Draft submitted by Standard 6 Committee: Sheryl Culotta (chair), Paul Erickson, Mark Hovey, Ishita Mukerji, Nicole Stanton, Michael Whitcomb, Alison Williams
Standard Six: The institution supports teaching and learning through a well-qualified faculty and academic staff, who, in structures and processes appropriate to the institution, collectively ensure the quality of instruction and support for student learning. Scholarship, research, and creative activities receive support appropriate to the institution’s mission. The institution’s faculty has primary responsibility for advancing the institution’s academic purposes through teaching, learning, and scholarship.
DESCRIPTION
As of fall 2021, Wesleyan has 464 faculty: 197 tenured, 80 tenure-track, 86 non-tenure-track faculty in ongoing professor of the practice, adjunct, or artist-in-residence positions, 87 visiting faculty, and 14 staff members who teach undergraduate courses. Four additional instructors teach in the Graduate Liberal Studies program. The student:faculty ratio is 9:1. There are processes in place in Wesleyan’s long-range planning to assess the composition and adequacy of faculty lines. In 2017 the provost received approval from the president and Board of Trustees to increase the number of tenure-track faculty lines by 6, and professors of the practice by 8. In the new strategic plan, the provost requests additional faculty to ensure that all students have opportunities to work one-on-one with faculty.
The allocation of open faculty lines is determined annually by the provost in consultation with the divisional deans, associate provosts, and president. Available tenure-track lines are always filled with a tenure-track hire, but not always in the same department. Each year in November, the provost sends chairs an official call for search requests. Visiting faculty requests are reviewed in December and January, and ongoing faculty requests, including tenure-track and professors of the practice, are reviewed in February and March.
The professor of the practice (PoP) position was established in 2015 as part of a conscious effort to move away from contingent visiting faculty appointments to longer-term appointments. Replacing previous visiting positions that were renewed annually (sometimes for many years in a row) with 3-year renewable positions has provided more stability to these faculty by providing multi-year contracts, regular raises, and a path to promotion. Assistant PoPs receive 3-year and associate PoPs receive 4-year renewable contracts. The focus of the PoP is teaching, and in some cases administrative duties. Research is not expected, though if a PoP is actively engaging in research Wesleyan may provide support via Grants in Support of Scholarship.
The rollout of the PoP position experienced some difficulties. A few PoPs have been appointed in academic centers rather than traditional departments, and those faculty have needed help integrating into the life of the University, understanding how things work, and finding appropriate mentoring, all of which would have come more naturally in a traditional department. There have also been uncertainties regarding how PoPs should be evaluated. The initial plan was for reappointment cases to not go before the Advisory Committee because Advisory’s docket was already too long; however, many faculty would like Advisory to oversee these reappointments and in May 2021 the Continuing Faculty Committee submitted a proposal to Academic Council advising on reappointment, promotion, and benefit policies for PoPs (as well as adjuncts, artists-in-residence, and university professors). The Advisory Committee is reviewing this proposal and is expected to make recommendations sometime in spring 2022.
Academic Affairs is continuing to work on integrating PoPs into the Wesleyan system. For example, a PoP representative was added to the CBC in 2019-20. Overall, the PoP position represents a significant improvement over the previous visiting positions. In particular, in Division 3 there were long-term visitors serving as lab instructors who now have more stability and better benefits as PoPs. And the PoP position has allowed us to add hybrid designer positions (costume, lighting, etc.) to the arts departments that have long been needed.
Academic Affairs continues to hire a small number of per-course and full-time visitors for one semester or one year (and in certain circumstances occasionally two years). These positions fill small holes during unpaid faculty leaves, or take advantage of Wesleyan’s location to bring professionals from New York to add to our curriculum.
The Library currently has 18 librarians, 17 library technicians, and 6 other professional staff. Following a wave of generational retirements beginning in 2018, roughly 25% of the librarians are new to Wesleyan. With each opportunity, the Library works with faculty to understand their current and future teaching and research needs. Prior to hiring a new science librarian, the Library surveyed and met with Division 3 faculty to determine their research and teaching needs. As a result of these conversations, the Library rescoped the position to include support for data management and a deeper understanding of their research process, and a new Data and STEM Education Librarian began in September 2021.
