center
The Accessible Education Center (AEC) is dedicated to facilitating access and full inclusion of students with disabilities into the university environment. This is accomplished through determining reasonable accommodations for students, collaborations with faculty/staff, proactive advising, and the fostering of systemic campus change. The AEC works to create and sustain physical, curricular, and informational environments that are informed by and responsive to the diverse characteristics and experiences of students with disabilities and variations of ability.
The University of Oregon is required to make reasonable accommodations for students in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), ADA Amendments Act, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. AEC is the office designated to determine reasonable accommodations for students.
Faculty are required to include a statement on their syllabi about disability-related accommodations and resources. Please visit AEC’s Faculty & Instructors page for additional resources.
The University collectively has responsibility to remove barriers impacting access to programs, activities, and services for students with disabilities. It is important to understand the roles and responsibilities that instructors, students, and the AEC have in this process. If you have any questions about the table below, please do not hesitate to contact the AEC by phone or email to gain clarification. You can contact AEC at 541-346-1155 or via email at uoaec@uoregon.edu.
Student Role | AEC ROLE | Faculty/instructor role |
|---|---|---|
Disclose disability information to the AEC to initiate registration. | Meet with students to receive and review student requests. | Refer students who may need accommodations to the AEC. |
Submit relevant verifying documentation to the AEC as appropriate. | Engage students in the interactive process for implementation of reasonable accommodations. | Read all notification letters, take appropriate actions, & maintain confidentiality of student information. This includes completing the testing agreement right away, and providing your exams to the AEC at least two days before a scheduled exam. |
Request notification letters and schedule exams. | Consult with faculty and academic departments to address accessibility issues and accommodations. | Contact the AEC if an approved accommodation might fundamentally alter course objectives. Do not deny any accommodations without consulting with the AEC. |
Make timely requests. | Advise AEC-registered students to ensure access to accommodations. | Only implement disability-related accommodations for students who are registered with the AEC. |
Meet University expectations and qualifications. | Provide relevant programming, mentorship, skill-building opportunities, and create access. | Consider ways to implement universally designed methods into courses to reduce barriers and the need for accommodations. |
Information Services
As the University of Oregon's central technology provider, Information Services provides a wide range of UO-wide services, such as:
- Collaboration tools, including Office 365, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom.
- Usernames, passwords, two-step login, and account-related help.
- Email and calendaring.
- Wired and wireless networking.
- Web hosting, such as UO Blogs.
- Information security.
- Banner, Integrated Data and Reporting (IDR), DuckDocs, and other administrative applications.
- User Support Services, including the Technology Service Desk, which provide tech support and troubleshooting for students and employees.
- For more information about university IT services, visit the service catalog in the UO Service Portal.Tech Support and Other Resources
Looking for tech support, how-to articles, or frequently asked questions? Visit the UO Service Portal.
Office of the Dean of Students: Student Conduct and Community Standards
The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards educates the University community about the community standards necessary to maintain and protect an environment conducive to learning. Their core purpose is to develop students' academic and social responsibility. Faculty will want to be familiar with student conduct standards in general, and, with regard to teaching, academic misconduct standards and policies.
The UO Center on Diversity and Community (CoDaC) builds the capacity of individuals and units across campus to advance the university’s goals of equity and inclusion. A unit of the Division of Equity and Inclusion, CoDaC sponsors a range of programs for individual faculty, graduate students, alumni and staff as well as capacity building initiatives with departments, colleges, schools and research units across campus. Faculty will want to explore their many faculty development initiatives.
The Yamada Language Center is the University of Oregon's resource center for language teaching and learning. UO offers regular (BA-satisfying) courses in 19 modern and classical languages, and additional instruction in 8 others. The Yamada Language Center (YLC) supports faculty and students in Romance Languages, East Asian Languages, German and Scandinavian, Linguistics, REEES, Arabic Studies, and the American English Institute.