Communities Accelerating the Impact of Teaching (CAITs) bring faculty into small, compensated innovator groups to work on compelling problems and issues, which CAITs consider through lenses of both pedagogical and institutional change. CAIT fellows meet across multiple terms with facilitators from TEP, devoting time to community-building and activities like reading research on student learning, revising courses, developing resources for colleagues, and recommending policy and curricular changes.

Current CAIT Groups

Reducing Equity Gaps in STEM

Spearheaded by Distinguished Teaching Professorship Mike Price, this group aims to ensure faculty are aware of a breadth of research-based methods for increasing success and improving experience for all students, but in particular our populations who are underrepresented in the sciences. The fellows will enact new methods to improve their own large enrollment courses and will develop tools and strategies to improve courses throughout their discipline. 

More information is available on the Readuing Equity Gaps in STEM Group website.

Participants

Facilitators

Mike Price (Mathematics)
Austin Hocker (Office of the Provost)
Julie Mueller (TEP)
Lee Rumbarger (TEP)
Richard Wagner (TEP)

Fellows

Biology
Nicola Barber
Jana Prikryl

Chemistry
Don Clayton

Computer Science
Juan Flores

Earth Sciences
Disha Chandrakant Okhai

Human Physiology
Jon Runeyon
Val Sawiccy

Mathematics
Kristen Henderson

Physics
Ben McMorran

Psychology
Paul Dassonville

Past CAITs

2023-2024

Teaching and AI CAIT

Led by Ramón Alvarado, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Data Science Initiative Data Ethics Coordinator

The Teaching and AI CAIT considered the implications of AI for teaching and learning in higher education, and what strategies faculty and departments can adopt to address AI in their programs, curriculum, and courses. Areas of inquiry for the Teaching and AI CAIT group include: 

• What are the implications of AI for teaching and learning in higher education? 
• How can UO support faculty in addressing AI as part of their teaching? 
• How can UO support students in addressing AI as part of their learning?
• What range of policies and procedures – at the course, departmental, and institutional levels – can support teaching and learning in the context of AI? 
• What principles and strategies can guide faculty and departments in how they engage AI? 
• What specific teaching approaches can faculty adopt to embrace, minimize, or prevent AI use in their courses? 
   

Participants

Facilitators:

• Ramón Alvarado (Philosophy)
• Jason Schreiner (TEP)
• Chris Edison (UOO)
• Lee Rumbarger (TEP)

Fellows:

• Tom Bivins, School of Journalism and Communication
• Peg Boulay, Environmental Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
• Phil Colbert, Computer Science, College of Arts and Sciences
• Leslie Coonrod, Graduate Internship Program, Knight Campus
• Donna Davis, School of Journalism and Communication
• Colin Koopman, Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences
• Aniko Drlik-Muehlech, Planning, Public Policy, and Management, College of Design
• Chiara Gasparini, History of Art and Architecture, College of Design
• Rebekah Hanley, Law School
• Gina Hermann, Romance Languages, College of Arts and Sciences
• Kate Mondloch, History of Art and Architecture, College of Design & Clark Honors College
• Lisa Munger, Clark Honors College
• Bryce Newell, School of Journalism and Communication
• Ari Purnama, Cinema Studies, College of Arts and Sciences
• Jennifer Rice, American English Institute, College of Arts and Sciences
• Janine Sepulveda, American English Institute, College of Arts and Sciences
• Genifer Snipes, UO Libraries
• Cengiz Zopluoglu, UO College of Education

2022-2023

High Enrollment Online Courses CAIT 

UO Online will convene a new, stipended CAIT (Community Accelerating the Impact of Teaching) to examine best practices in high enrollment online classes. Through conversations—both within this group and with colleagues in their disciplinary areas—CAIT members will work together to identify scalable practices and to recommend guidelines that 1) increase student engagement and 2) support student learning in high enrollment online classes.

More information is available on its the High Enrollment Online Courses CAIT webpage.

Teaching Excellence and Evaluation CAIT   

The Teaching Excellence and Evaluation CAIT will support units that are making UO’s professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed teaching quality standards meaningful in their real teaching contexts. Participating units will undertake a process to update peer review tools and overall teaching evaluation criteria in alignment with new university policy and with the practices and aspirations specific to their unit colleagues. Documents they create would be showcased on the Teaching Support and Innovation website as models for other units.   Participating units should identify up to two faculty representatives to the CAIT including or delegated by the unit head: at least one should have significant experience with teaching evaluation in the unit; at least one should be a colleague looked to by peers and the university as a teaching leader (say, a member of the Provost’s Teaching Academy or informal teaching mentor to their colleagues). Meetings—about nine total—will be hosted spring 2022 through winter 2023. CAIT members, called fellows, will receive $1000+OPE stipends to acknowledge their participation.

