Committee on Teaching, 2003-04 Annual Report
To the Academic Senate, Los Angeles Division:
A major responsibility of the Committee on Teaching (COT) involves selecting five members of the
Senate, three non-Senate faculty, and five teaching assistants to receive awards for distinguished
teaching. Another major responsibility of the committee is to advise the Division and departments
with regard to policies for expanding distinguished teaching, improving the quality of instruction,
including development of methods to evaluate teaching performance. During this academic year,
the latter concerns have involved the COT in a range of activities and issues.
THE AWARDS
Since 1991-92, recipients of the Distinguished Teaching Awards who are Senate members receive
$6000, non-Senate award winners receive $3000, and teaching assistant winners receive $2500.
Teaching assistants also receive Dissertation Fellowships from the Graduate Division of $15,000, a
fee remission, and $500 research grant, if they advance to candidacy by the beginning of the fall
quarter of the year in which they receive the teaching award.
This year, the Committee received 11 Senate member nominations, 10 non-Senate member
nominations and 12 teaching assistant nominations for the Distinguished Teaching award. In all
cases, the nominee’s were judged on a variety of elements including impact on students, scholarly
approach to teaching, use of innovative teaching methods, programmatic innovations in
curriculum and the impact such innovations might have at a local or national level. Size, number
and diversity of classes were also taken into account as well as the candidate’s teaching ratings
and involvement in community linked projects. All nominees were evaluated in three cycles of
four to six weeks’ duration. Each member read all the files and rated the candidate within each
award category. The final decisions were made in three separate meetings of the full Committee.
A statistical analysis of preliminary ratings was used as a basis for discussion.
The five Senate members selected to receive the Award were:
David Kaplan, Philosophy
Kathryn Morgan, Classics
Mark Morris, Physics and Astronomy
Jesus Torrecilla, Spanish and Portuguese
Joan Waugh, History
Professor Kaplan was designated to receive the Eby Award for the Art of Teaching and Professor
Morgan was awarded the Distinction in Teaching at the Graduate Level.
The three non-Senate members receiving a Distinguished Lecturer Award were:
Andrew Hsu, Philosophy
Kimberly Jansma, French
Jennifer Westbay, Writing Programs
The five teaching assistants chosen to receive a Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award were:
Anthony Friscia, Organismic Biology, Evolution and Ecology/Freshman Cluster Program
David Sanson, Philosophy
Indre Vida Viskontas, Psychology
Jerome-Ieronymos Zoidakis, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Kelly Suk Yong Yi-Kang, Spanish and Portuguese
On May 22, 2004, the five Distinguished Senate Faculty winners were recognized at the Alumni
Association’s Awards for Excellence Ceremony. All thirteen recipients were honored at the annual
Andrea L. Rich Night to Honor Teaching Ceremony on October 7, 2004. This latter event is cosponsored by the Office of Instructional Development and the Academic Senate.
OTHER ISSUES
Report on Undergraduate Education in a Research Context.
The Committee voted
unanimously to support a recommendation presented by the Joint Administrative/Senate
Taskforce on Undergraduate Education in a Research Context to promote and celebrate
achievement in undergraduate research at UCLA under which the COT would create a new award,
as part of its annual awards for Distinguished Teaching. The award will be given to a member of
the Academic Senate who has contributed substantially to the mentoring of undergraduate
researchers. Setting up the new procedure will involve several different departments; will require
new criteria for evaluating exceptional mentoring and adequate resources to fund the new award
at the same level as the ladder faculty awards. When the Committee met with Co-Chairs of the
Taskforce Judith Smith, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Raymond Knapp, Chair of
the Undergraduate Council, it learned that Executive Vice Chancellor Daniel Neuman had agreed
to provide full funding for the new award. AY 2004-05 was discussed as a target date for
implementation.
UC Mandates for Increased Teaching.
The Committee heard a presentation on the new UC
responsibilities related to faculty teaching workload that resulted from the report of the Bureau of
State Audits. From a Teaching Committee viewpoint, the main issue is that UCLA ladder faculty in
general campus units will be required to teach an additional 375 courses beginning AY 2003-04.
