Transforming College Teaching Evaluation: A Framework for Advancing Instructional Excellence is a newly published book by our very own President’s Office staff member, Dr. Gabriela Weaver, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs and Research. Gabriela joined us less than a year ago from the Amherst campus. The book is the result of her research, funded by the National Science Foundation and carried out in collaboration with her co-authors at three other public R1 universities. The book describes a new approach to assessing college teaching, which shifts the focus from compliance to continuous improvement. In Transforming College Teaching Evaluation, Ann E. Austin, Noah D. Finkelstein, Andrea Follmer Greenhoot, Doug Ward, and Gabriela Cornejo Weaver argue that institutional evaluation systems too often miss what matters most: high-quality instruction that improves student learning and professional practice. Drawing on seven years of data from the TEval study at the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Kansas, and UMass Amherst, the authors offer a practical, research-backed framework for change.
Central to their proposal is the idea that departments are the primary unit of change; lasting reform requires coordinated action at the department, college, and campus levels. The book presents a model that examines seven dimensions of educational practice — covering the full continuum of teaching activities inside and outside the classroom — and recommends using a constellation of measures (faculty self-report, external reviews, student surveys, and more). The goal is flexible, context-sensitive evaluation systems that administrators and faculty can adapt to local needs while producing robust conclusions about teaching quality that can be used both for improvement and as a basis for personnel reviews.
For academic leaders and instructors committed to modernizing teaching and reward systems, this work supplies a clear roadmap for aligning evaluation with excellence. Transforming College Teaching Evaluation offers concrete steps to strengthen instructional practice, support faculty development, and put institutional culture behind sustained student success.
More information about the book can be found at the publisher’s site, Harvard Educational Press.