ENCOURAGING, RECOGNIZING, AND REWARDING INCLUSIVE TEACHING BY ALIGNING EVALUATION SYSTEMS WITH STRATEGIC GOALS

Numerous studies have demonstrated that inclusive teaching practices positively impact learning outcomes for all students, a core strategic goal across all levels of education. Within the Geosciences, adopting inclusive teaching practices is also cited as a primary avenue for recruiting and retaining more diverse student populations. While adopting effective inclusive teaching practices takes additional time and effort, this work is often unrewarded in evaluation systems. We interviewed and surveyed Geoscience faculty to investigate who is engaging in inclusive teaching and other DEI work and how that work may or may not be valued in evaluation and tenure/promotion criteria. We found that faculty engagement varied significantly among different types of institutions, career stages, genders, and races/ethnicities. Most participants reported that <50% of faculty in their department engage in DEI work and those faculty are disproportionately non-male, early career, and/or underrepresented in terms of race/ethnicity. Many participants reported that clearer expectations and evaluation criteria would motivate them to increase their engagement. However, most participants indicated that inclusive teaching and other forms of DEI work are not clearly valued in annual evaluations or tenure and promotion criteria.

To address the disconnect between strategic goals and evaluation and reward systems within the Geosciences, we convened a NAGT webinar aimed at helping departments develop evaluation criteria that can be used to recognize and reward inclusive teaching and other DEI work within evaluation and reward systems. We used a Universal Design approach, where evaluations would recognize a wide range of faculty activities, rather than valuing only a few types of products or outcomes. Webinar participants worked collaboratively to develop evaluation criteria that can be adapted to align with the strategic goals within geoscience departments. Recommendations from the webinar: https://nagt.org/nagt/profdev/webinars/eval_value_dei/index.html . Participants reported that the webinar provided both 1) example evaluation criteria, and 2) a model they can follow for reassessing evaluation systems within their departments.