The Teaching Effectiveness Project is a multi-year, multi-phased initiative to bring greater consistency and equity to the evaluation of teaching across Saint Louis University. It will focus on aligning our teaching evaluation practices with the literature on effective, responsible evaluation. Ultimately, it will help the University to better define, document, enhance, evaluate, and recognize effective teaching in meaningful ways that align with our institutional identity. This project is an essential component of SLU's Academic Strategic Plan, adopted in the spring of 2023.
The project is a direct result of persistent and growing calls from SLU faculty to adopt a more consistent and equitable approach to teaching evaluation. Over the last several years, this need has been expressed in multiple ways:
The Faculty Senate recommended significant change in the annual evaluation of faculty performance, and in particular, in the area of teaching evaluation.
The Provost-Faculty Senate Gender Equity Committee has repeatedly identified the need for meaningful change in the evaluation of teaching, with a focus specifically on student course evaluations and the role these have historically played in teaching evaluation.
Deans, Chairs, and rank and tenure committees have expressed a need for more holistic evaluation of teaching.
Throughout the process of developing our new Academic Strategic Plan (ASP), individual faculty and academic leaders repeatedly identified teaching – its evaluation and valuing – as a significant focus area. This led to Teaching being the first priority in the ASP, with specific emphasis on defining and evaluating the kinds of teaching we aim to offer at SLU.
Faculty who have been engaged in SLU's NSF ADVANCE partnership grant with Seattle and Gonzaga Universities have echoed and amplified the calls for serious and substantive change in how teaching is evaluated at SLU.
Project Overview - prose view [3-page PDF]