Supported by the Office of the Provost and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence 3 Initiative.

Participants

Architecture 
Alison Kwok

Chemistry 
Adam Glass
Tanya Gupta

Cinema Studies 
Mike Aronson
Erin Hanna

Computer Science 
Michal Young 

Earth Sciences 
Samantha Hopkins 

Psychology 
Brice Kuhl 
Kate Mills 

Facilitators 
Austin Hocker 
Lee Rumbarger

 Sample schedule (we will finalize as a group)

Spring 2022 activities 

• Facilitators will overview UO teaching evaluation goals and changes. 
• Fellows will discuss and give feedback on draft teaching practices inventory tool. 
• Fellows will ask departmental colleagues to take teaching practices inventory anonymously, then, with TEP’s help, revise a general peer review tool and teaching evaluation rubric to reflect unit’s own current and aspirational practices. 

Fall 2022 activities 

• Facilitators will support fellows in presenting these draft tools to their unit and gathering unit colleagues’ initial feedback on these documents. 
• Facilitators will organize a peer review training and formative (not for evaluation) peer review exchange for participating units to develop unit-level familiarity with and gather additional feedback on peer review tools.  

Winter 2023 activities 

• Facilitators will present existing data sources related to teaching quality. 
• Fellows will perform a sample teaching evaluation using mocked up file and their own draft teaching evaluation criteria document. 
• Fellows will discuss gaps in relevant data and have an occasion to use CIET committee’s customization protocol to make matching refinements to Student Experience Surveys and/or develop a draft statement for the unit on how Instructor Reflection surveys will be used.  
• Fellows to present any possible policy and practice changes for unit discussion and vote. 

2021-2022

Trauma-Informed Pedagogy CAIT

Led by Anita Chari, Provost’s Teaching Fellow, Associate Professor of Political Science 

CAIT fellows will engage in focused training in trauma-informed somatic practices and their relationship to equity and inclusion work, and be part of building broader awareness of trauma-informed practices at UO by bringing the work that they cultivate in the CAIT back to their units. Faculty from all disciplines, units, and schools are welcome to apply. 

Learn about the work of this CAIT:

Anita Chari is Associate Professor of Political Science, 2020-21 Provost’s Teaching Fellow, and co-creator of Embodying Your Curriculum, a program that teaches trauma-informed pedagogy to faculty. The CAIT consisted of 11 faculty drawn from various disciplines and schools on-campus who engaged in a 4 Module training. Through the modules and conversations, CAIT participants explored:

• Tools for nervous system regulation, as well as ways to practice them within a relational and societal context.
• Learning how to recognize nervous system activation and overwhelm in ourselves and in others, and understanding the relevance to creating an inclusive and anti-oppressive classroom space. 
• Cultivating resources based on the Social Nervous System and Mirror Neuron System for working with these dynamics. 
• Working with intersectional oppression at an embodied level, including skills for making repair in the classroom when ruptures occur. 

Learn Dr. Chari's thoughts about why trauma-informed somatic work is important:

"2020 witnessed some of the most passionate protests for racial justice seen in the US and globally since the Civil Rights movements, awakening a new consciousness of the depths of structural anti-Black and racist violence. In the past year we also collectively bore witness to an unfathomable number of incidents of violence against communities of color, from the brutal murder of George Floyd by a policeman to a series of shootings of unarmed Asian women in Atlanta. And all of this has taken place amidst the backdrop of a global pandemic that has heightened inequalities in educational access and severed students from the contact with campus that anchored learning and social contact, as well as a level of political polarization in the US greater than we’ve seen since perhaps the Civil War. 

To say that this constellation of events has been traumatic is only to state something that we all know: students, faculty, and campuses as a whole are collectively overwhelmed. The result has been that students are challenged in their learning process, and that together we face a crisis in higher education’s approach to learning itself, which tends to conceive of education as a disembodied, highly rational process. 

Trauma-informed pedagogy is an approach to education that recognizes that collective overwhelm lives in the body and the nervous system, and that when unaddressed impacts our ability to learn and to engage in transformative conversations about the most pressing issues of our times. Undischarged trauma reduces our window of tolerance for discomfort, healthy conflict, and trust amidst diversity. When we do not acknowledge the presence of trauma, both present-day and historical, we are bound to repeat and recapitulate it in our classrooms. Bodily awareness and social connection are the portals through which trauma can be discharged and resolved in the context of learning environments in higher education. We don’t need therapeutic practices in our classrooms, but rather a recognition of the power of an educational approach in which overwhelm is named and acknowledged in the context of learning itself."