In addition, UCLA must raise the actual number of courses taught per ladder faculty from the
1999-00 level of 1.78 to 2.13 and maintain that level on a permanent basis for both current
faculty members and those who are hired in future years. An Academic Senate Ad Hoc Committee
on Faculty Instructional Effort Data and Reporting was appointed to study how these data were
collected, to ensure that faculty teaching efforts are appropriately represented, and to provide
information that will help departments report ladder faculty instructional activities more fully and
accurately. Because UCLA faculty has not always institutionalized many of its teaching activities as
courses, the ad hoc committee developed guidelines and practices on a variety of ways to get
teaching credit and report instructional activity. It also prepared descriptions on how “courses”
are counted at UCLA. The material was distributed to all Senate members in October 2003. It is
expected that changes in UC reporting now under consideration will be consistent with the
descriptions the ad hoc committee circulated. It will be necessary to monitor the experience of
ladder faculty as the number of courses taught increases and seek improvements in the quality of
instruction where possible.
Systemwide COT. The Committee discussed a request made by the UC Santa Cruz Committee
on Teaching to convene a systemwide meeting next fall 2004 to consider adopting UC-wide
standards for on-line course management systems and on-line course evaluations. Although
committee members felt that this venue might provide opportunities to share ideas and bring
uniformity across the UC system, there was considerable concern expressed that this new
committee
was
not
officially
charged
with
responsibility,
and
hence
any
significant recommendations made by such a group may bear no influence in the UC system. At
the time, the Committee agreed it would advocate awaiting evidence of support from UC
leadership for such a meeting, with specific charges. If anything is supported in the future, the
UCLA COT would be happy to hear from UCSC/COT in follow up.
Revision to Bylaw 67.3. The Committee discussed amending its bylaw to eliminate one aspect
of COT’s responsibility: “recommends to the UCLA Alumni Association five members of the Division
for awards. Traditionally, five Senate awards have been given and funded by the Alumni
Association requiring that the COT submit its choices to the Alumni Association for approval and
obligating the Senate winners to attend the Alumni award ceremony as a condition of receiving
the award. An on-going concern of the committee is that in past years not all recipients were
able to attend the ceremony. One of this year’s recipients had to cancel a very important
speaking engagement to get the award. The Committee has learned that the Alumni Association
no longer contributes money to the award fund. At this time, the Chancellor provides the full
funding for all three categories of awards. In 2004-05, the Committee will look into whether the
Senate made a commitment to the Chancellor that it would need to be addressed before moving
forward with the bylaw change.
Proposal on Academic Senate Reorganization. Committee members reviewed a proposal by
the Workgroup on Academic Senate Reorganization. The workgroup was appointed to evaluate
the effectiveness and efficiency of the Senate organization including the review of 23 Senate
Standing Committees and the functioning of all administrative aspects of Senate business. One of
the recommendations of the workgroup included consolidating the activity of the Committees on
Teaching and Faculty Research Lectureship into one Committee. COT did not endorse this
recommendation for the following reasons: 1) Committee members who evaluate candidates for
Distinguished Teaching have different expertise and expectations than those members who assess
candidates for extraordinary achievements in research and ability to present a lecture; 2) it would
be a disservice to the candidates and the award program if the senate were to combine the work
of these award committees. This action could result in having committee members not fully
qualified to select the winners.
Dissertation Fellowships. An important issue, viz., when a TA is completing graduate study
and will not be able to receive the $15K fellowship, can it be given to the awardee's department to
be allocated to another outstanding TA, was raised. Serious discussion of this proposal with a key
member of the Graduate Division will be on the committee’s agenda in 2003-04.
CONCLUSION
The graduate and undergraduate student representatives, Jordan Smith and Laurel Turbin, are to
be commended for their dedicated service this year. Alumni Association representative, Ann Rieber
Plauzoles, provided thoughtful and insightful comments during the discussion of nominees, and
the Committee wishes to thank her for her efforts. As always, we are indebted to Margaret Avila
for providing the skilled administrative support and continuity which makes it possible for our
Committee to function.
Respectfully submitted,
John Garnett, Mathematics
Bruce Baker, Psychology
Veronica Cortinez, Spanish & Portuguese
Robin Liggett, Architecture/Urban Design
Jane Lewis, English
Arnold Scheibel, Neurobiology
Brian Walker, Political Science
JANE WEINREB, CHAIR, MEDICINE
March 7, 2016