9 By the faculty, for the faculty: A grassroots effort to define and support teaching excellence

In 2022, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville launched a process to establish a university-wide set of principles guiding teaching excellence and rooted these efforts in the process of shared governance. After a meticulously inclusive feedback process and iterative revisions, we arrived at a set of four principles that we now call UT’s Principles of Excellence in Teaching (UT PoET), which reflect the specific values around teaching at our R1 (doctoral university with very high research activity), flagship, land-grant institution. This chapter will detail the process by which we arrived at these principles. In so doing, we hope to provide a roadmap for other institutions seeking to replicate our process and create their own framework to define teaching excellence in a way that works at their specific institution with their specific faculty. Although the results of this approach may differ across institutions because of differing contexts and cultures, the importance of shared governance across R1 institutions renders our grassroots approach widely relevant for helping each institution identify and document their version of teaching excellence.

Planting the seeds: Why grassroots efforts matter

Teaching excellence, as an aspirational goal, occupies a central place in the strategic agenda of R1 universities. R1 institutions must balance this aspiration with adjacent goals in research and service, and, for land-grant universities, community engagement (Gavazzi, 2020). Yet, institutional reward systems at R1 universities often elevate mechanisms to support and assess quality of research with little equivalent consideration given to assessing quality of teaching or service (Luckie, 2022). As a result, we sometimes have coherent institutional definitions for research but not teaching. This imbalance is well-documented across the past thirty years, from Boyer’s (1991/2016) observation that research is more amenable to measurement than teaching, to Zimmerman’s The Amateur Hour (2020), in which he uses institutional archives to trace faculty perceptions that quality teaching cannot not be measured or developed, leaving departments to focus on quality of research as the priority. This creates a conflict between research and teaching at R1 institutions for faculty members in terms of their workload and effort (Brownell & Tanner, 2012).

Further complicating the situation, macro-level changes in higher education have led to different effects for different groups within large universities. In the 1990s, Boyer had already observed how centralizing university functions could lead to a decline in shared governance, giving faculty less control over evaluation standards. Since then, faculty work itself has become increasingly unbundled, leading to different effects for those with research or teaching as their primary responsibility (O’Meara, 2016). For tenure-track faculty, most tasked primarily with research, new standards for teaching performance, new instructional technologies, or simply new procedures can increase workload (Kim & Rehg, 2018). As enrollment in higher education has increased, teaching workload has correspondingly increased as well (Kim & Rehg, 2018) while research productivity expectations have similarly increased (O’Meara, 2002; 2005). Ultimately, tenure-track faculty are often forced to make decisions about what to prioritize, and without incentives to prioritize teaching, they are likely to focus on research.

Simultaneously, an increasing proportion of the teaching, particularly in terms of credit-hours and enrollment numbers, is conducted by faculty off the tenure track, and for them, these challenges play out differently. Their continued employment depends on the quality of their teaching, yet the absence of a clear, foundational understanding of teaching excellence and a way to document it leaves them to the whims of student evaluations of teaching (SETs) as a way to measure their effectiveness, even though a large body of research has shown SETs are replete with bias and inaccurate estimates of student learning (Heffernan, 2022; Heffernan, 2023; Kreitzer & Sweet-Cushman, 2022). Some institutions have attempted to compensate for the known deficiencies in SETs by introducing requirements for peer observation and evaluation, but in contrast to centralized and quantified research expectations, the standards for these experiences are often left open for individual departments to define and conduct. The resulting experiences often feel idiosyncratic and can lead to stress and job dissatisfaction for faculty (Stupnisky et al., 2017). Clearly communicated standards, on the other hand, enhance credibility for the retention, promotion, and tenure (RPT) process and can contribute strongly to faculty motivation (Hardré & Kollmann, 2012).

Furthermore, when teaching excellence is documented and evaluated only as part of RPT decisions, those standards for evaluation may seem to be imposed by an external authority, which could create or widen rifts between faculty and administrators. Moreover, the varying responsibilities and needs of faculty with different appointment types can create additional tensions across faculty groups. To close these gaps and to create a way to document teaching excellence that resonates with faculty of all rank and appointment type across the institution, it is important, as a matter of shared governance, that the definition for teaching excellence originate with and be articulated by members of the faculty.

