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Curriculum Subcommittee Agenda January 02, 2025, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Approval of Minutes
• Program Proposals
• Semester Course Approval Reviews
• Other Business
• Adjourn

Documenting Teaching Excellence, Karin Dejonge-Kannan, Travis N. Thurston, Amanda Deliman, Amanda Morris, Anna Kuthy, Anne Cook, Beth Buyserie, Bethany B. Stone, Caroline Wienhold, Casandra E. Harper, Chris Kilgore, Cynthia Korpan, Elisabeth Schussler, Ferlin Mcgaskey, Gabrielle Stecher Woodward, Hannah Mae Lewis, James Agutter, Janette R. Hill, Jeff Spears, Jim Lamuth, Jordan Shipley, Kate Tregloan, Kim Hales, Letizia Guglielmo, Melissa E. Ko, Micael Morrone, Miranda Yaggi Rodak, Peggy Brickman, Raoul A. Mulder, Shannon M. Sipes, Sharon Lyman, Shihua Brazill, Stephen A. Klien, T. Adam Halstrom, Terri A. Dunbar, Victoria Mondelli, Vijay R. Kannan, Virginia Stormer

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Before we embark on a brief overview of how the book is structured and what it contains, we wish to draw readers’ attention to the sculpture on the cover of this book, and to the word “vital” in the subtitle of this book.

Open Educational Resources For And As Assessment, Eliana Elkhoury, Jako Olivier, Travis N. Thurston, Morgan Barker, Steven Clontz, Will Cross, Michael Tadeusz Dabrowski, Teresa Focarile, Hillary Fox, Angela George, Sharona Krinsky, Drew Lewis, Erin Mckenney, Lauren Mcmillan, Nalanda Roy, Zoë Soon, James Thibeault, David Tully, Lydia Watson, Sam Winemiller

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

The need to rethink assessment in higher education has become increasingly urgent due to the shift to remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and the recent introduction of various generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools. Globally, instructors are called to redesign their assessment practices to make them more innovative, authentic, and empowering.

13. Mentorship Matters: Documenting The Unseen Impact Of Instructor-Student Relationships, Jeff Spears, Amanda Deliman, Hannah Mae Lewis, Jim Lamuth, Kim Hales

Documenting Teaching Excellence

This chapter explores the critical yet often unrecognized role of documenting instructor mentorship as a core component of teaching excellence in higher education. Mentorship encompasses a range of instructor-to-student interactions, including academic guidance, psychosocial support, research support (graduate and undergraduate), and career exploration for students (DeAngelo, Mason, & Winters, 2016; Thiry & Laursen, 2011). Despite its importance, mentorship is rarely documented comprehensively in teaching documentation portfolios (Ocobock et al., 2022). By systematically capturing the multifaceted impacts of mentorship, instructors enhance their teaching portfolio and contribute to the broader discourse on teaching excellence. This chapter aims to empower instructors to demonstrate …

14. Loops, Badges, And Remixes: How Ctls Support Documenting Scholarly Teaching, Travis N. Thurston

Documenting Teaching Excellence

College instructors today face mounting pressure to document and demonstrate teaching excellence, but too often they confront ambiguous requirements disconnected from teaching values. However, what if the future of scholarly teaching depended on making instructors feel visible, validated, and valued in how their teaching is documented and shared? In the current climate, where burnout and disconnection run high, instructors need more than compliance checklists, they need structures of support that affirm their professional identity and invite them into a community of inquiry to support scholarly teaching.

