New Faculty Teaching Newsletter # 6 (September 10, 2009)

Quick Start Guide

This Quick Start Guide is not like the one that comes with your DVR. This one makes sense.

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.

And here’s some advice from your just-slightly-more-senior colleagues, about what they wish they had known their first year.

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

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

    3. Know whom to ask: for practical matters; it’s often the staff, the undergraduate or graduate assistants.

    4. 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.

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

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

    7. 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.

And of course, use the services of the Office of Educational Development and teaching.berkeley.edu. Now that’s really good advice.