Graduate teaching assistants are employed by Math and Music as part of the professional training of graduate students. In Music, graduate TAs also allow Wesleyan to offer one-of-a-kind teaching, such as steel drum band or koto lessons. In other departments, graduate students typically serve as assistants in lab courses, but not as primary teachers. A graduate pedagogy training course, which recently added training from the Office of Equity & Inclusion on inclusive teaching and implicit bias, is required of all new graduate students.
Wesleyan also employs a great number of undergraduate course assistants to run help sessions and provide additional assistance to students. The Office of Equity & Inclusion and the Center for Pedagogical Innovation developed a new TA Toolkit workshop to provide instruction on inclusive teaching for students who support teaching in any capacity.
APPRAISAL
There is a well-defined search process for all faculty searches. The department names a search committee which meets with Academic Affairs and Equity and Inclusion to review the process. This involves discussion of implicit and explicit bias and how it can creep into searches in many ways, for example through letters of recommendation and overemphasis on scholarly pedigree. Job ads are approved by Academic Affairs, taking into account equity and immigration issues (the job ad being central to Wesleyan’s ability to obtain a green card for international hires). The job ad is then posted in the Chronicle of Higher Education and in more specialized locations. The department is required to reach out to colleagues to build a diverse applicant pool. After initial departmental review, which can include Zoom first-round interviews, the department makes a report to the Provost and the Dean of Equity and Inclusion, describing the search and requesting permission to bring a short list of candidates to campus. The Provost sometimes pushes back at this point if she or he does not think the department has made sufficient diversity efforts.
The short-list candidates visit campus, where they meet the department and give a talk. They also meet the dean of their division and a representative from the Advisory Committee to go over Wesleyan’s tenure process. The receive basic information about Wesleyan, including the department’s tenure expectations document and information about benefits and immigration. After these interviews, the department ranks the candidates and makes a recommendation to the Provost, who makes the final decision regarding to whom to make an offer. The Provost and Dean then negotiate with the candidate to finalize the job offer.
Wesleyan revises this process frequently, with the goal of building more diverse pools and hiring more faculty of color. Wesleyan has committed to at least half of all new tenure-track hires in the three years 2021-23 being BIPOC faculty, and exceeded that goal with new hires starting in 2021. We added language to our job ads requesting candidates to describe their approach to inclusive teaching, and we are in the process of adding a process advocate for each search, focused on ensuring candidates are judged appropriately, beginning in 2020-21. There is a greater focus on inclusive hiring practices among the faculty, and this is emphasized in the mandatory meeting of search committees with the Vice President of Equity and Inclusion.
Wesleyan has also begun to cultivate applicant pools years in advance. We joined the Liberal Arts Diversity Officers (LADO) C3 program that builds capacity through mentoring graduate students and postdocs, and we hope to make broader use of conferences and organizations for BIPOC scholars. Wesleyan just formed a chapter of SACNAS, led by an early-career tenure-track faculty member. We are adding teaching fellows as potential visiting positions beginning in the 2022-23 visitor request process (in Fall 2021). These teaching fellows are intended to support early-career BIPOC scholars interested in teaching at a liberal arts college. We also have an opportunity hire policy, which allows us to create a position in a department if there is a strong case for a specific hire that will add to the diversity of the department; that case should include a collective plan for addressing inclusivity so that work does not fall disproportionately on the new hire.
We do face some challenges. Hiring in fields like Economics and Computer Science, where there are so many varied opportunities for PhDs, is a challenge. We need to find candidates who are truly interested in teaching and doing research at a liberal arts college that weighs those contributions equally. This has worked well in Computer Science in recent years, but has been more challenging in Economics, with some great successes and some hires who quickly moved on to jobs outside academia. Some science faculty think that our startup packages are too low. This is partly because Wesleyan has such strong research compared to our peer schools that our science faculty compare our start-up packages to those at R1 universities. However, we have been able to hire successfully in the sciences. The fact that we offer graduate programs in the sciences, unlike almost all of our peer liberal arts colleges, helps us recruit strong faculty.
