On this page, we imagine five units, each of which makes different choices about their Career and Tenure-Track Faculty Promotion Policies and their associated Teaching Evaluation Rubrics. We enumerate their decisions and offer detailed policy documents for each in the hope that these examples will support to units as as part of the 2025-2026 Unit Policy Review Process, or any time they re-open their policies.
The units profiled here offer different language about how they ultimately determine whether a faculty member meets overall expectations for teaching; some units identify additional areas of focus or discipline-specific teaching practices they want to ensure are considered when they evaluate teaching.
The first example makes no changes to the Teaching Evaluation Rubric included as part of the Office of the Provost's policy templates, and offers general and holistic language for how to determine overall meets/does not meet expectations for teaching.
Terminology on this page: the Teaching Evaluation Rubric Template is divided into four sections, one for each of the Professional, Inclusive, Engaged, and Research-Informed evaluation "standards" that align with UO's definition of good teaching. Each of the standards contains one or more "conditions" that detail different aspects of the standard.
Tailoring teaching evaluation materials to your unit's needs
Key questions
- What’s often misunderstood about the Teaching Evaluation Rubric in your unit?
- Is there something essential to your unit that’s not already included?
- Are your faculty doing something important that feels invisible at the time of review?
- Is there an implicit expectation that you want to make explicit?
- What should the criteria be for meeting or not meeting overall expectations for teaching?
Types of rubric modifications
- Clarify and elaborate on criteria that are expected of faculty to minimally meet teaching conditions, and criteria that go beyond minimally meeting teaching conditions. This might include specifying criteria that all faculty must meet in order to meet expectations for a condition. Or it could mean providing examples of faculty actions that could demonstrate meeting expectations for a condition.
- Elaborate on existing conditions within the professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed standards. This might be a way to emphasize a general teaching practice the unit sees as particularly important, or to incorporate a discipline-specific example of an existing condition.
- Add new conditions to the existing standards. This might be needed if you want to include practices that are not already included in the existing professional, inclusive, engaged and research-informed standards, but could be categorized under those broad themes.
- Add an entirely new standard to the rubric. This might be needed if you want to highlight practices that are significantly different from the existing professional, inclusive, engaged and research-informed standards and their associated conditions.
Example Policies
Example 1: A Basic Policy
Department 1 is satisfied with the Teaching Evaluation Rubric. Faculty colleagues feel that it is a worthwhile tool for evaluating teaching as it stands and do not want to make any modifications to it. They just need to propose a structure for how they will use the template to determine whether faculty members meet or do not meet overall expectations for teaching. They plan to use general and holistic language for this purpose.
- Answers to the key questions
- Often misunderstood: Nothing
- Essential to unit: No
- Invisible practices: No
- Implicit expectations: No
- Overall expectations criteria:
- Holistic assessment of teaching using the Teaching Evaluation Rubric.
- Meet expectations overall if they meet expectations in most of the conditions in the rubric.
- Extreme cases treated differently.
- Basic example: Detailed policy documents
Language for Review and Promotion Policy Template - Basic Policy
Example 2: Focusing on Career Readiness
Department 2 has really taken up UO’s Oregon Rising goal to become a leader in career preparation. They’ve modified their curriculum to develop students’ career readiness skills, and want to encourage instructors both to (1) attend to career readiness in their individual courses and (2) get credit for the related work they do, so they modify the Teaching Evaluation Rubric accordingly. The modification represents a significant addition to the rubric, and the unit feels the change does not fit neatly into the already-existing PIER categories, so they add an entirely new standard: Career Readiness, with a single condition that addresses different aspects of career readiness preparation. They offer general and holistic language about how they will determine overall meets/does not meet expectations for teaching.
- Answers to the key questions
- Often misunderstood: Nothing
- Essential to unit: Career Readiness focus
- Invisible practices: No
- Implicit expectations: No
- Overall expectations criteria:
- Holistic assessment of teaching using the Teaching Evaluation Rubric.
- Meet expectations overall if they meet expectations in most of the conditions in the rubric.
- Extreme cases treated differently.
- Types of rubric modifications made
- Add an entirely new standard to the rubric.
