STANDARD FIVE
FACULTY QUALIFICATIONS, PERFORMANCE, AND DEVELOPMENT
Standard 5. Faculty are qualified and model best professional practices in scholarship, service, and teaching, including the assessment of their own effectiveness as related to candidate performance; they also collaborate with colleagues in the disciplines and schools. The unit systematically evaluates faculty performance and facilitates professional development.
5.1 How does the unit ensure that its professional education faculty contributes to the preparation of effective educators through scholarship, service, teaching, collaboration and assessment of their performance?
To ensure that faculty in the SOE and the College contribute to the preparation of effective educators through scholarship, service, teaching, collaboration and assessment of their performance, the College consistently hires faculty who have exceptional expertise in their fields of study. The unit selects tenure-track faculty members through a rigorous search process, evaluates their performance by assessing the intellectual rigor of their classes, the effectiveness of their classroom performance, their contributions to the discipline, and their service to the community, college, the profession, and the SOE.
5a. Qualified Faculty: In 2010-11 of the 21 full-time faculty members in the SOE, 17 were tenured and 4were on tenure track lines. Ten full and part-time adjunct faculty members have master’s degrees. Of the 45 clinical faculty (student teaching supervisors), most have earned a master’s degree; all are experienced, certified teachers in the state of New York. (5.3.a/5.3.b) As part of the process of ensuring the quality of faculty, the performance of tenured faculty members is reviewed for purposes of promotion. Tenure-track faculty are reviewed every one or two years for renewal in preparation for continuing appointment. All tenured facultyrequesting promotion, and all tenure-track faculty coming up for renewal, prepare a substantial portfolio for review by the Provost, and the President. THE SOE Personnel Committee reviews portfolios for those seeking promotion. The Personnel Committee holds orientation meetings for new faculty to assist in preparing their portfolios for continuing appointment as well as those seeking promotion. In addition, the Provost’s Office holds annual meetings to inform all faculty under review about the procedures. New faculty are mentored bysenior faculty, Division Chairs, and by the Dean of the SOE. Official course syllabi are kept on file and new faculty members are provided with these documents.
The Office of Student Teaching is responsible for hiring and reviewing the performance of clinical faculty. Orientation sessions and special meetings are held each semester with clinical faculty to provide program updates and to gather input on policies, procedures, and current trends. The Office of Student Teachingsolicits feedback from student teachers and cooperating teachers each quarter regarding the effectiveness of instruction and supervision by our clinical faculty. (5.3.c) All P-12 school faculty who evaluate candidates are certified in the areas they teach and feedback on their effectiveness is reviewed each semester by the Director of Student Teaching.
5b. Modeling Best Professional Practices in Teaching: At both the initial and advanced levels,faculty have a thorough understanding of the content. Their teaching reflects the SOE’s conceptual framework, the proficiencies outlined in the New York State Teaching Standards, InTASC and Common Core Standards, and the standards of their professional association. Program and unit key assessments are linked to the conceptual framework as well as the standards appropriate for the class. Key assessments necessary for transition through the program are made clear during advising.
Diversity issues are a part of each syllabus and addressed during course work, field experience, and student teaching. Facultyhave created numerous school/community partnerships that not only improve conditions for students and families but also provide candidates with real-world experiences. The GOLD Program focuses on leadership roles and responsibilities to the college and the global community. (5.3.e) In addition, many faculty are involved with campus clubs and service organizations that focus on diversity. (5.3.e)
Faculty incorporate technology into their instruction through the use of Smart Classrooms, computer labs, and in a variety of ways that support instruction. Technical training is available upon request from campus CIT staff. Online courses at the advanced level provide candidates with the flexibility to balance coursework with their daily work and family responsibilities. Faculty understand assessment technology, use multiple forms of assessments, and use the data to improve instruction. They record and monitor student progress on key assessments via TaskStream and access student data for program improvement purposes. Faculty are provided detailed feedback on the quality of their teaching through Student Opinion of Faculty Instruction (SOFI) questionnaires completed by students at the end of each semester. Evaluation of SOFIs is a regular part of thePersonnel Committee’s process when considering faculty applications for renewal, tenure, and promotion. SOFI results are also reviewed by the Dean, the College-wide Personnel Committee, the Provost, and the President.(5.3.f)
Faculty regularly attend and present at local, state, national, and international scholarly and professional conferences. In addition, each faculty member completes an annual end-of-year Faculty Activity Summary (FAS) report.