Wesleyan has many initiatives running and processes in place to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion across campus, and many of these are run through the Office for Equity & Inclusion (OEI), as well as Academic Affairs. OEI conducts yearly training of the Advisory Committee on implicit bias and its impact on the evaluation of faculty. The workshop, which takes place before any deliberations of promotions are held, includes measures to minimize bias and cognitive errors in the review of dossiers. OEI also collaborates with a number of offices to promote equitable and inclusive practices both in and outside of the classroom. These efforts are highlighted in a ‘Diversity Summit’ at the beginning of the spring semester.
The Pathways to Inclusive Education programs begin with two pre-orientation programs, WesMaSS and First Things First. These programs are designed to build cohorts of mutual support and introduce students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM and first generation college and low income (FGLI) students respectively to available academic and personal resources available on campus. OEI has hired a Civil Rights/Title IX student intern to help improve communication with students about resources available when they feel they have experienced bias or sexual misconduct.
OEI also manages our Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Program and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship (MMUF) program, both designed to provide students with research and mentoring to prepare them for successful graduate school careers. These programs are discussed in Standard 5. In addition, OEI provides resources for faculty wishing to employ best practices for creating inclusive classrooms. These include one-on-one support and resource materials available online.
With support from a variety of sources, departments have made a conscious effort to include scholars from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to give lectures. There has been a notable increase in scholars of color and scholars from underrepresented identities giving seminars in the past year. The College of Letters (COL) initiated a speaker series to help the college to think about issues of diversity and inclusion in the COL curriculum (where the impact will primarily be on our teaching) and in our respective fields as scholars. In Spring 2021 COL offered a series of five talks focused on Islamic Intellectual Traditions, a field that has long represented a gap in our teaching and research despite its relevance to the work we do as teachers and scholars.
Academic Affairs asked departments to update their tenure expectations with an addendum related to the Covid-19 pandemic. These documents are provided along with the appointment letter to all new faculty.
We have seen a dramatic increase in the numbers of students requesting academic accommodations in the past few years. The campus-wide Accessibility Committee, is working with Accessibility Services, faculty, and students to review the process of obtaining accommodations for students with disabilities. While our New Faculty Orientation includes a session on the accommodation process, faculty who have been here for a while are often not familiar with the process. The Office for Equity & Inclusion, Accessibility Services, and the Office of Faculty Development are collaborating to conduct workshops for all faculty to familiarize them with the various methods for providing students with tools needed to access learning and demonstrate their knowledge, regardless of learning, physical, sensory, health, psychiatric, or other disabilities and to share pedagogical tools for universal design in classrooms, which will benefit all students.
NSM faculty recently authored a petition which pledges to combat racism at all levels in science and math, and commits the signers to certain actions such as bringing in more diverse seminar speakers, hiring diverse TAs and practicing inclusive pedagogy. Student-faculty dialogues, typically one per semester, are facilitated by CIS and OEI where for example, best practices regarding teaching and creating inclusive classrooms are discussed and incorporated into documents for distribution to other faculty. The College of Integrative Sciences has committed to incorporating equity and inclusion into their senior colloquium, where in the first semester students discuss topics such as imposter syndrome, stereotype threat and implicit bias.
In 2019, six black faculty, 5 of whom were women, left Wesleyan. Of those six, all left for great opportunities (4 went to R1 institutions, the other two went to strong institutions closer to family), though we are also aware that at least two of them did not feel entirely comfortable at Wesleyan or in their department. We recognize that while there are always reasons for a departure, if the person was happy at Wesleyan those reasons may not have carried the day. These losses were the impetus to reflect on issues around faculty retention. The VP for Equity & Inclusion is working directly with departments to actively address climate issues. When departments have had a particularly bad climate issue, we have hired mediators to come in to try to triage the situation and help the faculty in the department work through their issues.
An equity audit is being conducted in 2021-22 for all departments on campus to examine six categories: curriculum and pedagogy, access and success, faculty recruitment and retention, scholarship, climate, and resources and engagement. Results will inform departments about their strengths and deficits as we seek to build a more inclusive campus, and will inform the development of a strategic plan for equity and inclusion.
In Fall 2021, Wesleyan joined with Connecticut College and Trinity College to form a Black Faculty Consortium. The group focuses on mentoring, support, wellness and building community for Black faculty across all three institutions. Academic Affairs also piloted a new dependent care initiative in 2017 that has now been standardized as part of the Grants in Support of Scholarship program. Through this program faculty can apply for up to $400 to cover dependent care costs while they are traveling or participating in research or other career development.