- Career Readiness example: Detailed policy documents
Teaching Evaluation Rubric - Career Readiness
Language for Review and Promotion Policy Template - Career Readiness
Example 3: Focusing on Student Success
Department 3 wants to place special attention on teaching for student success as a way to enhance pathways to timely graduation, one of the goals of the Oregon Rising strategic plan. They also feel that this is an opportunity to make more visible the ways faculty contribute to student success through their actions outside the classroom. They decide that the additions they will make to the Teaching Evaluation Rubric, while significant, can be carried out by making additions to or elaborating on the existing Professional, Inclusive, Engaged, and Research-Informed standards and their associated conditions rather than requiring an entirely new standard. They offer general and holistic language about how they will determine overall meets/does not meet expectations for teaching.
- Answers to the key questions
- Often misunderstood: Nothing
- Essential to unit: Student Success focus
- Invisible practices: No
- Implicit expectations: No
- Overall expectations criteria:
- Holistic assessment of teaching using the Teaching Evaluation Rubric.
- Meet expectations overall if they meet expectations in most of the conditions in the rubric.
- Extreme cases treated differently.
- Types of rubric modifications made
- Clarify and elaborate on criteria for not meeting, meeting, and going substantially beyond meeting expectations in particular conditions.
- Elaborate on existing conditions within the professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed standards.
- Add new conditions to the existing standards.
- Student Success example: Detailed policy documents
Teaching Evaluation Rubric - Student Success
Language for Review and Promotion Policy Template - Student Success
Example 4: Clarifying Dual Meaning of Research-Informed
Department 4 knows that “Research-Informed” has a dual meaning in UO’s definition of good teaching: it refers to (1) incorporating disciplinary research into teaching and (2) using evidence-based teaching methods. They feel this dual meaning does not come through in the Teaching Evaluation Rubric, so they modify the rubric to clarify it. They break the Research-Informed standard of the rubric into two subsections: Research Mission and Evidence-Based Practices, each containing several conditions. As part of this effort, they add several conditions to elaborate on how to incorporate disciplinary research into teaching and say explicitly that mentoring research falls under the research informed standard. They use a formula to determine whether faculty members meet or do not meet teaching expectations overall.
- Answers to the key questions
- Often misunderstood: Research-Informed
- Essential to unit: No
- Invisible practices: Mentoring student research outside the classroom.
- Implicit expectations: No
- Overall expectations criteria:
- Faculty must meet expectations in at least 75% of all conditions in the Teaching Evaluation Rubric
- Faculty must meet expectations in at least 50% of conditions in each standard.
- Extreme cases treated differently.
- Types of rubric modifications made
- Elaborate on existing conditions within the professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed standards.
- Add new conditions to the existing standards.
- Clarifying Research-Informed example: Detailed policy documents
Teaching Evaluation Rubric - Clarifying Research-Informed
Language for Review and Promotion Policy Template - Clarifying Research-Informed
Example 5: Giving Credit Where It's Due
Department 5 finds some aspects of the teaching evaluation rubric confusing and wants to ensure that everyone is on the same page so their faculty get credit where it's due. They clarify what it means to meet or not meet expectations in individual conditions in the Teaching Evaluation Rubric, and they lift up work that's not mentioned in the existing rubric. They recognize that (1) they can set specific requirements that MUST be met in order to meet expectations, (2) they can provide examples of actions faculty might do in order to meet expectations, (3) they can create places to give credit for difficult teaching-related work that might otherwise go unacknowledged, such as teaching large classes and developing new ones, and (4) they specify or provide examples directed toward faculty in different employment categories, such as career teaching faculty and tenure-track faculty.
- Answers to the key questions
- Often misunderstood: Research-Informed standard
- Essential to unit: AI policy, digital accessibility.
- Invisible practices: Teaching large classes, developing new courses, serving on graduate student committees, winning grants or awards related to teaching.
- Implicit expectations: Differing expectations for career and tenure-track faculty.
- Overall expectations criteria:
- Faculty must meet expectations in at least 75% of all conditions in the Teaching Evaluation Rubric
- Faculty must meet expectations in at least 50% of conditions in each standard.
- Extreme cases treated differently.
- Types of rubric modifications made
- Clarify and elaborate on criteria for not meeting, meeting, and going substantially beyond meeting expectations in particular conditions.
- Elaborate on existing conditions within the professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed standards.
- Add new conditions to the existing standards.
- Giving Credit Where It's Due example: Detailed policy documents
Teaching Evaluation Rubric - Giving Credit Where It's Due
Language for Review and Promotion Policy Template - Giving Credit Where It's Due