Like other R1, flagship, land-grant institutions, UT sets an expectation to excel at teaching, research, service, and community outreach, but these tasks are managed heterogeneously by a large and diverse population of faculty, not all of whom may have all four obligations. UT’s administrative structure is decentralized in that the university’s 13 colleges set expectations for their own faculty, particularly regarding RPT processes and decisions. In our 6 smaller colleges, faculty work is overseen by a dean-level administrative structure, whereas our 7 larger colleges have further levels of internal administration, so that individual faculty teach within the context of departments or schools overseen by department chair-level positions, who report to dean-level administrators. Each department is responsible for creating their own set of faculty by-laws that detail the expectations for tenure and promotion. As such, each college and/or department articulates their own approach to documenting teaching efficacy. When such practices are sufficiently siloed, this kind of system can lead to significant differences in expectations, which can in turn create disparities in expectations and evaluations across faculty in different units, with different workload allocations, and with different appointment types.

In light of this variability, we wanted to create an institutional definition of teaching excellence that allowed for discipline-specific flexibility. This would ensure that everyone knew what it meant to be an excellent teacher and how to document that excellence at our university. While such a definition would allow our institution to put our own stamp on our teaching identity, we knew that creating one could be a challenge at a university like ours where faculty work occurs in decentralized units that differ in the context, approaches, and disciplinary topics of their teaching. Traditionally, this has meant a large amount of autonomy in how units define quality in faculty work. Yet, institutional standards are maintained at the central level. These standards are enshrined in faculty handbooks, and these handbooks are vetted and approved by faculty through the work of the Faculty Senate. The senate works in conjunction with institutional leaders to set policies and practices in a process called shared governance. Thus, the next section details how, as we began our effort to define and document teaching excellence, we started these efforts in our grassroots body, the Faculty Senate.

Grassroots origins: Germinating ideas together

Our initiative to create a set of principles for faculty to reflect on and document their teaching excellence began in 2022 with the then-Faculty Senate President bringing to the then-co-chairs of the Senate’s Teaching & Learning Council (TLC) the idea of having faculty create a uniform set of institutional teaching “values.” The goal was to identify principles that faculty agreed effective instructors represented. That is, we sought to answer the question, “What does it mean to be an excellent teacher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville?” This idea arose as a focus because of the Senate president’s work in higher education research, specifically in the areas of faculty and graduate student professional development for teaching. Her idea was that these principles would not be dictates or requirements about how to run a class, but philosophical and aspirational guides for effective instructional choices and a way to focus professional development and peer assessment at our institution.

The TLC, including representatives from Faculty Senate, Academic Affairs, and Teaching and Learning Innovation (TLI), saw the value in this endeavor and started a plan to accomplish it. The Faculty Senate graduate research assistant (GRA) was tasked with performing a literature review to see whether other institutions had established teaching guidelines as we were proposing. Her research found that this was not a common practice, which set us on a path to creating our own way forward.

Throughout that academic year, the Senate President and TLC members, along with the Senate GRA, brainstormed and defined the data collection methods, ultimately deciding to survey faculty who had won teaching awards at UT about their perceptions of effective teaching practices. The TLC and TLI gathered a list of 105 faculty who had received a university-level or college-level award for excellence in teaching and used an anonymous Qualtrics survey to ask: “What values, characteristics, or skills do you believe the best instructors possess or exemplify?” Participants were provided open-ended text boxes and asked to share at least five but no more than seven answers. Forty-two faculty members responded in April 2023, generating 264 total responses to the question.

