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Core Incentives Program

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The Core Incentives Program recognizes the unusual commitment of time and energy that teaching excellence in the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum requires. This program is designed to encourage long-term participation by tenured faculty and to foster skillful Core teaching by new faculty. It provides a system for the mentoring of new pre-tenure faculty, whose participation in the Core calls upon them to develop materials and pedagogical strategies that may lie outside their field of graduate specialization.

Tenured Faculty Incentive

Professor Barrera and students sitting in a discussion circle

Tenured faculty who teach six non-crosslisted sections of Core component courses as part of their normal teaching load will receive an SLA credit of .5, as long as those six have been accrued in a span of no fewer than four and no more than twenty years. Each semester of teaching with mentoring will count as two sections taught.

Pre-tenure Faculty Incentive

Tenure-stream faculty will be eligible before tenure to receive one course load credit in the semester immediately preceding their first teaching of a non-crosslisted Core component course.¹ Receipt of this credit is contingent on participation in the program outlined below.

By the second week of the semester preceding the semester of the proposed course load credit, the pre-tenure faculty member’s department chair or program director will contact the relevant University Professor (UP). The UP will work with the faculty member (in consultation with the department chair or program director) to identify a mentor.

The UP will ensure that the following criteria are met:

  • The mentor is a tenured member with considerable experience teaching Core component courses.
  • The mentor is not a member of the pre-tenure faculty member’s department.
  • Core mentors should not be used as evaluators of teaching. In cases where the Core UP was the Core mentor, an appropriate substitute should be found to write letters of evaluation. In cases where the Core mentor is a member of P&T, an appropriate substitute should be foundto serve on P&T.
  • The mentor will be on campus in the semester of the pre-tenure faculty member’s first time teaching Core.
  • The schedules of the pre-tenure faculty member and the mentor are coordinated so that the pre-tenure faculty member can attend the mentor’s course in the first semester and the mentor can attend meetings of the pre-tenure faculty member’s course in the second semester.

During the semester of the course release, the following conditions will be met:

  • The pre-tenure faculty member will attend all sessions of the mentor’s Core class and complete all course readings.
  • The mentor and pre-tenure faculty will meet regularly, at least once a month, to discuss class content and pedagogy.
  • The pre-tenure faculty member will attend all staff meetings sponsored by the relevant Core component, including cross-component teaching tables held for all newteachers of the Core.
  • The mentor and the relevant will assist the pre-tenure faculty member in the preparation of a syllabus for the course, and will assist in the preparation of a new-course proposal.

In the semester of first-time teaching, the following conditions will hold:

  • The mentor and pre-tenure faculty will meet regularly, at least three times per semester.
  • The mentor will visit the pre-tenure faculty member’s Core class at least three times.
  • The pre-tenure faculty member will attend all staff meetings sponsored by the relevant Core component, including cross-component teaching tables held for all newteachers of the Core.

The incentives program aims to foster an ongoing commitment to Core teaching. Therefore, the pretenure faculty member is expected to teach at least twice more in the six years following first-time teaching. At least one of these instances should occur before the semester of the tenure review. None of these first three Core classes may count towards the tenured faculty incentive described above.

The UP will be responsible for verifying that the conditions of the mentoring assignment have been met. The mentoring role will be a significant and time-consuming one for the tenured faculty member. Therefore, a successfully completed mentoring assignment, which includes teaching a Core course and mentoring a pre-tenure faculty member over the span of two semesters, will count for two Core courses towards the required six of the Senior Faculty Incentive. There will be no more than one pre-tenure faculty member shadowing a class at one time, and no tenured faculty member will have more than three mentoring assignments in a four-year period.