Writing the Teaching Statement for the Promotion to Full Professor Review Process
The Office of the DOF/VPAA, in consultation with the Promotions Committee (PC), provides the following guidance on writing the teaching statement indicated in the Faculty Handbook as part of the promotion to full professor review processes. This guide is not meant to be prescriptive or exhaustive, nor should it be seen as a checklist to complete. Its goal is to help candidates write an effective teaching statement. Candidates are encouraged to write in a way that reflects their individuality and teaching values.
General Recommendations
- Conciseness and Clarity: Keep the statement clear, concise, and well-organized. Avoid overly complex language, and focus on communicating your teaching goals, strategies, and accomplishments succinctly.
- Teaching Approach and Methods: Clearly articulate your approach to teaching and explain how it is implemented in your courses. This can include your goals, strategies, and how you assess your effectiveness as an educator.
- Narrative and Context: Provide a narrative that aligns your teaching with institutional or departmental/program expectations. Connect your approach to teaching to the broader mission of the college or department/program.
- Concrete Examples: Use specific examples or point to evidence in your file that illustrate your teaching methods, assignments, course design, and overall approach to teaching.
Speaking to Promotion Criteria
- Connect Evidence to Criteria: Speak to your teaching goals, strengths, and accomplishments in relation to the Faculty Handbook criteria and expectations (Part I, Article VIII, Sections A and F), including: motivation and mentoring, expertise, course design and delivery, and fostering student learning.
- Highlight Mentoring and Motivation: Describe your role as a mentor in guiding students in the classroom and beyond, such as through independent studies, senior projects, or research collaborations. Show how you inspire students and support their academic and professional development.
- Show Your Expertise: Demonstrate how your ongoing scholarship or creative work informs and enhances your teaching. Explain how your knowledge of the current state of your field informs your teaching methods, course content, and course design.
- Clear Pedagogical Goals: Articulate specific, measurable objectives that guide your approach to teaching. Clearly define what you aim to achieve in your courses and for your students.
- Creativity and Innovation: Highlight creative elements in your teaching, such as innovative syllabi or new pedagogical approaches.
- Explain How You Handle Different Course Levels: Discuss how you approach teaching courses at different levels—introductory, advanced, seminars, etc.—and how you adjust your methods based on the course’s requirements and student needs.
- Student-Centered Focus: Describe how you encourage and support student learning and engagement. Outline strategies to help your students become independent learners and explain how you prioritize their educational needs.
Showing Sustained High-Quality Teaching
- Success Over Time: Highlight your long-term success in teaching by showing a consistent record of student engagement, well-designed courses, and effective learning outcomes.
- Teaching Resource: Reflect on how you have served other faculty as a teaching resource.
Continuing Development
- Growth Over Time: Discuss how your teaching has evolved over the years, including shifts in your thinking, pedagogy, or course design. This can include how you have responded to new insights, technologies, or external factors like COVID-19.
- Engagement with Feedback: Describe how you have incorporated or responded to feedback from peers and students.
- Acknowledgment of Challenges: Acknowledge teaching challenges and explain how you have addressed them, whether these challenges are related to specific courses, student engagement, or external factors.
- Reflection and Adaptability: Show self-awareness by reflecting on past experiences. Highlight how you have adapted and grown in response to difficulties, such as making course adjustments when things did not go as planned.