Difference, Inequality, Agency CAIT 

Led by Alison Gash, Provost’s Teaching Fellow, Associate Professor of Political Science 

Fellows will build community around and consider the impact of UO’s two-year-old United States: Difference, Inequality, and Agency course requirement. We will discuss which practices have been most meaningful in developing the specific knowledge and skills DIA courses target. And we’ll identify how a changing, and in many ways deeply traumatizing national context creates additional pressures as well as opportunities for teaching and learning. We’ll ask how the pedagogy of these courses accounts for differences in students’ contexts, abilities, and experiences—making them (ideally) models of inclusive and anti-oppressive teaching at UO. 

Click here for a description of the work these CAIT fellows will engage in:

Fellows would: 

• Engage in a self-review of one of their courses around student engagement, support, development, and accessibility 
• Workshop potential changes, challenges, and innovations with other participants in the group 
• Identify/develop resources, spaces, and opportunities for support that might enable ongoing innovation, collaboration, and community-building for DIA faculty

Writing and Assessment CAIT

The UO Composition Program, Department of English, and Teaching Engagement Program developed a faculty learning and leadership group to examine and revise the course and program objectives for the writing sequence and articulate the essential and promising experimental teaching methods linked to these objectives.      

Moreover, the group will develop rubrics that highlight levels of attainment in relation to these objectives and, with TEP, launch a two-year UO Assessment of Student Writing that begins with a collegial event for English and Composition faculty and GEs to introduce and test the new rubric(s) against students essays from WR courses. The CAIT group may then revise the rubric—and potentially the learning objectives themselves—with that larger conversation in mind. Then, a group of writing faculty and faculty campus-wide will repeat the exercise with essays from across the curriculum. The exercise will be hosted a third time, this time in partnership with the Career Center, and include employer readers and workplace writing artifacts. During these widening rounds of the assessment project the rubrics and learning objectives will continue to be critically examined and sharpened with Composition expertise.

Important to this work will be the program’s longstanding commitment to “ethical argumentation,” as the group determines how to deepen that commitment in the operational documents it is creating, learning objectives, essential and experimental methods, and rubric(s): what does “ethical argumentation” mean in 2020 and beyond, as the nation protests to protect Black lives and BIPOC students at UO continue to face opportunity gaps and report stress and alienation in UO classrooms?     

Another overriding question is how does UO’s Composition Program and objectives/criteria articulate with Core Education goals, especially for “written communication” and “difference, inequality, and agency.”   

Read the new Composition Program Learning Objectives.

Participants

Facilitators:

Lee Rumbarger
Director, Teaching Engagement Program
Assistant Vice Provost for Teaching Engagement

Austin Hocker
Assistant Director for Research and Assessment
Teaching Engagement Program

Fellows:

Department of English, Composition Program

• Michael Copperman  
• Anna Kovalchuk  
• tia north  
• Brendan O’Kelly 
• Nick Recktenwald
• Stephen Rust 
• Emily Simnitt
• Eleanor Wakefield

2018-2019

Core Education CAIT

TEP, the Office of the Provost, and the Division of Undergraduate Studies selected 13 faculty fellows to develop—with an eye toward offering in AY19-20—UO’s first core education “runways.” 

Runways are meant to enhance the intellectual coherence and sense of community of students’ first year at the university by focusing on a big question that runs through several core education and writing courses. 

The runways are held together by faculty-led year-long seminars (one credit in fall and winter, two credits in spring) about the big question—questions students explore in the seminar, informed by their work in existing core education courses identified by seminar faculty as opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills required to pursue their question. The seminars support students’ social belonging, enhance their “college knowledge” and metacognitive capacities, and give them a chance to integrate concepts, examples, and skills from other courses into a more cohesive learning experience. They culminate in a final project and count for core education credit. 

Big questions are linked to one of six broad themes, currently called: industry and innovation, identities and social structures, sustainability and the natural world, healthy communities, human stories and expression, and global connections.

The fellows developed the seminar curriculum along with a standardized syllabus template, identifying shared learning goals—and even pedagogies like, say, collaborative learning—common across seminars. Fellows worked with writing composition faculty to develop how a writing course can connect with the big question. They learned teaching strategies proven effective for teaching first-year students and developed each fellow’s own big question, course cluster, syllabus, and final project in collegial conversation. Finally, fellows informed how these runways are named and presented to students.

