{"id":125516,"date":"2020-07-31T10:02:23","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T16:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=125516"},"modified":"2022-02-10T14:17:29","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T21:17:29","slug":"faculty-assembly-to-prioritize-safety-equitable-teaching-evaluations-for-2020-21-academic-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/?p=125516","title":{"rendered":"Faculty Assembly to prioritize safety, equitable teaching evaluations for 2020-21 academic year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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With a new academic year comes a change in leadership for\nFaculty Assembly, the official voice of UCCS faculty in shared governance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For David Weiss, new president of the body, the circumstances of the upcoming academic year \u2013 and Faculty Assembly\u2019s priorities \u2013 may be different. The body will focus primarily on promoting safety as UCCS reintroduces on-campus learning this fall and on constructing well-rounded merit evaluation criteria for in-person and online teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the role of Faculty Assembly for the UCCS campus remains\nunchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur most important role is to hear what faculty say, to voice their concerns and to give input to leadership on what our faculty are thinking,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cThe Faculty Assembly is the voice of all faculty on campus, for all of the colleges. We can\u2019t give leadership guidance if we don\u2019t know what the faculty want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weiss is no stranger to leadership roles on campus. An associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, he has held roles as associate chair of the department and original director of the Compass Curriculum general education program. He is a 2012 alumnus of the CU Excellence in Leadership Program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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David Weiss, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry and new president of the Faculty Assembly<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Weiss has also worked for years to lead task forces considering how to incorporate student feedback and merit reviews into faculty members\u2019 annual evaluations. With Weiss at the helm, UCCS faculty members have overwhelmingly indicated that they\u2019d like to see faculty course questionnaires (FCQs) comprise a maximum of 30 percent of faculty members\u2019 merit review scores, along with two or more measures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe developed methods for class evaluation of faculty teaching\nthat are not purely based on FCQs,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cThis year, one of the big\nthings we need to do is figure out how to do the same for online teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, Weiss is also working towards a safe return to campus for the fall semester \u2013 from organizing class spaces in response to public health guidelines, determining instructional modes and allowing faculty the freedom to decide the format through which they offer classes. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A key piece of the work has been a faculty survey, developed by Weiss and distributed by Faculty Assembly in April, which gauged attitudes towards instructional modes for the fall semester. Faculty Assembly used the responses, submitted by 515 faculty members,\u00a0to develop the academic components of the Returning Stronger Together plan for the summer and fall semester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The faculty-wide survey is emblematic of Weiss\u2019 leadership style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a scientist, so I like to see numbers,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cAnd\nI try to do things collaboratively. Everything we do in Faculty Assembly should\nbe actionable, positive and bring items to leadership that they really do need\nto hear from the faculty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weiss counts Faculty Assembly fortunate to have strong relationships\nwith Provost Tom Christensen and Chancellor Venkat Reddy, both longtime faculty\nmembers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the biggest things we can do is to allow faculty to\nhave an impact on the direction of campus and really be the voice of the\nfaculty,\u201d Weiss continued. \u201cHere at UCCS, if they\u2019re concerned about an issue, we\u2019re\nable to bring it directly to Provost Christensen and Chancellor Reddy. We have\nfantastic working relationships with leadership. We\u2019ve been very lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the fall semester bringing new challenges, Weiss is\nready to center the faculty voice in conversations around health, safety, instructional\nmodes, teaching evaluations and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUltimately, we want faculty buy-in for how campus is working, and we want faculty involvement,\u201d Weiss said. \u201cWe\u2019re all a big family. It\u2019s really important that we work together and move forward in a positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All faculty members are part of the Faculty Assembly, the official voice of UCCS faculty in shared governance. The Faculty Assembly meets one to two times per academic year. A representative group known as the Representative Assembly meets monthly during the academic year. Learn more about Faculty Assembly online<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Weiss, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry and new president of the Faculty Assembly, shared the governance body’s priorities for the upcoming year. (More)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":125521,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[145,363,358],"class_list":["post-125516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all","tag-department-of-chemistry-and-biochemistry","tag-faculty-assembly","tag-research-creative-excellence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/UCCS-Summer-2018-6032-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1mBpJ-wEs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125516"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125624,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125516\/revisions\/125624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/125521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communique.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}