15. Documenting Teaching Excellence: Applying Universal Design For Learning (Udl) In Communication Courses, Shihua Brazill

Documenting Teaching Excellence

As a professor in communications, I know firsthand the challenges and rewards of teaching diverse students in courses such as Presenting Technical Information, Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, and Intercultural Communication. These courses demand not only mastery of content but also the ability of students at varying levels of comfort and expertise to communicate effectively using a variety of media. My approach to teaching has been heavily influenced by the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which I have found to be an invaluable tool for creating inclusive, engaging, and dynamic learning environments. UDL has become essential to my pedagogy because …

16. Confronting "I Just Don't Have Time": An Argument For Seeking And Documenting Professional Learning, Sharon Lyman, Karin Dejonge-Kannan

Documenting Teaching Excellence

We confess our teaching is not always exemplary and our students often struggle to learn. We argue that intentionally pursuing professional learning is the only way to improve our teaching, and that documenting this learning is imperative when we make the case for teaching excellence. This chapter will examine the common lament of “I just don’t have time” for professional learning, followed by a discussion of how to exchange this self-sabotaging notion for a self-sustaining alternative, and a description of the benefits of documenting professional growth. The aim of this chapter is three-fold: to argue that “I just don’t have …

17. Our Teaching Excellence: Effective Teaching As An Inherently Collective Endeavor To Enhance Student Learning, Melissa E. Ko

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Higher education has long pursued excellence in its core pillars: research, service, and teaching. Yet, public trust in higher education is at an all-time low. In 2024, nearly 1 in 3 Americans reported little to no confidence in higher education (Nietzel, 2024). Another survey revealed that 1 in 2 Americans think a college degree is less important now for getting a well-paying job compared to 20 years ago (Pew Research Center, 2024). Individual faculty continue to secure tenure through demonstrated teaching excellence, yet higher education struggles to convince the American public of its effectiveness. Why does this discrepancy exist?

7. Integrating Research Into Coursework: Fostering Inclusive Pathways To Student Success, Nalanda Roy, Lauren Mcmillan

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

The financial burden of course materials on students can be substantial. The chapter Integrating Research into Coursework: Fostering Inclusive Pathways to Student Success explores efforts to alleviate these costs and create more inclusive opportunities. By leveraging no cost materials and open educational resources (OER), students can achieve their educational goals without incurring additional financial strain. Accessing these resources through libraries or library guides allows students to prepare effectively at the start of the semester and complete their courses successfully, paving the way for graduation. The chapter details how the first author’s project served as a gateway to fostering an equitable, …

1. Placing Students At The Heart Centre: Using A Compassionate Lens In The Selection And Use Of Open Assessment, Lydia Watson

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

This chapter will discuss the topic of compassion and its role in the selection and application of open educational assessment practices. Drawing on research and practice that centers compassion within assessment activities and everyday life, it will focus on four emerging themes, namely: understanding compassionate assessment, self-compassion and assessment, compassion for students in assessment, and compassion for faculty in assessment practices. It will propose that embracing and integrating open assessment practices offers a meaningful path forward.

2. Leveraging Open Pedagogy To Create An Authentic And Renewable Curriculum, Erin Mckenney, Sam Winemiller, Hillary Fox, David Tully, Will Cross

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

The high cost of course materials is a barrier for many students, and traditional assessments often fail to inspire engagement. To address these challenges, NC State University Libraries promotes open course materials and open-enabled practices. Since 2014, the Alt-Textbook Project has helped faculty incorporate Open Educational Resources (OER) into their syllabi, reducing textbook costs and supporting innovative educational approaches. This effort was enhanced with the Open Pedagogy Incubator, a multi- semester program bringing together librarians and interdisciplinary faculty to redesign courses around open- pedagogical practices. Dr. McKenney, an incubator participant, redesigned her advanced undergraduate course on Applied Ecology (AEC 400) …

6. Oer As Assessment; Assessment As Oer: Collaborative Oer Creation And Assessment In Language And Culture Courses, Michael Tadeusz Dabrowski, Angela George

Open Educational Resources For and As Assessment

This chapter describes the transformative integration of Open Educational Resources (OER) utilized as assessments in language courses at two distinguished Western Canadian universities. It explores how OER, underpinned by a commitment to collaborative learning and evaluation, reshape educational practices. Through collaborative maps, peer editing, and renewable assignments, educators and students collectively contribute to the creation of a repository of knowledge, embracing a pedagogical paradigm that values student engagement and deepens their understanding of OER. This process demonstrates the ability of OER to redefine academic assessment and collaboration, showcasing how OER can transform the educational experience into a more engaging, enriching, …

