Career- and Tenure-Related Faculty Review and Promotion policies include an opportunity for units to customize and supplement university-wide teaching standards (professional, inclusive, engaged, and research-informed), and to define what it means to meet and fall below expectations related to these standards. Ultimately, units’ decisions about criteria and achievement will form the rubric for how teaching will be evaluated at key moments in faculty careers. 

Decision points:

Units will need to decide:

• Are there modifications to the Teaching Evaluation Rubric that clarify the Professional, Inclusive, Engaged, and Research-Informed standards for your context?
• What does it mean to meet or fall below expectations in each of those four areas, or in other areas specific to your department?   
• Are there additions to these criteria, the conditions that define them, the sources of evidence that will be used, etc. that match your unit’s teaching values and aspirations?
  • See Career and Limited-Duration Faculty Review and Promotion Policy Template, II. Career Faculty Performance Reviews, A. Instructional Career Faculty Performance Reviews, i. Teaching; and Tenure-Track Faculty Review and Promotion Policy Template, III. Primary Evaluation Criteria, B. Teaching.

Tasks:

Your unit’s Career and Tenure-Related Faculty Review and Promotion Policies must be approved by department vote, then sent to the Provost’s office (a file copy) by February 22, 2026. Templates for the Tenure- and Career-Related Review and Promotion Policies are available at the Provost's AY 2025-2026 Unit Policy Review Process page.

• Host a departmental discussion to decide the contents of the Teaching Evaluation Rubric. In addition to the considerations above, discuss:
  • What the university’s teaching standards mean in your departmental context. What practices are really important as examples of these categories?
  • From your perspective, what needs to be more clearly defined or more fully captured for UO’s Teaching Evaluation Rubric to work for you?
• Redraft based on departmental discussion.
• Vote at a department meeting and submit faculty approved policy by your dean-defined deadline using these instructions for submission. 

Units' Assignment of Professional Responsibilities policy and Peer Review of Teaching policy (with rubric) were approved by the Provost's Office in early 2025. Units should view these policies as living documents, improving and resubmitting them when the need arises. Links to current versions can be found on the Office of the Provost's Department and Unit Policies page.

Assignment of Professional Responsibilities 

Units’ Assignment of Professional Responsibilities policies relate to teaching by indicating a unit’s standard course load and the circumstances under which that load would be adjusted, and by articulating general instructional policies that span all UO courses and connect all UO faculty. These policies are the place to account for, say, how especially challenging teaching assignments count in load, or how a unit will administer the Student Experience Survey, or other unit-wide instructional expectations.

Considerations and Tasks:

Your unit’s Assignment of TTF and Career Faculty Responsibilities policy was approved by department vote, then sent to the Provost’s office (a file copy) and your dean’s office in early spring 2024. (See the Provost's office’s policy template: you developed and inserted language for the parts in blue and brackets.)   

Units considered:

• Are there any priority teaching areas that should count differently in load (say, teaching a large class and managing a teaching team, leading a certain number of independent studies, redesigning a high priority course as part of the unit’s Student Achievement Goals process, etc.)?
  • See III. Tenure-Related Faculty Professional Responsibilities, A. Workload Expectations for Tenure-Related Faculty, ii. Teaching, 2. Adjustments to Standard Load and IV. Career Faculty Professional Responsibilities, A. Workload Expectations for Career Instructional Faculty, 2. Teaching, b. Adjustments to Standard Course Load
• Do all faculty understand the general expectations of teaching? Some policies that connect all UO courses and teaching are fairly new—this is a chance to check in about them.
  • See II. General Considerations, E. General Teaching, Advising, and Student Contact Expectations, ii. General Expectations of Teaching
• Are there any additional unit-wide instructional expectations that you’d like to include as part of this policy? (For example, some units might collectively decide to administer the Student Experience Survey in class during week nine or 10)?
  • See II. General Considerations, E. General Teaching, Advising, and Student Contact Expectations, ii. General Expectations of Teaching

Tasks, in addition to the considerations above:

• Prepare a draft of blue, bracketed sections for departmental discussion.
• Redraft based on departmental discussion.
• Vote at a department meeting and submit faculty approved policy by your dean-defined deadline using these instructions for submission

Peer Review of Teaching

Units’ Peer Review of Teaching polices provide consistent structure for these regular, collegial assessments of teaching, both by specifying the content and scope of peer reviews and clarifying units' processes and management of them. Each unit's policy contains as an appendix a template all faculty should now use for the review itself. Units’ work on this policy was meant to ensure peer review is a valuable window into faculty teaching, along with faculty members’ own self presentation and student feedback. Units may change the peer review template (appendix) without further review, but modifications to the overall peer review policy should be submitted for approval. 

Considerations and Tasks:

Your unit’s Peer Review of Teaching Policy was approved by department vote, then sent to the Provost’s office (a file copy) and your dean’s office in early spring 2024 term. (See the Provost office’s policy template: you developed and inserted language for the parts in blue and brackets. As an appendix to your policy, you included a template that the unit should now use to complete each peer review. You were welcome to adapt and adopt TEP’s.)      

Units needed to decide:

• The content of, template for, and scope of peer reviews.  
  • Substance: For what aspects of teaching are peer reviewers seeking evidence, including specific aspects of Professional, Inclusive, Engaged, and Research-Informed (PIERs)?  
  • Tool: Will you use TEP’s peer review template or another? What adaptations might be needed? 
  • Scope: What does a reviewer actually review (aspects of a Canvas site, syllabus, a class meeting, etc.)?  
• The process and personnel for peer reviews. 
  • Who serves as reviewers? For example, does the unit want to specify anything around relevant ranks of reviewer/reviewee, or whether they are within or beyond the unit?  
  • Does the unit wish to use a Peer Review Committee?  
  • How (or by whom) are reviewers assigned/chosen?  
  • Who keeps track of administrative details?    

Tasks for this policy included:

• Discuss and decide the content, template, and scope of peer reviews.
  • See II. The Substance of the Peer Review of Teaching
  • In determining your policy, you might:
    • use the Unit Discussion Guide: Identifying Teaching Standards & Criteria to support your unit's conversation.
    • explore ideas and sample policies in “Peer Review Policy: Sample Departmental Profiles.”
• Discuss and decide the process and personnel for peer reviews
  • See III. The Review Process and Management of Reviews
• Prepare a draft of the blue, bracketed sections for departmental discussion and look together at TEP’s review template, or another that you recommend.
• Discuss the draft at a department meeting.
• Revise based on departmental discussion.
• Vote at a department meeting and submit faculty-approved policy by your dean-defined deadline using these instructions for submission.