In March 2020, Wesleyan faculty voted to require that every department, program, and college record its official mentoring policy with Academic Affairs, and that by fall 2020 Academic Affairs establish an official mentoring program to provide every new tenure-track, PoP, and adjunct faculty member with a faculty mentor from outside their department, program, or college. The pilot program developed by the Provost provides for mentoring communities, each with one senior faculty member and approximately 2-3 junior faculty members, with the goal that each member will serve as a mentor to each other. Mentorship is also an area of focus in our overall commitment to recruiting and retaining faculty historically underrepresented in the academy. Modeled on a project of Dr. Freeman Labowski, we offer faculty an opportunity to participate in an eminent scholars program that pairs Wesleyan faculty with a noted artist or scholar in their field, particularly if their discipline or identity is not represented on campus or in their department.
Wesleyan joined the National Center for Faculty Development & Diversity (NCFDD) as an institutional member in February 2021 following a 3-year pilot in which we offered individual faculty memberships and sent a few junior faculty members to the Faculty Success Program bootcamp. By December 2021, 115 faculty had set up memberships, and those faculty had engaged in 758 active sessions.
The Office of Faculty Career Development, run by a rotating faculty director and housed in the Center for Pedagogical Innovation, offers professional development training throughout the year on a wide range of topics including research, leadership, technology, grant writing, professional speaking, and writing for the public. Every semester the OFCD helps coordinate the formation of a variety of faculty “communities” focused on teaching, research, and professional development, and the office offers one-on-one consultations about all aspects of faculty life.
Wesleyan offers an annual Grants in Support of Scholarship (GISOS) program which provides funding for projects (up to $5,000), teaching and pedagogy (up to $3,000), meetings (up to $2,600), student-faculty research internships, dependent care funding for professional development (up to $400), and general support (up to $750). Funds are awarded on a competitive basis to eligible faculty (all faculty, including visitors on a 3-year or longer contract).
Wesleyan offers a number of resources and avenues to pursue redress of grievances by faculty, staff, and students. Many of these are discussed in the faculty handbook, section 3.4, “Standards and Procedures for Regulating Conduct.” For more information about grievances, see Standard 9.
Faculty compensation is managed by Academic Affairs with direction from the President’s office and Finance. The general goal is to be competitive with our peers, and we measure this by how effective Wesleyan is at hiring new professors and retaining faculty, as well as through review of comparative compensation data from peer institutions made available by AAUP. If Academic Affairs finds that Wesleyan is unsuccessful in hiring new professors and must increase starting salaries in negotiation, the provost can raise starting salaries in the following year. At the same time, Academic Affairs is sensitive to the need to prevent salary compression. We do not raise starting salaries in such a way that brings in new professors at or above the pay scale of current assistant professors. Academic Affairs also periodically conducts salary reviews to address any inequities that may evolve over time.
The faculty Compensation and Benefits Committee (CBC), a Standing Committee of the Faculty, is charged with consulting with Academic Affairs, Finance, and the President’s Office on issues of compensation and benefits changes. They provide feedback and serve as a vehicle for presenting faculty concerns. At times, questions arise regarding Wesleyan’s goal of remaining in the median of our peer group, and even the makeup of the group. The current peer group was developed collaboratively between Academic Affairs and CBC. It is a peer group of 16 schools that was agreed on by the faculty and the administration in 2002-03. Professors at rank have been at or above the median since 2014-15, Associate Professors have been at or above since 2016-2017, and Assistant Professors have been at or above since 2013-14. That positive trajectory is a result of a concerted effort by the President’s Office, Finance, Academic Affairs, and the faculty to address a period of being below the middle.
Faculty often say that they are expected to be at the top of their field, so why should we not be at the top of our peer group in compensation as well? In point of fact, Wesleyan does come out well in Inside Higher Education’s annual report on faculty salaries, usually ranking 5th or so in the list of highest full professor salaries at liberal arts schools. In addition, the peer group contains some ”aspirational peers” that include R1 institutions with professional schools making their pay range significantly higher than all similarly sized liberal arts institutions. It is more difficult to get comparison data for PoP, Adjunct, Artist in Residence, and visitor compensation. Academic Affairs recognizes the need to increase PoP and visitor base salaries and has been gradually increasing them over the last few years. The President’s Office has committed to making a significant investment in raising those salaries for 2022-23.