The Senate President and GRA conducted an initial qualitative thematic analysis of these data by independently reading and sorting the responses into categories they thought represented the data (Braun & Clark, 2006). They met and compared their sorting, working to merge their ideas into a common set of categories. They then used these categories to independently sort the data a second time, meeting once again to make final revisions to and formally name and describe the categories. The data and categories were then given to another faculty member who reviewed them and made additional edits and refinements to the categories and descriptions in discussion with the Senate President. This process yielded four values and characteristics of excellent instruction at UT. Those were:

• Inspire student success by communicating and maintaining clear course standards
• Demonstrate empathy and respect for students
• Cultivate a vibrant and inquisitive classroom atmosphere
• Embrace the dynamic nature of teaching and knowledge

Once we had this draft, we created a plan, detailed in the next section, to collect feedback and further refine these principles.

Cross-campus collaboration: Sprouting ideas

We began our efforts to gather feedback on our initial set of values by creating a draft document, titled “Guiding principles and aspirations for teaching at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville,” which included the list of the guiding principles, a brief description of what they each meant, and an explanation of how these principles were derived. The draft document also included a link to a Google form that allowed faculty to provide feedback on the principles or help clarify them. While the survey could be anonymous, we provided a space for faculty to leave their name and email if they wanted to provide further feedback or discuss the principles in more depth. We used this form consistently across our different efforts to vet these principles and have a standardized procedure for feedback.

New Faculty Teaching Institute

The most significant changes to the principles came after they were presented at the 2023 New Faculty Teaching Institute (NFTI), which is a one-day program run by TLI that includes keynote sessions and concurrent workshops for all new, full-time faculty who have any level of teaching appointment. As such, it brings together faculty from across the university and with a wide variety of appointment type. In one of the keynote sessions, TLI presented these principles to the new faculty and sought feedback. This session provided an opportunity for new faculty to feel part of the teaching culture and create buy-in to that culture by soliciting their feedback. This session included interactive elements that allowed faculty to talk in small groups and reflect on their own teaching values. It was after reviewing the feedback from that session that we made the most significant changes from the initial set of principles and solidified the wording of the four principles as follows:

• Clarity in Course Design and Communication
• Approachability, Empathy, and Respect for All Students
• Engaging and Student-Centered Classroom-Teaching
• Reflective Improvement of Teaching

TLI then continued to present these principles and solicited feedback from faculty in as many places as possible during the 2023-2024 year. We specifically identified additional opportunities that would reach faculty across campus, in all colleges and of all rank and appointment type. We also presented to groups that included relevant staff such as the University of Tennessee Teaching and Learning Units Consortium, which includes staff from TLI, Digital Learning, Office of Innovative Technology, and the libraries. These opportunities provided faculty and staff time and space to brainstorm around the principles. We diligently kept notes at each opportunity, and after considering what participants shared verbally or through the feedback form, we refined the principles to more accurately apply across disciplinary contexts.

Teaching Values Summit

One of our biggest events through which we received feedback from faculty occurred during the Teaching Values Summit. In 2024, we created an in-person, UT-focused professional development opportunity called the Teaching Values Summit. The focus of the Summit was to introduce the principles of teaching excellence to faculty and get their feedback regarding their salience and use for driving teaching excellence at the institution. We also wanted their feedback on how faculty might operationalize these principles and use them to document teaching excellence.

This event was open to all UT faculty, and 60 faculty members attended. In an effort to receive quality feedback, we created small group exercises based on active learning techniques to promote engagement:

• We assigned each table one of the four principles, and we began with individual reflection. We asked participants to consider, “How does this principle resonate with you? Does it align with your thoughts on teaching excellence? How does this show up in your own teaching?”
• After individual reflection, the table discussed examples of practices they use in the classroom that support this principle. They also discussed their own struggles or opportunities to improve related to that principle.
• We then used a jigsaw technique to rearrange participants so that they were at tables with individuals who had discussed each of the other principles. Participants shared out to each other so that all participants engaged with each principle. Then, we asked them to discuss the following questions: “How could we use these principles to drive teaching innovation at UT? How could we use it to evaluate teaching? How could we use these to develop instructors’ teaching?”

In each stage, participants were asked to take notes, and those notes were collected following the Summit so that participant ideas could be used to revise the principles. We also provided a link to the Google form for additional feedback.