2. Triangulating Teaching Growth: A Three-Voice Approach To Evaluating And Documenting Your Teaching, Terri A. Dunbar, Peggy Brickman, Janette R. Hill

Documenting Teaching Excellence

For many universities, student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are synonymous with teaching evaluation. Universities typically administer surveys to students at the end of the semester, year after year, to solicit evaluations of their instructors’ teaching. Instructors report their scores as evidence of their teaching excellence for formal evaluations. Different academic units review these scores while making consequential decisions, such as raises or promotions. For better or worse, SETs are deeply embedded within the academic evaluation system.

4. Raising The Bar: An Administrator's Perspective On Documenting Teaching Excellence To Support Instructor And Student Development, Vijay R. Kannan

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Administrators at the department, college, or institutional level are well positioned to support instructor development. Department heads, who typically have responsibility for routine performance reviews, play a role in tenure and promotion decision making processes, and have a line of sight on data related to instructional performance, can and should play a particularly impactful role. Serving as a department head, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, and on a university level tenure and promotion committee gave me diverse perspectives on what effective teaching documentation looks like. Moreover, it shaped how I mentored, offered counsel, or approached conversations about teaching effectiveness, whether …

5. Teaching Excellence Fostered Through Institutional Collaboration: A Case For An Effective Assessment Rubric, Amanda Morris, Anna Kuthy

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Teaching excellence is a defining characteristic and ongoing challenge at small liberal arts institutions, where instructor independence and mission-driven education converge. Defining and measuring it in such contexts involves navigating instructor autonomy, institutional mission, administrative oversight, and accreditation requirements. This chapter presents a case-based approach to addressing these challenges at Brescia University, a small liberal arts school in Owensboro, KY. We offer an example of an implementable solution that fosters and documents teaching excellence while aligning with both generally accepted standards and the university’s mission. Additionally, we model a collaborative development process between the offices of the Academic Dean and …

6. The Creation Of A Teaching Excellence Framework: Defining, Measuring, And Facilitating Teaching Excellence, James Agutter, T. Adam Halstrom, Anne Cook

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Defining what constitutes teaching excellence is a crucial focus for faculty development to create deep learning opportunities in our classrooms and ensure our students’ success. However, establishing a single definition is challenging to standardize and quantify. We recognize outstanding teaching when we see and experience it — we all know the faculty members who spark curiosity, foster deep learning, and create memorable experiences for our students. Yet, how do we assess something so complex, nuanced, and profoundly influential? Excellent teaching varies based on the institution, the field, the context, the content, and the demographics of the students in a course. …

8. Developing A Framework And Multidimensional Evidence Matrix For Evaluating And Documenting Teaching Excellence At A Research-Intensive University, Raoul A. Mulder, Kate Tregloan

Documenting Teaching Excellence

On 19 August 2021, the Australian city of Melbourne marked an unenviable milestone: its citizens had recorded their 200th day enduring one of the longest and most arduous global lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

9. By The Faculty, For The Faculty: A Grassroots Effort To Define And Support Teaching Excellence, Virginia Stormer, Elisabeth Schussler, Chris Kilgore, Caroline Wienhold, Jordan Shipley, Ferlin Mcgaskey

Documenting 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 …

11. Me-Search Research: The Use Of A Self-Study Methodological Approach To Teaching Documentation, Cynthia Korpan

Documenting Teaching Excellence

As teaching in higher education becomes increasingly complex (De Courcy, 2015), documenting one’s teaching practice requires instructors1 to take a more nuanced approach. The diversity associated with teaching today, impacted by COVID (Scholkmann et al., 2024), the various teaching modalities now available (McManus et al., 2024), and the introduction of artificial intelligence into academia (Li, 2025; Sok & Heng, 2024), has created a concoction of elements available to each instructor. This means that every instructor, bringing their own philosophical and ontological approach to teaching, has a myriad of decisions to make about how to best teach each course to students. …