Faculty governance supports the academic and institutional mission of the university through standing committees of the faculty and academic council. These committees review educational policies, faculty rights and responsibilities, assignment of honors, budgets, and compensation. Committees of the academic council are involved in the promotion and tenure process. These committees are composed of approximately 70 faculty from all ranks and divisions at the university. With respect to leadership and service, faculty governance is currently working on a proposal to revise election procedures to ensure greater participation of all groups. To more formally recognize faculty efforts in service and leadership, the annual merit form has been modified to include a section on equity and inclusion activities and a section to report service to the broader community. In addition, Academic Affairs established a new Faculty Leadership and Service Prize pilot with the first prizes awarded in fall 2021.
The path to tenure for tenure-track Wesleyan faculty is marked by several significant signposts, so that any concerns may be addressed before the tenure decision. There is a departmental second-year review in the third semester at Wesleyan, a reappointment decision in the spring of the third year, a departmental fifth-year review, and finally the tenure decision in the fall of the 7th year. These timelines may be delayed by parental or medical leaves.
The reviews for tenure-track faculty are based on written departmental expectations of tenure. Each short-listed job candidate receives this document for their department, and they are publicly available on the Academic Affairs website. Each document addresses expectations for tenure and for promotion to full within the three canonical areas of teaching, research, and colleagueship. Second and fifth-year reviews are in the form of letters from the chair of the department to the candidate, reviewed by the Provost. The reappointment decision is more formal, with a departmental recommendation to the Advisory Committee followed by a recommendation from that committee to the Provost and President. The tenure decision is similar, but it involves external evaluators of research, the Review and Appeals Board, and the Board of Trustees. Promotion to full professor is similar, though without the intermediate reviews and reappointment.
We are discussing ways to formalize peer evaluation of teaching. Currently, departments may include peer evaluations in their evaluation to Advisory, but we do not yet have a systematic procedure for this. We also changed the teaching evaluations, as addressed below, but faculty are not entirely satisfied with the new form, so there may be additional changes to the form in the future. We also face the more short-term issue of coping with the pandemic, and the restrictions it placed on faculty research. As mentioned above, each department wrote a codicil to their tenure expectations to address the pandemic, but we will see how this plays out over the next few years. Another issue we have tried to address is implicit bias. The Advisory Committee receives training on implicit bias at the beginning of each year, but departments do not receive such training, and there have been cases where that lack is clearly visible.
As mentioned above, the reappointment and promotion process for PoPs has been in flux. Since the PoP position is intended to be flexible, each position has a different mixture of duties, so it can be difficult to find a uniform evaluation process for them. At the moment, the PoP reappointment process is: the department writes a recommendation to the Provost, and the three academic deans, two associate provosts, and the Provost vote, with the final decision belonging to the President in consultation with the Provost. The process for promotions for PoPs is similar but also involves the Advisory Committee. However, the faculty have expressed a desire for the Advisory Committee to have a role in the reappointment process, as well.
Tenured faculty submit an annual report along with an updated CV each year to receive a merit review. The department chair then submits merit recommendations for faculty in the department to the dean of the division. Our current system has four categories of merit; across the board only (10 percent of faculty), merit (35 percent), high merit (35 percent), and distinctive merit (20 percent). Department chairs generally round up these percentages, leaving the dean to try to balance between different departments, and the Provost, in conversation with the deans, to balance between different divisions. Overall, this has worked well. The biggest complaints have been from people who receive high merit in a given year but think they should receive distinctive merit. When this process was first established, the faculty created a Merit Committee to hear these appeals. So few appeals were submitted, however, that the faculty disbanded the committee in 2017-18 and now appeals go to the tenured faculty on the CBC who make a recommendation to the President.
