New Faculty Teaching Newsletter # 8 (September 20, 2007)

What I Wish I had Known My First Year and Attributes of Successful New Faculty

This newsletter is slightly longer than usual, because we are combining two related topics. First up, some thoughts from your Berkeley colleagues who have come here in the last several years.

    1. You don't have to reinvent the wheel your first time teaching-don't need to introduce new technologies, new modes of teaching, etc.

    2. Ask colleagues from other universities for their notes for similar classes. Most are very flattered.

    3. Separate out a whole day for preparing lectures. Don't try to work it in between research, committees, etc. You need the focused time.

    4. Rely on senior colleagues for advice and guidance about such things as problem students. Find out if the undergraduate or graduate advisor in the department knows a student and can tell you anything that might be helpful.

    5. Do listen to the advice of colleagues (if they tell you that 500 Powerpoint slides is too many, they're probably right).

    6. If you are assigned a class that is already on the books, retool it to fit yourself.

    7. Know that the choice of a GSI can make a huge difference in your class.

    8. Know what you're entitled to (number of GSIs, readers, etc.).

    9. Know who to ask: for practical matters, it's often the staff, the undergraduate or graduate assistants.

And below are a number of more detailed comments from Berkeley faculty:

    1. Very early on, I would have benefited from being able to schedule my class at an appropriate time. Because of the lab section, numerous students turned out to have conflicts and dropped the class. This is probably something between the Professor and the department, but it's important. My department scheduled the lab at a very inconvenient time for students. It might be good for new faculty to be aware of scheduling constraints and make sure they tell the schedulers what to do before it is too late.

    2. Information about when to schedule the midterm to be able to warn the students if they are in danger of failing. I did not know that we need to warn them half way through the semester, so I scheduled my midterm after the deadline for notifying them online about this danger. As a result, I had to email them, in kind of an ad-hoc way.

    3. I think that it might be good to survey your colleagues to figure out the exact level of your students, so that you can deliver adequate material. You want to go into class knowing what, generally, you can expect of them. This is I think critical in scientific fields.

    4. New faculty should find old midterms and finals from previous years, and post them online. This makes students less nervous about them.

    5. New faculty should be very responsive to emails (when possible). This is usually very welcomed by students.

    6. Write midterms/finals for which answers cannot be ambiguous. I made the mistake of writing questions for which several answers were OK, but not equally good. This resulted in a nightmare in grading and being fair. This is hard to figure out until you give out the midterm.


Seven Attributes of Successful New Faculty

"The quick starters identified by Boice* were those new faculty who, during their first two years, were exemplary teachers according to student ratings, Boice's own ratings, and faculty's self-descriptions. In sum, the attributes and behaviors of the quick starters included:

1. positive attitudes about students;
2. relaxed paced lectures with student involvement;
3. low levels of complaining about students, workload etc.;
4. actively seeking advice about teaching;
5. quicker transition to moderate levels of lecture preparation;
6. superior investment in time spent on scholarly and grant writing; and
7. readiness to improve their teaching.

Boice describes the quick starters as resilient, insightful, and positively identified with the campus. They demonstrated resilience by not taking their early feelings of isolation personally but rather sought out senior faculty for support and identified those who could be helpful. They demonstrated their insight as they gathered information about their new role and new environment. They were able to separate gossip and small talk from valuable and reliable information. Perhaps because they quickly identified helpful senior faculty, Boice's quick starters began to feel themselves as part of the campus more readily than other new faculty."

*Robert Boice, "The New Faculty Member"

You might also want to read a more detailed piece covering the same territory: "Advice for New Faculty: Everything in Moderation." This link will take you to the Tomorrow's Professor Listserv archive of postings, a valuable resource for those interested in teaching (and research) at the college level.

Campus Tour of the Week, even though this Newsletter has been long enough already:

Take the elevator to the top of the Campanile (which was patterned after St. Mark's Campanile in Venice). Some of the rooms in the Campanile are storage for the bones of saber-toothed cats and other animals from the La Brea Tar Pits in Southern California. An original plan for the tower included graduate student apartments.