To the Academic Senate, Santa Cruz Division:

The Committee on Teaching (COT) met regularly, at least twice per month, to carry out its charge of fostering and promoting the teaching mission of the campus. In addition to the appointed Senate and student members, the Committee was extended by the helpful participation of Eileen Tanner, Coordinator of the Teaching Support Office (as of 1997-98: The Center for Teaching Excellence); Jan Dickens, Director of Media Services; and Laurie Babka, staff to COT from the Academic Senate Office. A number of invited guests also contributed usefully to the work and discussion of the committee: Alison Galloway, previous Chair of the Committee on Teaching; Fred Siff, Associate Vice Chancellor of Communications and Technology Services; Susan Schwartz, Faculty Coordinator of the campus's teaching initiative in electronic media; Cecilia Rodriguez, Registrar; and Leo Laporte, Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Education (AVCUE).

The regular business of the committee included responding in a timely fashion to the flow of faculty and staff applications for mini-grants (with a limit of $1,000) for instructional improvement. In addition, the Committee made decisions on applications submitted in the annual competition for grants to improve instruction. COT considered a total of 67 proposals. In the annual competition, there were 21 individual/collaborative applicants requesting roughly $80,000, and 11 major project applicants requesting just over $124,000. In the year-long competition for mini-grants, 35 applicants requested a total of $30,871. Approved for funding were 12 individual/collaborative grants, 5 major project grants and 28 mini-grants. In all, approximately $120,000 was awarded. In addition to the Call to inform potential applicants of grant opportunities, the Chair of COT participated in an open forum for faculty and staff interested in the application process for Instructional Improvement Grants.

COT also co-sponsored (with the Teaching Support Office) two forums on teaching led by distinguished teachers on the campus and --in connection with the Chancellor's Inauguration--one lecture/ discussion on teaching issues featuring Professor Thomas Bender, Dean at New York University. In addition, the Committee helped to organize, and participated actively in, the third annual Winter Convocation on Teaching, which focused on one of the Committee's major discussion issues of the year, "Teaching Gateway Courses to the Disciplines: Problems and Possibilities."

From the public events and informal conversations with colleagues about teaching, the Committee identified and discussed some other general teaching-related concerns on campus. High on many faculty members’ lists is a concern about the quality of classroom space on the campus. In response to this concern, COT invited the Registrar in to discuss the problem, since the Registrar chairs the subcommittee that manages the development of most classroom space on campus. Campus budgetary cutbacks during the recession, we found, had rendered the subcommittee inactive in recent years, but as a result of our meeting, the subcommittee reconvened and reportedly is addressing faculty concerns about existing classroom space, making a prioritized plan for improvements, and requesting needed capital improvement funds for classroom renovations.

Not surprisingly there is widespread (and perhaps still somewhat diffuse) interest on the campus about the use of electronic media in the classroom. COT lent its support by linking its discussions with the ongoing campus efforts to develop the electronic environment of teaching. To that end, we had a substantial discussion with two of the campus leaders in the Universitywide effort, Fred Siff and Susan Schwartz. As a consequence, the Chair of COT participated in one of the open forums organized as part of the efforts to educate the campus community. Other ways for COT to collaborate with that effort were also discussed. COT identified some issues worthy of ongoing discussion, such as the need for more space, greater support, and improved computer equipment in certain areas of the campus, as well as the need to address the problem of

the "digital divide" between incoming students. There was also a common interest in developing an Online Writing Laboratory (OWL) for the campus, following the useful models being developed at Purdue University and other campuses. A further outcome of COT's interest in fostering the electronic environment for teaching on campus was an application to systemwide for funds available from Instructional Technology Initiatives to augment Instructional Improvement Grant funds. Had this application been successful, next year's COT would have had a dedicated fund for this purpose which it could manage within its existing Mini-Grant and Major Grant process for Instructional Improvement.

Among members of the committee and interested other parties, COT experimented with an ongoing electronic mailing list and discussion group, called TEACHING-L. A wide range of teaching-related issues were aired and discussed in this environment. Members who subscribed to ongoing national mailing lists about teaching were encouraged to clip and share postings from the larger dialogue. As long as someone is willing to take responsibility for some moderating and for the need to avoid glut, the model of TEACHING-L has promise for keeping campus conversation going on teaching-related matters. On the basis of the experience this year, COT recommends finding mechanisms for involving a larger number of interested parties to participate.

Two other recurrent teaching-related issues emerging from the year were ones that often carry a high emotional charge, namely: (1) students' evaluation of faculty teaching and (2) academic dishonesty and plagiarism on the part of students. From our committee's experience trying to keep our fingers on the pedagogical pulse of the campus, both of these issues are very complicated ones that involve a wide range of faculty concerns. As a result of our discussions this year, COT identified these as faculty concerns that would be worth exploring further in forums organized by COT and the Center for Teaching

Excellence in the next academic year. We came to the view that it is worthwhile to keep asking questions about the process, content, and format of student evaluations, about how student evaluations are interpreted and used to improve teaching and to make personnel recommendations on our campus, and about how to develop supplemental ways of finding useful information about the quality of classroom teaching. COT encouraged the Teaching Support Office in its efforts to promote a standardized, machine-readable UCSC Instructor Evaluation Form, and we supported efforts to experiment more widely with this approach and to revise the form based on experience (a revision on which COT

will collaborate, as it did in initially developing the form). Related to the discussion of developing supplemental sources of information, the Chair of COT and a member attended national meetings related to the American Association of Higher Education's (AAHE) project on "The Peer Review of Teaching," in which UC Santa Cruz has been participating for three years under the leadership of AVCUE Leo Laporte. COT recommends that the dialogue in this area be continued and extended, perhaps through an open forum or convocation on student evaluation of teaching during 1997-1998.

The issues surrounding plagiarism and academic dishonesty on the part of students clearly also merit some kind of public discussion in the near future. The lack of examination rooms and of a system for giving final examinations in sufficiently isolated circumstances is a concern for faculty teaching large classes. The complicated problems of plagiarism from the Internet are becoming concerns for many faculty as well, particularly those who teach courses involving essay writing.

Perhaps the most pleasant, but certainly not the least painful, task of COT is the selection of faculty for Excellence in Teaching Awards. Many worthy nominations were received, and it was the committee's business to gather and evaluate evidence for making meaningful qualitative decisions. The final selection, as difficult as it was, grew out of the collective wisdom of a peer review process similar to the way other grants and awards are decided in the academy--a fallible process, no doubt, but the best and fairest known to us as a model. In the end, the Committee decided on eight award winners and four honorable mentions, and these were presented at an appropriate ceremony held in the Chancellor's home to culminate the teaching year on campus.

February 2, 1998