Looking forward, the biggest issue is not about the merit system, but rather the percentage increase. Wesleyan has had a 4 percent raise pool for faculty and 3 percent for staff for many years. During the pandemic, there was a salary freeze, so that neither faculty nor staff received raises in July 2020 because Wesleyan faced significant financial challenges. However, those challenges turned out to be less severe than anticipated, due to federal financial support and unexpected endowment growth in 2020-21. This has led to pressure to try to make up for the salary freeze in some way. In addition, the 4 percent raise has worked well in a time of relative economic stability, but if we enter a less stable economic environment, it may need to be adjusted. In Fall 2021, for example, the inflation rate looks high, so faculty are saying that 4 percent is too low. However, no faculty said that 4 percent was too high in the year when inflation was at one percent or lower, though some trustees did bring up this point. Overall, Wesleyan would prefer to have a predictable yearly pool increase that more or less tracks the expected tuition increases, so that expenses and revenue can stay in line.
The teaching load for tenure-track faculty is 2/2 or the equivalent, and the teaching load for PoPs, who do not have research responsibilities is 3/2 or the equivalent.
Student teaching evaluations are made available electronically to every student in every class. Students are strongly encouraged to submit evaluations for their courses, and students who have submitted an evaluation for every course they are enrolled in are able to view their final grades a few weeks earlier than students who have not submitted all of their evaluations. Data from teaching evaluations are regularly reviewed by the faculty instructor, the chair of the department, the dean of the division, and by the Advisory committee when a faculty member goes up for tenure or promotion.
Teaching evaluations have been controversial at Wesleyan for a number of years now, and much time and effort has been invested in trying to improve the process, including the content of the form, the method of delivery, and the use of the resulting data. EPC spent a year in 2018-19 reviewing the content of the form and developing an updated version, but the Advisory Committee did not find the updated version satisfactory. EPC may revisit the form. The Office for Equity and Inclusion offers training each year for members of the Advisory Committee on issues around biases in teaching evaluations. We have also experienced a decline in student completion of evaluations.
Faculty have raised concerns about our heavy reliance on student teaching evaluations, so in fall 2018 the provost constituted an ad-hoc committee to develop and recommend a system of peer observations of teaching. The committee consisted of five faculty and one representative from Academic Affairs. This committee met throughout 2018-19 but came to the conclusion that introducing a summative system before Wesleyan had much experience with a formative system would not be wise. Not satisfied with this result, the provost charged a second committee comprised of three tenure-track and three tenured faculty members from across the divisions, plus a representative from Academic Affairs, with reviewing the entire process by which we evaluate teaching and also considering whether peer observations and reviews of other evidence of teaching should be part of that process. The committee met ten times between October 2019 and April 2021 and presented its ideas to and solicited feedback from about 100 members of the faculty during this development phase. Following this feedback, the committee produced a preliminary report that was discussed with the provost and the Faculty Executive Committee, then updated slightly, and made available to all members of the faculty. The committee presented its report during an April 2021 meeting of the full faculty.
The committee proposed to expand the scope of evidence used to evaluate the quality of teaching at Wesleyan. Specifically, tenure and promotion reviews conducted by departments and the Advisory Committee should be required to weigh evidence of pedagogical success in addition to student evaluations of teaching. The types of additional evidence would be determined by each department. Peer teaching committees would meet with each candidate at least once per semester to discuss the candidate’s teaching and gather the additional evidence (see figure below). Peer teaching committees would report this additional evidence to the relevant academic units involved in reviewing the candidate’s teaching.
The goals of the committee’s proposal include the following. First, the review process should be as fair as possible; expanding the scope of evidence used in reviews is intended to reduce well-documented bias from student evaluations of teaching. Second, the review process should be more transparent; proposed meetings of peer teaching committees should promote dialog between candidates and peers, leading to greater mutual understanding of teaching goals, how to achieve them, and the candidate’s degree of success along the way. Third, faculty peers should support their tenure-track colleagues as the latter adapt to Wesleyan’s culture; proposed peer teaching committees offer a structure to exercise support and formative assessment. Fourth, tenure-track faculty should have more agency in the process leading to reviews of their teaching for tenure and promotion; proposed peer teaching committees and their rules of operation should give tenure-track faculty more say in those conversations.
The committee’s proposal is not without challenges. The major practical challenge is how to align the proposed peer teaching committees with Wesleyan’s new mentoring initiative. The current plan is to leave it to departments to work out that alignment. Another challenge is that proposed peer teaching committees blur the lines between formative and summative assessment. Some faculty are resistant to mixing formative and summative assessment even though it happens routinely when they teach their students. A final challenge is convincing departments and the Advisory Committee that the requirement to expand the scope of evidence used to evaluate teaching quality is necessary and worthwhile. The proposal has yet to be subjected to a vote by the faculty and the Academic Council, but appeared to be well received by the faculty that attended meetings held by the committee in Spring 2021.
