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   from the issue of February 17, 2005

     
 
UNL Peer Review of Teaching Project Wins National Recognition

 BY KIM HACHIYA, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

A ten-year-old program to improve teaching at UNL has won national recognition.

 
Amy Goodburn, Paul Savory and Amy Burnett are co-directors of the Peer Review Project. Photo by Brett Hampton.
 Amy Goodburn, Paul Savory and Amy Burnett are co-directors of the Peer Review Project. Photo by Brett Hampton.

UNL's Peer Review of Teaching project received a TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award Certificate of Excellence. The award was announced Feb. 14 in Washington, D.C., at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education. UNL's program was one of only three that were selected by the judges to receive a Certificate of Excellence in the competitive award. The grand-prize winner, Wagner College, received $25,000. The U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and the University of Wisconsin System also received Certificates of Excellence.

The TIAA-CREF Hesburgh Award recognizes exceptional faculty development programs designed to enhance undergraduate teaching and learning. Named in honor of Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame, the award is given annually program judged to have best met the three award criteria: significance of the program to higher education; appropriate program rationale; and successful results and impact on undergraduate teaching and student learning.

Project co-directors Paul Savory, Amy Burnett and Amy Goodburn, along with Dave Wilson, collected the award.

The UNL project is an intensive year-long program in which faculty deeply examine and reflect with others on how their teaching supports student learning. Through conversations, writing and analysis, participants document, test and assess their teaching using a model similar to that used when conducting scholarly research. The model validates the notion that teaching is an intellectually rigorous activity, Goodburn said.

"It allows you to represent the intellectual work that goes into developing and teaching a course," she said.

UNL started the peer review of teaching project in 1994 when five faculty members attended a meeting sponsored by the American Association for Higher Education. A grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education along with funding from Academic Affairs funded the project from 1995-1998. In 1999, UNL landed a $750,000 grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, and $120,000 from the Hewlett Foundation to disseminate the model to four partner campuses. All along, Academic Affairs has provided funds to continue the on-campus effort.

Barbara Couture, senior vice chancellor for academic affairs, praised the work of the co-directors.

"This faculty-driven initiative emphasizes the intellectual and scholarly work of teaching, an effort that supports our faculty and helps ensure that our students have the best educational experience that we can deliver," she said. "We are proud of the excellent work done by Amy Burnett, Amy Goodburn, and Paul Savory and the many other faculty members who have participated in this project for bringing this honor to UNL."

Since its inception, 101 UNL faculty members from 28 departments in eight different colleges have completed the project. A national conference last spring attracted nearly 200 faculty from across the country. And a book, The Peer Review of Teaching: Excellence in Student Learning Made Visible, is under contract with Anker Publishing and is due out next fall.

Savory, Burnett and Goodburn are project graduates, and their transition from student to practitioner to leader exemplifies the excitement the project has created. Savory is an associate professor of industrial and management systems engineering. Goodburn is an associate professor of English and women's studies. Burnett is an associate professor of history. All went through the program when it was directed by its founder, Dan Bernstein, former professor of psychology at UNL and now a professor and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas.

"The project is more than one person's vision," Savory said. "The three of us have impacted the direction the project has taken in the last three to five years."

Goodburn added that project participants are so excited after completing, they tend to want to stick with the project. "They want to keep going and keep getting together because this project really is for some of us the first time we'ev been able to talk about our teaching."

Burnett agreed that faculty seem to "crave an ongoing, systematic way to assess and improve their teaching."

The three nominated the project for the award before, but came away empty handed. They think this year's success happened because they had empirical data to back up their assertions of progress.

For example, surveys of participants reported 100 percent agreement that the project improved the course they were examining, 95 percent agreed the project helped them improve student learning and 98 percent agreed the project helped them become more self-reflective about their teaching.

The project is also a winner, Savory said, because it is faculty-driven and grassroots. Its year-long duration helps sustain engagement and it is related to a host of university efforts to improve learning.

Hesburgh winners also need to show national impact. Savory said graduates of UNL's project have presented at various disciplinary meetings and published their results in journals and on-line. UNL hosted the national conference last spring. And UNL was the lead institution in disseminating the peer review model to four partners, Indiana-Bloomington, Texas A&M, University of Michigan, and Kansas State University from 1999-2004.

While the Hesburgh recognition brings prestige to the university, it's also personally rewarding to the three co-directors.

"It validates the faith that Academic Affairs has in the project because it's had continuous funding since 1994," Savory said.

"It legitimizes and makes it more known," Goodburn said. "It connects my scholarship, teaching and research."

Adds Burnett, "It broadens the definition of our efforts in teaching improvement and adds an element to the evaluation of teaching. What we've done is help improve the culture of teaching on campus, and encouraged the larger conversation about teaching."

Savory said the program is "mature" but still has areas for expansion. He would like to create an on-line archive of faculty portfolios to serve as a resource repository for others interested in the peer review process. Burnett said the program is adding a new element intended to support faculty as they present their teaching to a broader audience outside UNL.

But the big thing, according to Savory, is finishing the book by its May deadline. He described it as a "generic guide" to starting a peer review program. And soon, the project will be recruiting faculty for next year.


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