12. Teaching Excellence Plus: The Teaching Philosophy Statement As Creative Platform For Strategic Self-Promotion, Miranda Yaggi Rodak, Gabrielle Stecher Woodward

Documenting Teaching Excellence

Theoretically, the teaching philosophy statement (TPS) is a self-reflective document that articulates your core beliefs as an instructor about teaching and learning and explains your values, goals, and strategies for fostering student success. But let’s face it: the TPS can feel like the most awkward and performative of professional documents—an uncomfortable hurdle to jump with every application, annual review, and promotion, which makes many instructors, regardless of rank, dread writing (and rewriting) it. At its best, the TPS captures your authentic voice and professional identity, and it paints a clear picture of how you approach the classroom. Yet, in practice, …

Contributors, Karin Dejonge-Kannan, Travis N. Thurston, Amanda Deliman, Amanda Morris, Anna Kuthy, Anne Cook, Beth Buyserie, Bethany B. Stone, Caroline Wienhold, Casandra E. Harper, Chris Kilgore, Cynthia Korpan, Elisabeth Schussler, Ferlin Mcgaskey, Gabrielle Stecher Woodward, Hannah Mae Lewis, James Agutter, Janette R. Hill, Jeff Spears, Jim Lamuth, Jordan Shipley, Kate Tregloan, Kim Hales, Letizia Guglielmo, Melissa E. Ko, Michael Morrone, Miranda Yaggi Rodak, Peggy Brickman, Raoul A. Mulder, Shannon M. Sipes, Sharon Lyman, Shihua Brazill, Stephen A. Klien, T. Adam Halstrom, Terri A. Dunbar, Victoria Mondelli, Vijay R. Kannan, Virginia Stormer

Documenting Teaching Excellence

No abstract provided.

1. The Teaching Dossier As Genre: A Sotl-Informed Approach To Documenting Teaching Excellence, Shannon M. Sipes, Michael Morrone

Documenting Teaching Excellence

This chapter argues a teaching dossier (the primary outlet for documenting teaching effectiveness) is its own genre of academic writing and that the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) provides the most effective cross-disciplinary lens in which to engage with this genre. Salient defining characteristics of the genre are its purpose–to evaluate teaching quality, stakeholders–the faculty member who writes and complies the dossier and evaluating readers, and sub-genres such as teaching philosophy statements and curricula vitae. The genre’s core purpose, to evaluate teaching quality, also serves as a core purpose of SoTL, with peer review making the evaluations “akin to …

General Catalog 2025-2026, Utah State University

University Catalogs

This catalog contains information on the Academic Departments and Programs as well as Course Descriptions for the above school year at Utah State University.

Immersive Modeling Of Water Banking Elicits Local Knowledge To Explore Strategies To Get More Water To Great Salt Lake, Hadia Akbar, David E. Rosenberg

Civil and Environmental Engineering Student Research

This study used immersive online collaborative modeling of water banking to explore strategies to get more water to the declining Great Salt Lake (GSL). In a model session, each collaborator immersed in a water user role. They articulated a strategy to consume and bank water. Then they adapted their strategy in response to their available water, others’ choices, and the real-time discussion of choices. Collaborators included 29 farmers, ranchers, practitioners, and experts. Collaborators who personified agricultural users had the most varied strategies. They balanced economic viability, long-term sustainability, and land preservation. Pricing water was challenging, with prices ranging from $15 …

Racial-Ethnic Differences In The Associations Between Functional Disabilities And Subsequent Depression Among Community-Dwelling Midlife And Older Adults In The Us, Debasree Das Gupta, Uma Kelekar, Kallol Kumar Bhattacharyya, Sidney Carl Turner

Kinesiology and Health Science Faculty Publications

Background: The intersection of race/ethnicity with disability is a critical dimension of mental health outcomes in later ages that remains under-investigated.