Prior to the pandemic, all fall and spring courses were conducted in person (with the exclusion of partial-credit language courses conducted via Mango). During the pandemic when that was not possible, Wesleyan offered courses remotely. The intention moving forward is to continue fall and spring courses fully in person because we feel that the interpersonal interactions among faculty and students are an important part of the residential college experience.
Most of Wesleyan’s undergraduate classes are small; in fall 2021, one in five enrolled fewer than 10 students and 74% enrolled fewer than 20 students. Conversely, less than one percent of classes enrolled 50 or more students. Wesleyan faculty offer various class formats (a total of ten formats are offered, including lectures, seminars, studio courses, performance courses, lab courses, and discussion courses), with just over one-quarter of classes offered as lecture-discussion courses, and 21% offered as seminars.
In December 2020, faculty approved a resolution that “faculty shall generally distribute a syllabus within the first week of any course’s semester or term, with exceptions limited to small and upper-level (400+) and partial-credit courses.” With this new resolution, faculty committed to ensuring that all faculty make it clear to students how and where to access the information and resources they will need to participate fully in a course.
Many of the initiatives around innovative teaching have come through the Center for Pedagogical Innovation (CPI). CPI is intended to inspire, support, and disseminate pedagogical innovations on campus by providing the infrastructural resources, logistical assistance, and training and mentoring needed to design, test, and deliver innovative courses, instructional materials, formats or modes of delivery, and advising or mentoring programs.
Prior to the pandemic, CPI, ITS, and the Library regularly hosted a Compass Workshop Series each semester, in which faculty and staff meet to learn about and discuss the kinds of innovative pedagogies and technological methods they are using at Wesleyan. In response to the pandemic, this partnership developed the “Summer of Learning” which was a rich and comprehensive set of workshops and trainings led by external and internal experts to help faculty to prepare high quality courses that are resilient to changes in teaching modalities.
In the fall 2021 semester, CPI invited course instructors to participate in remote teaching cohorts, in which participants observed each other’s classes and met to discuss their experiences and what was working or not working in their online courses. The success of the remote teaching cohorts was instrumental in the Office for Faculty Career Development forming similar teaching communities for the spring 2021 semester.
CPI also provides internal grants to faculty to encourage and support development and implementation of pedagogical innovations in teaching. These grants may support attending workshops or conferences on innovative pedagogical approaches, guest speakers, employing student assistants to support the development and integration of innovative pedagogical approaches into new or existing courses, as well as purchasing equipment or software to support effective instruction.
Since 2017-18, we have offered a faculty-led faculty seminar on Race & Pedagogy. Each year the readings and focus have differed, but each year 10-13 faculty have met regularly over one or both semesters to discuss effective teaching of race and ethnicity.
All ongoing faculty (tenure-track, PoP, adjunct) participate in pre-major advising. Every new student is assigned a pre-major faculty advisor before arriving on campus first year. In most cases, that faculty member will remain that student’s advisor until the student declares a major in spring of the sophomore year. Occasionally students request a change of advisor, or the advisor becomes unavailable, and the student is reassigned to another pre-major advisor.
Pre-major advising is assigned on a rotating schedule: Year 1: 3-9 new pre-major advisees are assigned (number determined by the faculty member’s overall advising load), Year 2: 3-9 new pre-major advisees are assigned, Year 3: no new pre-major advisees are assigned and the faculty member just continues to advise current sophomore pre-major advisees, Year 4: no new pre-major advisees (this year is intended to be the sabbatical year), then the following year the rotation begins again.
The range of 3-9 pre-major advisees intends to help off-set inequities in major advising loads, so that faculty who have the most major advisees would receive only 3 pre-major advisees, while those who have the fewest major advisees may receive 9 pre-major advisees. Prior to the use of Zoom, we had authority to assign up to 9 advisees, but in reality only assigned a maximum of 7 because it would have been impossible for an advisor to meet with 9 students individually during the allotted time in new student orientation; but now that some of these meetings may be held via Zoom, we have begun to use this full range.