Participants

Facilitators:

Lee Rumbarger
Director, Teaching Engagement Program
Assistant Vice Provost for Teaching Engagement

Julie Mueller
Faculty Consultant
Teaching Engagement Program

Fellows:

Peter Alilunas
Assistant Professor
School of Journalism and Communication

Melissa Baese-Berk
Associate Professor
College of Arts and Sciences – Linguistics

Eric Boggs
Director of the Honors Program
Lundquist College of Business 

Edward Davis
Assistant Professor
College of Arts and Sciences – Earth Sciences (Core Ed Council)

Caitlin Fausey
Assistant Professor
College of Arts and Sciences – Psychology

Jeanne Hall
Field Experience Coordinator
College of Education

 

Anne Laskaya
Associate Professor
College of Arts and Sciences – English

Mike Price
Senior Instructor II
College of Arts and Sciences – Math

Nick Recktenwald
Associate Director
College of Arts and Sciences – Composition Program

Tricia Rodley
Instructor
College of Arts and Sciences – Theatre Arts

Emily Simnitt
Associate Director
College of Arts and Sciences – Composition Program

Mike Urbancic
Sr Instructor
College of Arts and Sciences – Economics

Difference, Inequality, Agency: Training and Classroom Allies CAIT

In advance of the Fall 2019 launch of the new Difference, Power, Agency undergraduate course requirement, TEP invited back into community a group of faculty leaders who have participated in developing ideas for this curricular change and outlining, delivering, or participating in the UO Summer Teaching Institute “DIA” pathway. This group offered proactive faculty development, working with TEP to contact departments that teach courses in the current multicultural requirement and to support interested faculty in revising those courses and preparing to teach DIA classes. The group worked to:

• Finalize student-facing learning goals and a syllabus statement for all DIA courses in coordination with the Core Education Council.
• Offer at least three trainings, which could be divided by fellows, in each of winter and spring terms and offer follow-up consultations with faculty.
• Finalize training materials as a UO: Difference, Inequality, Agency Guide to be available online for UO faculty.

Participants

 

Facilitator:

Jason Schreiner
Assistant Director
Teaching Engagement Program

 

Fellows:

Julie Heffernan
Director, College of Education Master’s Program and Licensure Director
College of Education

Michelle McKinley
Bernard B. Kliks Professor of Law and Director of the UO Center for the Study of Women in Society
School of Law

 

Avinnash Tiwari
Instructor of English
College of Arts and Science – Humanities

 

Teaching Excellence and Evaluation CAIT

TEP, the Office of the Provost, and the UO Senate partnered to form a Teaching Excellence and Evaluation CAIT to advance UO’s cutting-edge work to change how teaching is evaluated. Building on the Continuous Improvement and Evaluation of Teaching System developed in AY2017-2018 last and adopted in part by the Senate, this group brought faculty leaders into conversation with one another, home units, and the body of research into teaching excellence. (Learn more about UO’s efforts here.) The group of 10 fellows drawn from across the university’s school and colleges helped ensure UO’s new evaluation frameworks and instruments were practical in evaluation contexts and designed to mitigate bias and actually develop and enrich UO’s teaching culture. T

Three CAIT fellows served simultaneously on the Senate-legislated Continuous Improvement and Evaluation of Teaching Committee to shepherd the system toward full approval.

Half of the group led their units into piloting new student surveys, the other half in consideration of peer review .
 

Participants

Facilitators:

Sierra Dawson
Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Senate Committee Co-Chair

Lee Rumbarger
Director, Teaching Engagement Program
Assistant Vice Provost for Teaching Engagement

Fellows:

Adell Amos
Professor of Law
School of Law

Tina Boscha
Senior Instructor II and Assistant Head, English
College of Arts and Sciences

Dian Del Guercio
Professor of Finance and Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs
Lundquist College of Business

John Halliwill
Professor and Head, Department of Human Physiology
College of Arts and Sciences

Jenefer Husman
Professor of Education Studies
College of Education

Toby Koenigsberg
Associate Professor of Jazz Piano
School of Music and Dance

Richard Margerum
Professor and Associate Dean, College of Design Director
School of Planning, Public Policy and Management

Gabe Paquette
Professor of History and Dean
Clark Honors College

Brett Rushforth
Professor and Head of History
College of Arts and Sciences

Kim Sheehan
Professor
School of Journalism and Communications

 

2017-2018

Teaching About Difference, Power, and Agency

The DPA CAIT built on the Spring 2017 recommendations of a faculty group to revitalize UO’s multicultural requirement by emphasizing intersectional approaches to the teaching of difference and power in active, student-centered classrooms. Working with the Undergraduate Council and Academic Affairs, the group worked to bring those recommendations forward for feedback and implementation.