Objective: We examined the role of race-ethnicity in moderating the associations between functional disabilities and subsequent depression among Americans 51 and older and stratified into the two age-groups of midlife (51-64) and older adults (≥65).

Methods: Using a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling Americans (≥51; n=7,475) in the 2016-2018 Health and Retirement Study, we conducted bivariate and multivariable regression analyses. Racial-ethnic groups included non-Hispanic (NH) Black, Hispanic, and NH White and a binary (0/1) outcome defined subsequent depression in …

Rethinking Behavior - Winter 2025, Midwest Symposium For Leadership In Behavior Disorders

ReThinking Behavior Magazine

A magazine for professionals serving children and youth with behavioral needs.

Winter 2025, Volume 8, Issue 2

Using A Token Economy In A First-Grade Classroom To Increase On-Task Behavior, Ana Kesler, Emma Preston, Milad Najafichaghabouri, Kristen R. Rolf

Special Education and Rehabilitation Counseling Faculty Publications

Token economies are an adaptable intervention used effectively in many settings to improve behavior, including schools. When used in schools, students are often given a board or chart on which to collect tokens (i.e., small items or marks) for desired behavior(s). Tokens are then exchanged for students’ preferred rewards. This chapter presents a case study of token economies implemented with five students who were unresponsive to class-wide (Tier 1) strategies in a general education first-grade classroom. The intervention was designed and implemented by a paraeducator who worked collaboratively with the classroom teacher to select students, develop intervention procedures, collect and …

Formation, Operation, And Maintenance Of A Community Advisory Board For Research With Lgbtq+ Parents, Aubrey Jones, Olivia S. Yinger, Rachel H. Farr, Keisa Fallin-Bennett, Sabrina Beiring, Cassi Crouse, Carolyn Greenstrom

Transforming Communities

Community-engaged research is becoming increasingly popular to promote health equity. Objective: The purpose of this paper is to describe the formation, operation, and maintenance of a community advisory board (CAB) of LGBTQ+ parents and healthcare providers who work with LGBTQ+ parents. Method: Using Newman and colleagues outline, we describe the formation, operation, and maintenance phases of our CAB process. Inclusion criteria for CAB members is as follows, CAB members must be 18 years of age or older, live in the U.S., and (a) self-identify as LGBTQ+ and have had a child in the NICU more than five years prior to …

Identifying The Types Of Collective Engagement Structures That Manifest In Middle Grade Mathematics Classrooms, Tye G. Campbell, Michael A. Lawson, Erin Rich, Sheunghyun Yeo, W. Boden Robertson

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

While the potential of collaborative problem solving in mathematics is well known, facilitating effective group work is often challenging. One reason for this persistent difficulty educators face with collaborative problem solving can be traced to research and practice models that are not well-equipped to attend to the complexity of group work. The emerging construct of “collective engagement structures” represents one novel framework designed to attend to the complexity and variation of individual and group experience in collaborative problem solving. This study extends initial theorizing on collective engagement by offering descriptive accounts of the different types of collective engagement structures that …

Early Detection Of Pediatric Permanent Hearing Loss: A Population-Based Retrospective Cohort Study, Janet Olds, Elizabeth M Fitzpatrick, Stuart G. Nicholls, Laura C. Rosella, Sarah G. Spruin, Marie M. Pigeon, Joanne M. Whittingam, James Macdougall, David M. Schramm, Eric I. Benchimol

Journal of Early Hearing Detection and Intervention

Evidence has indicated that Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) programs have lowered the age of identifying permanent hearing loss (PHL) in childhood, a first step to intervention. However, limited research has compared the age of diagnosis before and after implementation in one jurisdiction across the full range of PHL.

Methods: Children diagnosed with PHL in Ottawa, Canada were identified from the Child Hearing Lab database at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario and linked to Ontario health administrative data. Age of identification of PHL of children born in the pre-infant hearing program (IHP) era (1991-2002) was compared to those …