Geneseo’sTeaching and Learning Center, was created to reinforce the importance of teaching excellence. The Center sponsors many activities to enhance quality teaching, including training workshops, speakers, establishment of faculty working groups to address specific courses or issues, and technology education. (5.3.g)
Most faculty in the SOE have backgrounds in public school teaching and are able to use those experiences to enrich instruction. In addition, faculty participate regularly in field experience and student teaching supervision. SOEfaculty have received a variety of awards for their scholarship, service, and instructional expertise. (5.3.e)
5c. Modeling Best Professional Practices in Scholarship: An active involvement in scholarly pursuits is an important responsibility of the SOE to insure that faculty remain current in their disciplines and develop additional expertise in their areas of research. Faculty demonstrate their scholarship in several ways. Recent publications include books, chapters, journal articles and presentations made at the local, state, national and international level. Faculty have published books with a wide range of well-known publishers in education, such asProEd, SUNY Press, Educator’s Publishing Service, and Pearson Publications. They have written articles for nationally known journals. Many faculty participate on editorial boards as reviewers of articles for state and national journals, such as Academic Journal of Education and Culture, Early Childhood Research Quarterly. Faculty also run and attend seminars, conferences, and workshops, and individual faculty have worked with P-12 schools in writing grants, providing staff development, assisting with research, and presenting papers at conferences. SUNY –Geneseo especially encourages scholarlypursuits that involve students; a number of faculty members have completed such projects with students, many funded by the Geneseo Foundation’s student research grants. (5.3.e)
5d. Modeling Best Professional Practices in Service: All faculty in the SOE exemplify service in a variety of ways, at the department, college, and professional levels. All full-time faculty are required to serve on at least one SOE committee, though many serve on more than one. Advisement of student groups is also considered service. At the College level, SOE faculty have recently served on or held leadership positions on the Faculty Personnel Committee, the President’s Task force – Six Big Ideas, the College Faculty Senate, the College Research Council, Teacher Education Advisory Committee (TEAC), The All- College Judicial Committee, the President’s Task Force on Diversity, the College Assessment Committee, and search committees for other departments.In the broader professional community, SOE faculty have also secured grant monies to work with Local Educational Associations (LEAs), Genesee Valley Educational Partnership sites in areas such as working with students with emotional and behavioral issues, literacy education, differentiated instruction and the Teacher’s Resource Center
5e. Unit Evaluation of Professional Education Faculty Performance:The SOE Personnel Committee has the responsibility of carrying out annual observations of faculty who are not yet tenured and of faculty who are anticipating applying for promotion. In addition, the Committee mentors new faculty. These teaching evaluations are based on rigor of instruction, responsiveness to students, and classroom performance. Quality of teaching accounts for 50% of faculty evaluation by the Personnel Committee with contributions to the discipline (35%), and service (15%). The committee has identified the aspects of best professional practice to be characteristic attributes of teaching within the SOE. (5.3.f)
5f. Unit Facilitation of Professional Development:The College and the SOE provide professional development for the faculty in a variety of ways, including mentoring programs for faculty, Xerox Center seminars, workshops and training through the Teaching and Learning Center, as well as grant assistance through the Office of Sponsored Research. The College provides a New Faculty Orientation Program each year. In the SOE, a mentor develops a close working relationship with the new faculty member by regularly meeting to provide orientation information, assistance in developing teaching materials, and answers to questions in a supportive, non-threatening environment. To foster discussion about teaching techniques and strategies, the Teaching and Learning Center convenes frequent seminars, workshops, book discussions and conferences. College-wide support for scholarship is coordinated by the Office of Sponsored Research. (5.3.g) The SOE supports faculty professional development by providing grants for faculty travel. (5.3.d)
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5.2.b Continuous Improvement [maximum of three pages]
Summarize activities and changes based on data that have led to continuous improvement of candidate performance and program quality.
As indicated through data sources: Alumni Survey, Exit Survey, SOFI’s, Annual Reports, and Faculty Summaries, the professional education unit has continued to make program modifications to improve candidate performance and program quality. Special emphasis has been placed on involving candidates in research that is meaningful and scholarly. Teacher candidates work in concert with faculty to conduct research and candidates in advanced programs complete capstone inquiry projects many of which are based on issues from their clinical experiences. (5.3.d) Faculty and candidates present their findings at national and state conferences on a regular basis. (5.3.d) Candidates are encouraged to conduct research during clinical experiences and are evaluated on their ability to use research while planning instruction.