For this identity, difference, and power group, we sought members looking for a supportive community of conversation, reading, and exploration around how their teaching investigates questions like:

• What are the historical and contemporary structures, forms of knowledge, and ideologies that perpetuate and change the distribution of power in society?
• How are articulations of identity such as race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic class, indigeneity, and ability formed and located in relationship to power?
• How can we balance developing listening skills with strengthening students’ own agency, voice, and resilience?

Participants

Chair:

Alison Gash
Associate Professor
Political Science

Facilitators:

Carmel Ohman
Teaching Engagement Program

Jason Schreiner
Teaching Engagement Program

Lee Rumbarger
Teaching Engagement Program

Fellows:

Jacques Abelman
Assistant Professor
Landscape Architecture

Mike Copperman
Senior Instructor
Composition

Sarah Ebert
Instructor
Dance

Michael Hames Garcia
Professor
Ethnic Studies

Maria Fernando Escallon
Assistant Professor
Anthropology

Abigail Leeder
Director of Experiential Education and Prevention Initiatives
Office of the Dean of Students

Dyana Mason
Assistant Professor
Planning, Public Policy and Management

Michelle McKinley
Professor of Law
Director, Center for the Study of Women in Society

 

 

Shoniqua Roach
Assistant Professor
Women’s and Gender Studies

Lori Shontz,
Instructor
School of Journalism and Communication

Emily Simnitt
Associate Director
Composition Program

Debra Thompson
Associate Professor
Political Science

Steven Wooten
Associate Professor
International Studies

Priscilla Yamin
Associate Professor
Political Science

Yizhao Yang
Associate Professor
Planning, Public Policy and Management

 

Teaching High-Challenge Gateway Courses CAIT

The High-Challenge Gateway Courses CAIT was tasked with investigating causes of and solutions to high failure rates in large-enrollment, introductory courses that satisfy general-education or major requirements. The CAIT explored the following questions:

• How can we assist students in feeling that they are capable learners, that their personal goals for higher education align with the institutional goals and curriculum, and that they feel supported in achieving these goals?
• What institutional practices can be put into effect that ensure we are a “student-ready university”? In other words, how can we ensure that we meet students where they are when they arrive, and then shepherd them through the undergraduate experience toward our shared educational goals?
• How can individuals (faculty, staff, students), departments, and the institution facilitate shifts in culture, policy, and pedagogy to improve student success, particularly among our underserved student populations?

The results of the group's work:

High Challenge Gateway Courses CAIT presentation, presented to the Provost’s Teaching Academy on June 1, 2018.

Participants

Chair:

Mike Price
Senior Instructor II, Assistant Department Head
Mathematics

Facilitator:

Julie Mueller
Faculty Consultant
Teaching Engagement Program

Fellows:

Laura Eidam
Coordinator, Class Encore
Teaching and Learning Center

Deborah Exton
Senior Instructor I
Chemistry and Biochemistry

Kathleen Freeman
Senior Instructor
Computer and Information Science

Hayden Harker
Senior Instructor
Mathematics

Michele Henney
Senior Lecturer II, Accounting Program Manager
Center for Finance and Securities Analysis
 

 

Cristin Hulslander
Senior Instructor
Biology

Dev Sinha
Associate Professor
Mathematics

Randy Sullivan
Lecture Demonstrator
Chemistry and Biochemistry

Elly Vandegrift
Senior Instructor, Biology
Associate Director, UO Science Literacy Program

Teaching Online

This group brought together faculty who had been awarded course development grants as part of the College of Art and Sciences Online Initiative. As these faculty moved existing courses online, they were invited into reading, conversation and reflection about the particular promise and challenges of creating online courses that are inclusive, engaging, and research-led. What is possible in an online format that is more difficult in face-to-face teaching and learning? How can these truly be “student-success” oriented courses—in other words, courses that can support students’ timely graduation both because they provided added flexibility and because they are taught in ways that are transparent, motivating, and skill-building? How is online teaching best deployed at a residential research institution?

The results of the group's work:

Teaching Online CAIT Presentation Slides, presented to the Provost’s Teaching Academy on June 1, 2018.

Participants

Chair:

Anita Chari
Associate Professor
Political Science

Facilitator:

Robert Voelker-Morris
Faculty Consultant
Teaching Engagement Program

Fellows:

Jagdeep Bala
Senior Instructor
Psychology

Kathie Carpenter
Associate Professor and Head
International Studies

Kara Clevinger
Instructor
English

Aaron Gullickson
Associate Professor
Sociology

 

Harinder Khalsa
Senior Instructor II
Italian

Robert Elliott
Senior Research Assistant
Northwest Indian Language Institute

Leslie Opp-Beckman
Senior Instructor II, Director of Innovative Programming
American English Institute