The process of campus vetting did not change the overall category names that were revised after NFTI, but did help us refine the descriptions for each. These 4 were then formally debuted on campus in fall 2024 as the Principles of Excellence in Teaching (PoET):

• Clarity in Course Design and Communication: An excellent instructor carefully designs their curricula, is clear in their course expectations, and communicates them effectively through well-organized course materials. They convey the importance and practical value of the course content. They maintain high standards for student success and give students the tools to meet them.
• Approachability, Empathy, and Respect for All Students: An excellent instructor generates positive rapport with students, building equitable relationships with and among them. They are approachable, open, and honest, and treat students as individuals worthy of compassion and caring. They listen and seek to understand student questions, concerns, and life circumstances.
• Engaging and Student-Centered Classroom-Teaching: Excellent instructors cultivate a vibrant classroom atmosphere and care about student success. They inspire student intellectual curiosity and interest through their passion for the material. They provide opportunities to students to explore and apply their new knowledge in meaningful ways and adapt creatively in response to student needs.
• Reflective Improvement of Teaching: Excellent instructors embrace the dynamic nature of teaching and learning. They reflect upon their practices and experiences, and iteratively refine and improve their understanding of themselves as educators. They seek out and integrate new disciplinary knowledge and pedagogical approaches in a forward-thinking manner.

To officially introduce these to the campus, TLI created a webpage for PoET and communicated its creation through Faculty VOLume, TLI’s monthly newsletter. As part of a broader communications and branding plan, we created icons for each principle that can be used to identify workshops or other opportunities that align with the different principles. For example, to help acculturate new faculty to PoET, we used these icons during the 2024 NFTI to designate which principles aligned with each of our concurrent sessions. We also introduced participants to the principles as part of the opening keynote to provide context for the icons. In the next section, we will discuss additional efforts that began once PoET debuted.

Campus implementation: Growing and flowering

With the principles and their definitions readily accessible campus-wide, we began to consider how to integrate these ideas into the work and culture of the university. This meant not only developing ways to disseminate the principles themselves but also developing resources and programming around PoET that would help faculty use these principles to support and document their own teaching excellence and the teaching excellence of others. As with the development of PoET, we sought to keep faculty voice centered in both the creation of resources and programming, as highlighted in the following examples.

Support for evaluating teaching

In the summer of 2024, TLI staff used the UT PoET framework to develop a focused approach to formative feedback processes, including both self-reflection and peer evaluation components. The importance of peer evaluation has been well supported by the literature (Bell & Cooper, 2013), but before UT PoET, TLI was unable to provide faculty with rubrics or structures of our own to guide these evaluations. As a result, faculty had to look to those developed externally. While those tools reflect general best practices, they do not fully reflect UT’s campus values and teaching goals, nor do they embody the importance of ongoing self-reflection throughout the evaluation process (Brookfield, 2017; McAlpine, et al., 2004). As such, TLI developed three support resources:

• Instructor’s Self–Evaluation Form: This form is designed to help faculty members identify areas of strength and growth in their teaching related to PoET. It includes a rubric for each component of PoET as well as space to provide evidence of the principle being met. One use of this form might be as a pre-observation tool to help a peer pay particular attention to desired areas of the instructor’s teaching.
• Peer Observation Protocol: This is a new way to guide peer observations at the institution that includes behaviors associated with each component of PoET, as well as space for the observer(s) to note other practices and actions.
• Self-Reflection & Goals Form: This guided reflection is used after the observation and meeting with the observer(s). The form creates an opportunity for the instructor to note areas of strength and growth and to set short- and long-term goals for each of the principles.

These resources are currently on the TLI website for departments to voluntarily use. In keeping with our grassroots approach and valuing faculty feedback, TLI is also piloting and seeking feedback about these resources through its 2024-2025 programming. In the Volunteer Faculty Launchpad, a program for faculty new to UT’s campus, we are using these resources to engage in a formative peer evaluation and self-reflection. TLI is similarly using these resources in a community of practice for lecturers in the math department. Upon the completion of these programs, TLI will seek feedback on the resources from our participants through focus groups. This feedback will be used to modify the resources to address concerns or ideas for additions.