Major advising is overseen by each department. Faculty in some of the most popular departments have large major advising loads; this issue is compounded by additional major/minor advisees for those faculty who also support interdisciplinary majors, minors, and certificates. Surveys find that students are generally satisfied with their major advising. For example, satisfaction with advising in the major among the class of ‘21 was 81 percent, a full 20 points higher than satisfaction with pre-major advising.
As seen below, in fall 2021 the average advising load was 13 students (among those faculty actively advising). There is, however, wide variation with advising loads ranging from one student to 52. With an average load of 11 advisees, faculty in the arts and humanities have slightly lower advising loads, on average, than faculty in the social sciences or natural sciences & mathematics (each with an average of 15). Advising loads do not vary by faculty sex.
Students are asked to complete an advising evaluation form. This form is made available to the faculty advisor, but is considered confidential and is not available to anyone else. Some faculty find this feedback very helpful, while other faculty do not read the evaluations.
Research and Scholarship: Wesleyan support of faculty scholarship occurs through many different avenues. Significant institutional support of scholarship occurs through robust library collections, a relatively generous sabbatical policy (eligibility to apply after six semesters of teaching), funding of start-up costs for new faculty, and renovation of space needed for scholarship, such as laboratories and performance spaces. The university has also engaged in a greater effort to highlight faculty scholarship through annual research prizes (launched in 2017-18), lunches sponsored by the President’s office to showcase faculty research, and equity fellowships designed to support underrepresented faculty in their scholarship pursuits. The university further supports faculty research through funding of small research grants, travel to conferences, student internships, subventions, and other printing costs.
Much of faculty scholarship occurs in partnership with students and these successful collaborations occur across the divisions. Notable examples of this type of work are the Wesleyan Media Project, dance students performing with a company in New York City, and students in a Genomics Analysis class contributing to a published article. Faculty-student internships, offered through Academic Affairs, also provide direct funding of faculty scholarship projects involving students.
Wesleyan also has many colleges and centers that support interdisciplinary scholarship, typically at the intersection of fields. Many of these colleges and centers support this work through internships for students, funding for seminar speakers, and hosting of informal gatherings for faculty to discuss their scholarship. Some examples of faculty support through centers and colleges are the College of the Environment Think Tank, the Center of the Humanities cross disciplinary weekly lecture series, Traveler’s Lab, Fries Center for Global studies support of international faculty exchange opportunities and the College of Integrative Sciences summer research program which supports over 170 students each summer to work on faculty research projects.
Pandemic effects on faculty scholarship have been quite pronounced and the pandemic has impacted all areas of scholarship. Many faculty members were unable to travel to foreign universities and libraries for their scholarly research. For those faculty whose primary scholarship activities occur on site, social distancing reduced the amount of student training and participation. As recently documented in Nature Communications, the pandemic has led to a significant decline in the implementation of new projects and a reduction in the number of projects. The impacts of this reduction are expected to be long lasting. Continued support of faculty scholarship particularly in fomenting new research projects will be critical going forward. The university has addressed some of these impacts through additional scholarship funding from the provost, which allowed faculty members to continue research interrupted by the pandemic.
Academic Affairs offered tenure-track faculty up to 2 additional years to conduct their research before going up for tenure to recognize that many faculty—and particularly female faculty—had so many additional responsibilities during the pandemic (as well as situations in which some could not travel or access research materials) that many could not continue the normal pace of their scholarship. In addition, Academic Affairs offered all faculty who took a sabbatical in spring 2020 one additional semester of eligibility towards their next sabbatical. Academic Affairs also offered special funding for dependent care and some additional research funds during the pandemic.
PROJECTIONS
- Three new faculty lines have been proposed to help meet increasing curricular demands
- We anticipate that there will be longer-term impacts of the pandemic on productivity and output across the divisions which we will need to take into consideration as we plan for the future
- Future of remote teaching at Wesleyan
- Post-pandemic, fall and spring will return to a fully residential model
- Remote learning will continue in Summer Session, Winter Session, and GLS, and will occur in some new pilots being developed to bring Wesleyan’s resources to additional students
- Evaluation of teaching
- We anticipate there will be a new proposal regarding peer evaluation
- We anticipate the possibility of changes to the content and/or use of the student evaluation form