Another area of focus for our unit has been to ensure that faculty and candidates are skilled in working with the latest technology. Faculty receive training on technology at the unit level, through the Teaching and Learning Center, the library, and through our C IT Department. A number of courses at the advanced level are now offered online and Guidelines for Online Courses have been developed for our unit. (5.3.f) Smart boards have been installed in a number of classrooms for faculty use and Dr. Keegan, one of our professors, has received specialized training in smart board technology and provides professional development for our faculty and staff. Instructional delivery has been enhanced through the use of social networking both on the main Geneseo site (MyCourses - Learning Management System) and through faculty webpages. Several faculty members are working with newer information applications such as Prezi and Diigo, as well as more traditional formats such as creating webpages and iMovie. Because current Geneseo students are required to have laptops, faculty are doing much more with online application-based assignments, ie. use of drop boxes, wiki applications, etc. To streamline and modernize our assessment technology, candidates and faculty began to work with the TaskStream Program in the fall of 2010. Unit and program key assignments are entered into TaskStream along with the data which allows for instant access for program and unit decision-making. Candidate portfolios are now electronic which makes it much easier to collect student artifacts, document strategies, and reflect on practice. Seminars on working with student assessment data have been held for student teachers as they prepare to work in P-12 schools. (New York State requires that teachers are evaluated on their ability to use assessment data to plan instruction.)
Providing service to our P-12 partners will continue to be an area of focus for the School of Education, particularly in our current climate of diminishing resources. During the past five years, our faculty have increased their presence in area schools by offering professional development sessions for teachers and administrators, by working directly with school faculty and candidates during field experience,and teaching courses directly in local school buildings which not only provides our candidates with a real-world setting but also puts our candidates in a direct supportive role with area teachers and students.
Clinics at the advanced level (Reading and Literacy and Early Childhood Education) have been housed in several settings including School #58 and Community Place in Rochester and Geneseo Central School. In addition, SUNY-Geneseo teacher candidates also assist with the Horizons Summer Program for inner city students housed at Harley School in Rochester. RYSAG and Saturday School, begun in 2008 to provide a two-week, on-campus summer learning experience for urban middle and high school students with a weekly follow-up on Saturdays during the school year, has provided a unique learning opportunity for Rochester students and a real-world clinical experience for a number of teacher candidates, many of whom have chosen to channel their energies into urban education. Starting inFall of 2011, we have increased our number of PDS schools by four including Schools #12 and 34 in downtown Rochester.
Within the past five years we have worked collaboratively with our local Genesee Valley Educational Partnership to offer a summer workshop for area teachers and administrators with follow-up training by a team of trainers on differentiated instruction. This was expanded in 2010 to include training for teachers at School #42 in Rochester. Through a Teacher Leader Quality Professional Development Grant, training has been provided for urban teachers in the area of reading including teachers and leaders from schools 33,36,46,50,58, and the Genesee Community Charter School in Rochester. In January of 2011, our unit collaborated with our colleagues at SUNY Brockport to apply for a NYSED Grant which would create a graduate-level, clinically-rich teacher preparation program designed to prepare teachers to receive an Adolescence Special Education (MAT Degree) with an emphasis on literacy which did not receive funding. In the spring of 2010, New York State Teacher Centers were in danger of losing state funding. Our local center also was in need of a new location. SUNY-Geneseo offered to house the center in our library which has been a great benefit to our candidates, our faculty, and to our local P-12 teachers and administrators.
Discuss plans for sustaining and enhancing performance through continuous improvement as articulated unit Standard 5.
As we work together to strengthen our performance in this standard, the School of Education will focus attention on training for faculty. All new faculty, including adjunct and clinical faculty, will receive training in current SOE procedures, guidelines, syllabi, technology, and assessment policies including TaskStream details. Division Coordinators will continue to mentor new faculty to ensure they understand and comply with program and unit requirements. At the advanced level, efforts will be made to explore and expand online and hybrid course offerings to provide flexibility for candidates and encourage creativity. High impact pedagogy will continue to be encouraged through our work with the Xerox Center and their summer program and Saturday school for inner city middle and high school students as well as the Reading Clinics at School #58 and Harley School. We will continue our work to create and sustain transformative partnerships with area school districts through the Professional development Schools model. (See Standard 3) Faculty will continue to be encouraged to seek international opportunities for research and teaching. Currently Dr. Jane Morse teaches a Humanities course in Greece in the summer. Dr. Linda Steet has extended herFullbright into a sabbatical leave in Aman, Jordan as she continues her work with the Women’s Studies and American Studies Programs there. We will seek ways to expand our international partnerships that currently include a field experience exchange with the University of Exeter in the UK and a student teaching program in Ghana, West Africa in partnership with Kumasi University. These partnerships offer excellent opportunities to involve faculty through research, travel, exchanges, etc. Plans are currently underway to explore possibilities with other countries including Lithuania, Turkey, Mexico, and Haiti.