Community of Scholars for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence

In spring 2024, our College of Arts & Sciences (CAS) sought proposals to establish new research, scholarship, and creative activity units dedicated to pursing extramural or institutional resources to support educational and engagement programs. In response to this call, faculty involved in the development of PoET, the now-former Faculty Senate President and the other faculty member who supported the coding and creation of the original principles, submitted a proposal to create a Community of Scholars for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence (CATE). It was subsequently funded with the goal of generating recommendations for how faculty can use PoET to enhance teaching in CAS and disseminate those ideas to strengthen instruction across the university. Establishing this Community of Scholars ensured that PoET would continue to be a grassroots faculty effort.

CAS is currently divided into three divisions, Natural Sciences & Mathematics, Social Sciences, and Arts & Humanities. CATE has a leadership team comprised of a faculty lead for each division who helps encourage participation, collates the faculty voice, and represents the interests of their faculty at leadership meetings. This group worked in fall 2024 to provide information about the Community of Scholars and invite interested instructors of all ranks across CAS to join. This effort yielded 19 CATE members who have worked in small groups on four projects related to PoET. These projects include:

• PoET for all: Designing swag, video vignettes with teaching tips, and advertising materials to raise awareness about PoET and its value to all faculty
• Rapport in large classrooms: Creating exemplar strategies for classroom, email, and syllabus communication that can be used by faculty to foster trust and respect
• Classroom design and engagement: Compiling data on large classroom layouts and technologies across campus and providing customized engagement strategies to assist faculty in guiding student learning in those spaces
• Peer-observation matrix: Establishing a faculty peer observation program using TLI’s observation protocol to encourage faculty to participate in formative teaching observation and reflection

CATE will continue these efforts for two years, inviting more faculty to participate and focusing on project deliverables that can be used by a broad range of CAS faculty to operationalize PoET. Through continued faculty engagement, CATE will keep PoET at the forefront of college discussions and support a culture of teaching excellence.

Lessons Learned: Pruning our approaches

While UT PoET is still evolving and taking shape, we have learned a great deal about how to develop an initiative that is embraced and supported by faculty across the institution. Here is what we have learned:

(1) Begin the process with faculty

While many initiatives that impact faculty include faculty in some aspects of the development process, they do not always start with faculty. As has been documented, PoET started with a faculty idea and was created by surveying select faculty regarding their teaching values, beliefs, and practices. We then gathered (and continue to solicit) feedback from all faculty so that their voice and connection to the initiative remain central. Further development of the resources and materials to support instructors are also being developed or vetted by faculty, making the likelihood of their relevance and use higher.

Of course, throughout the process, administrators have been supportive of the initiative and have provided opportunities for faculty to think together about PoET. For example, from 2022-2024, the Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs met several times with individuals involved with the development of the principles. She was regularly updated about the ways that the principles were evolving with each cycle of feedback. Additionally, she fully supported the idea of including an opportunity to present and solicit additional feedback surrounding the principles during the Teaching Values Summit. While administrative support is important, universities seeking to create a similar set of principles should center faculty voice at all stages of the process.

(2) Be prepared to make revisions

Throughout the process of developing PoET, we have asked for and received feedback. This has allowed us to refine the framework to reflect faculty concerns or suggestions. For example, when we began, we called it Teaching Values. In presenting them as values, we received concerned feedback, specifically from the TLC that framing the components of PoET as values felt limiting and prescriptive. The change in name to principles created a foundation from which individual instructors could act but it did not dictate specific actions, thus creating freedom for a more personalized approach to enacting each principle. Attempts to replicate our process must include an ongoing feedback loop. It cannot end once the principles are created but must continue through the creation of resources and even after to maintain a pulse on the relevance of the principles and resources as faculty retire or leave and new faculty join the university.

