I THE UNDERGRADUATE TEACHING COMMITTEE (UTC)

The Undergraduate Teaching Committee will be composed a suitable number of full and associate professors to cover the peer review work, a representative from the regional campus faculty, one graduate student, and one undergraduate student. Ex-officio members will be the Undergraduate Studies Coordinator, the Academic Program Coordinator, the Director of the Goldberg Program for Excellence in Teaching, and the Honors Coordinator.

Responsibilities

1. The chair of the UTC will call a meeting of the committee and all faculty at the beginning of autumn quarter to discuss the scope of the committee's duties and the schedule of activities.
2. The UTC considers all undergraduate curricular matters.
3. The UTC will foster collegial exchanges in the art of teaching undergraduates.
4. The UTC has responsibility for the teaching evaluation process.

II TEACHING EVALUATION

Note: This process applies to Columbus campus faculty members. Since the teaching of regional campus faculty members is evaluated locally, each campus will determine its own process. The Vice Chair of the department, who serves as the liaison to the regional campuses, should visit each campus once a year and visit classes if possible. Other peer reviewers will be drawn from history and other faculty members on the regional campus.

1. Faculty members of all ranks may request an informal peer review at any time. Upon receiving such a request, the chair of UTC will assign a member of the UTC to conduct this review. The informal review may or may not follow the guidelines for a formal review. The results of this informal peer review will not be made public unless the faculty member wishes to include them in his/her dossier.
2. Each faculty member's Annual Faculty Report will include copies of the SEI's and a self-evaluation of teaching for the preceding four quarters. These will be available to peer reviewers and will be retained in the department.
3. Appropriate members of the committee will conduct peer reviews of the teaching of assistant professors over the second, third, and fourth years. Ideally, two GEC courses, two service courses, and two other undergraduate courses should be evaluated during the course of those three years. When an associate professor anticipates coming up for promotion in two or three years, s/he should inform the chair of the UTC, who will then arrange for full professor members of the committee to conduct peer reviews. Ideally, one GEC course, one other department service course, and one other undergraduate course should be evaluated. If the chair of the department detects a problem in the year-end summaries of any faculty member, then the chair can decide to suggest to the faculty member that s/he seek an informal or formal peer review in the coming year. If the UTC Chair cannot cover the necessary peer reviews with members of the UTC, s/he may call upon other appropriate members of the faculty.
4. The UTC will produce a written report integrating an evaluation of classroom visits and course materials with an analysis of student evaluations. The faculty member being evaluated and the promotion and tenure committee will receive a copy of the report.
5. The report will be based on at least two visits to the classroom for each course evaluated. The faculty member being reviewed will decide whether the visits should be arranged for particular times or whether the peer evaluator may make surprise visits, and this choice should be included in the report.
6. All peer evaluations of teaching will list the facts of the classroom visits [i.e., date, time of class, quarter, course number and title, number of students enrolled and attending, topic(s) for the day] and describe the level and type of course, the syllabus and other course material (including reading and writing assignments, handouts, examinations, class web site, or other technology-based teaching material, etc.), the style of pedagogy (lecture, discussion), the instructor's quality of organization, command of the material, and clarity of presentation. Note: All peer reviewers are encouraged to peruse Nancy Van Note Chism, Peer Review of Teaching: A Sourcebook (1999).
7. Until otherwise determined by the department, the Student Evaluation of Instruction (the SEI) will be the formal required instrument of evaluation for all formal undergraduate course offerings. Faculty members should appoint a student in the class to collect the forms and return them to the department or make other arrangements for a third party to collect the SEIs.
8. If a faculty member wants to include evaluation instruments in addition to the SEIs s/he should turn in copies of the raw data and his/her summaries of that data to the chair of UTC at the end of winter quarter. Such summaries should include the number of evaluations turned in as a percentage of enrollment, a description of the instrument used for written comments, and a description of what the students wrote, with a clear sense of the proportion of positive to negative comments. A UTC member will review the faculty member's summary and note that s/he has done so. The UTC member may add his/her comments to the summary.