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Faculty Excellence and Academic Engagement
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Resources and Programs

Course Planning Checklists & Reminders

UNF’s Undergraduate Studies, Writing Center, and Office of Faculty Excellence have developed a Course Planning Checklist document to aid instructors as they prepare their classes before the start of each semester.  We also encourage you to visit the following sites:

The Chronicle of Higher Education also has a series of advice columns that you may find helpful as you plan your courses, including the following:

Peer Teaching Review & Consultations

The Office of Faculty Excellence & Academic Engagement (FE&AE) provides comprehensive peer-reviews of faculty teaching. These reviewers can either be formative (and confidential) or summative in nature. We subscribe to the resolution passed by the UNF Faculty Association in 2021 that, among other things, states: “..peer teaching evaluations and/or faculty narratives that demonstrate reflection on teaching practice in response to such evaluations can be powerful artifacts of teaching excellence.”

 We seek to aid faculty in developing excellent teaching practice and results, as well as providing a means for documenting that excellence. In doing so we employ, per the recommendation of the Faculty Association's Faculty Enhancement Committee (FEC), a multi-stage, collaborative process consisting of preparation by both parties that includes a pre-review conversation, the actual review, and a post-review conversation and documentation of results. The form that the FEC recommends in available for review and use.

Recognizing that much of the effort of teaching happens outside the classroom (or class period), we offer not just peer-review of classroom performance. Faculty are welcome to request, and we are happy to provide, a review of their practice outside the classroom. For example, we have provided reviews of faculty syllabi, reviews of asynchronous-online courses, and reviews of assignments and assessment practices.

During the 2022-2023 academic year, FE&AE hosted a Peer-Review of Teaching community of practice with UNF faculty. The goals of the group were to:

  1. encourage more frequent peer-review of teaching,
  2. develop an expectation of peer-reviews of teaching as evidence of teaching excellence,
  3. distinguish between formative reviews that seek to improve teaching and summative reviews that seek to assess teaching quality, and
  4. instill the practice of peer-review in both departments and the culture of UNF.

As a result of the experiences of the 2022-2023 community of practice experience, the FE&AE office plans to develop our assembled resources and materials into an asynchronous, moderated, online Canvas course that faculty will be able to complete to obtain a certification to conduct peer reviews of teaching.

Please contact us to discuss a review of your teaching.

Department Chairs & Leadership Development

In collaboration with Academic & Student Affairs and the Office of the Provost, FE&AE organized monthly professional development and leadership workshops for department chairs and directors of schools.

Promotion & Tenure Support

In collaboration with Academic & Student Affairs and the Office of the Provost, FE&AE provides support for faculty (including tenure-line faculty, lecturers, instructors, and librarians) seeking promotion. Please see the Academic & Student Affairs website for the latest promotion timeline and resources.

We host regular workshops and panel discussions on promotion and tenure here at UNF.

We also provide one-on-one consultation and support. Please contact us.

RSCA Support

We in FE&AE recognize that much of our identity as faculty is vested within our research, scholarship, and creative activities (RSCA).  Whether or not we currently have an expectation to complete RSCA, each of us entered our fields of study drawn to the materials of our disciplines.  We are committed to supporting faculty in this fundamental aspect of our professional identity.  If you have a RSCA need, please contact us.