{"id":1,"date":"2016-03-07T01:32:45","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T01:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wolf\/?p=1"},"modified":"2016-04-01T09:07:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-01T16:07:09","slug":"write-your-tnp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/wolf\/2016\/03\/07\/write-your-tnp\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Write Your Tenure\/Promotion Packet: Teaching-Oriented Faculty Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"

NOTE: This is a draft; critical feedback, comments, and questions are very much welcome! <\/strong>(Leave a reply or e-mail wolf@cs.ubc.ca<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

If you’re in academia and teaching is an important part of your job, then you’ll probably need a teaching portfolio for promotion or tenure at some point. Unfortunately,\u00a0despite the fact that you have dozens\/hundreds\/thousands of students, teaching is often a solitary endeavor, especially compared to research. How, then,\u00a0do you compellingly document your teaching experiences and innovations to others?<\/p>\n

Here’s my advice, much of it inspired by my long-ago participation in the Engineering Teaching Portfolio Program<\/a> offered by U. Washington’s Center for\u00a0the Advancement of Engineering Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wrote this advice as I was drafting my tenure packet\u2014CV<\/a> and portfolio<\/a>\u2014and promotion packet<\/a>. The tenure packet from Sep 2008 was for promotion from “Instructor I” to “Senior Instructor” at UBC and, of course, for tenure. The promotion packet from Sep 2013 was\u00a0for promotion from “Senior Instructor” to “Professor of Teaching”, a somewhat unexpected process since the rank did not exist when I began at UBC. For context, check out\u00a0UBC’s tenure and promotion policies<\/a>. The guidelines for promotion to Professor of Teaching<\/a> have the most detail, although they were published well after my tenure case.<\/p>\n

Prelude<\/strong><\/p>\n

Both my tenure and promotion packets are bulky but designed\u00a0to be skimmed. I aimed for a “multi-resolution” packet that offers busy readers a short, sweet summary they can read, skipping the rest, but with\u00a0hooks available to dive deeper, all the way down to evidence (artifacts of teaching, evaluation records, research citations, etc.) supporting the claims I make in my portfolio.<\/p>\n

One minor caveat for non-Computer Scientists:\u00a0Conference publications in CS are at least as prestigious as journal publications (and often more so). More broadly and importantly, you’ll want to adjust disciplinary or cultural issues like this for your own context in both my packets and my advice!<\/p>\n

Finally, be aware that the\u00a0packets are written to make me sound like I walk on water. It’s all true mind you, but spun to the max. Don’t get intimidated; you can sound like you walk on water, too!<\/p>\n

Beforehand<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here are a few steps you can take from the start of your teaching career to prepare yourself for your tenure or promotion case.<\/p>\n

1. Be a pack rat. Save everything and file it away. Meeting agendas, notes from students and colleagues regarding your teaching,\u00a0links to\u00a0interesting student artifacts, etc.<\/p>\n

2. Write, write, write. Write a “post mortem” after each class\u00a0describing what worked well and poorly, write analyses of your exams (how and why you\u00a0planned them and how they turned out), write any commentary on your own teaching that you can motivate yourself to put down.<\/p>\n

Doing it all the time will\u00a0help you tremendously as a teacher. Doing it at least sometimes and filing it away will be invaluable for your portfolio.<\/p>\n

3. At least once a year\u2014merit review, anyone?\u2014write out a one paragraph story of each major teaching-related effort you make, like course design, new\u00a0pedagogical approaches, student research supervision, and so on.<\/p>\n

My mentor Paul Carter suggested this to me and suggested my CV as the place to keep it. Using this approach,\u00a0your CV recaps points in your\u00a0promotion portfolio… but it also makes the CV stronger and forces you\u00a0to write bits and pieces of your portfolio every time you update the CV. At my promotion, I received strong advice to brutally trim this in the submitted version, but the same text migrated over to the rest of my packet!<\/p>\n

Writing the Portfolio<\/strong><\/p>\n

The writing process itself can take a while on the calendar and a fair number of hours. Get started early, and try out these steps. I started a year or more in advance with the first step below.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0Review some other people’s portfolios. When I say “review”, I mean review like you would a conference or journal submission. Question how and\u00a0whether they’ve accomplished their main points and mark the document up with recommendations. If the author is still working on their portfolio, this\u00a0is peer feedback, but it’s worthwhile regardless so that you can discover what makes an effective portfolio.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0Write three crappy teaching philosophy statements, with three totally different philosophies. Don’t worry; they won’t go into your portfolio. Their\u00a0purpose is to encourage you to think creatively about what you’ve accomplished as a teacher and why you did it.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Make a list of artifacts you can use as evidence of your successful teaching:<\/p>\n