(3) Use focus groups or other qualitative feedback beyond surveys

As was mentioned in the beginning of this chapter, part of the iterative revision process was engaging faculty through in-person discussions to gather qualitative feedback. Each of these discussion opportunities allowed us to make immediate changes to the framework that reflected faculty input. While we did use one survey at the beginning of the process with our faculty who had won teaching awards, we decided against any campus-wide web surveys because they tend to have low response rates, and low-response rates can lead to bias in the results (Fricker & Schonlau, 2022). Additionally, we wanted to create a collegial environment that provided opportunity for community building, which cannot be done through surveys. The discussions we held allowed for individual and group reflections on each of the principles that ultimately led to refining our descriptions and titles for each. Because these conversations were so useful, as we move forward with our observation protocols and other documents, we plan to facilitate focus groups to gain valuable feedback.

(4) Be proactive and plan for sustainability

Our efforts have been well received thus far, yet the obstacles of a large, decentralized R1 institution remain. Without persistent and proactive efforts to communicate about the importance of teaching and the utility of PoET, attention could quickly be lost. As described earlier, we have taken deliberate steps to develop resources and establish CATE. Importantly as well, we are working to immediately onboard all new faculty with these principles by presenting them each year at NFTI and designing the entire day’s workshops around these principles, including using distinct icons for each principle to indicate which sessions address which principles. Through these efforts, we hope that PoET becomes normalized as a natural part of teaching for all faculty who spend time in the classroom. Without these intentional efforts to continue building on our successes, we run the risk of losing out to other endeavors. Other institutions should identify key opportunities to integrate their list of principles into the culture of the university so that they are used by faculty across all pockets of the university.

We are also working to anticipate and overcome future obstacles as we work toward university-wide implementation of PoET. Currently, we are focused on two major questions:

• How do we get the word out so everyone at UT knows about PoET?
• How do we help instructors who aren’t particularly inspired to worry about their teaching see the value of the principles?

CATE has taken on some of these challenges, yet most of our communication has, to this point, focused on those who are actively invested in teaching already. In the years that come, we will need to work towards sustainability plans and lean outwards and into departments through faculty meetings and retreats.

One clear path toward broad adoption would be integrating PoET into faculty evaluations for RPT. We have intentionally avoided this direction, however, to avoid undermining the grassroots-level trust we have built in this process. As we continue to socialize PoET as a tool for self-improvement, discussions about using PoET for summative assessment may arise. But we will always advocate that this decision be made by the faculty through shared governance processes, not administrative dictate.

(5) Take your time

Most importantly, however, we have learned that creating a list of principles that reflect the specific values of the faculty at our institution is not a quick process. These ideas took a long time to develop and adoption across the university will require significant culture change, which will similarly not be quick. TLI will continue to make faculty aware of PoET, guide faculty on how to use PoET to document teaching excellence, and seek to inspire faculty to think of creative and supportive ways to use PoET. This process will require a continued, consistent effort and investment of time. For universities seeking to implement a similar, grassroots effort, they must prioritize the time to do so. Rushing through the process will, necessarily, leave out voices and create barriers for embracing the ideas. But the efforts of developing a grassroots definition of teaching excellence are far more likely to result in support across the university and a change of institutional teaching culture.

Conclusion

As we reflected on our recommendations for other institutions seeking to replicate our process, we also considered a what-not-to-do list: don’t let administrators dictate the principles; don’t exclude faculty voices; don’t rush the process. All of these, as well as other pitfalls, however, can be avoided by returning to the guiding argument of our process: definitions of teaching excellence should come from grassroots efforts. While the principles we created may not be unique, our process is what sets our principles apart. Our ideal state would be for PoET to be woven into faculty culture throughout the University of Tennessee. Because we, ourselves, are consistently returning to the grassroots argument to guide our process, we believe that we are able to eventually make that ideal state a reality.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support and contributions of Drs. Bernie Issa and Lauren Whitnah, chairs of the TLC the year the project was conceived; Dr. Diane Kelly for her conceptualization of the TLI Summit; Dr. Chris Lavan for his early support and guidance; Dr. Mike Blum and CAS for the funding of CATE; and Dr. Josie Andrews for creating the teaching evaluation forms. We thank UT for their support of this initiative, and the many others who contributed and who we have not acknowledged here.

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