Academic Year 2024-25

Assessment Faculty Fellows play a central role in capacity building and direct faculty support related to learning outcomes and assessment at the University of Connecticut. The University of Connecticut is currently building infrastructure for and resources toward creating a sustainable culture of assessment, with a specific focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The University aims to develop this culture across academic programs and throughout the Common Curriculum.

For the academic year 2024-25, we are seeking an additional Common Curriculum Faculty Fellow to work alongside our continuing fellow. The Common Curriculum fellows will work directly with faculty who teach within the Common Curriculum, the Common Curriculum Committee, and the Common Curriculum faculty navigators to align assessment activities with the curriculum’s learning objectives. The fellows will serve as a resource to support development of meaningful and measurable program-level student learning objectives, curricular maps, and assessment plans, while promoting assessment innovation and transformation.

These fellowships provide an opportunity for interested faculty to strengthen their skills in team-management, to deepen their expertise in this area of teaching and learning, and to participate in developing a purposeful culture of assessment at an institutional level. Fellows will have support for professional development during the fellowship, with the aim of deepening the skills related to assessment and learning objective development at the University.

Work done by the Common Curriculum fellow will focus on:

• Reviewing syllabi for courses being proposed for the Common Curriculum
• Aligning course-level learning objectives with Common Curriculum learning objectives
• Aligning assessment measures from courses to course-level learning objectives
• Aligning assessment measures from courses to Common Curriculum learning objectives
• Supporting best practice in relation to equity and inclusion in the development of learning objectives, outcomes, and assessment

The Common Curriculum fellows will participate in regular meetings with the Common Curriculum Committee and its chair. They will serve as co-chairs of the Common Curriculum Committee’s Assessment subcommittee. They will have the option to develop a specific project related to learning outcomes and assessment that they would like to work on throughout the duration of their fellowship.

The hourly commitment may vary throughout the year, but the expectation is that each fellow will commit an average of 10 hours a week to this work. Each fellow will take on the role for a full academic year (with summer support to prepare for the upcoming academic year), with the possibility of renewing for a second year.

Fellowship Support

Each fellow will receive one course buyout per semester (two in total across the academic year) to support the time commitment of the work associated with the role. Each fellow will also receive summer salary of $5,000 for summer 2024 to allow for preparation time ahead of the academic year related to the fellowship. Each fellow will also be provided with $2,000 of professional development support, intended for activities that will benefit the fellowship (e.g., participating in conferences or workshops related to assessment).

Fellows would be expected to attend both the Common Curriculum Course Design Institute on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, and the Program Assessment Institute on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. The fellowship period would run from May 20, 2024, through to May 19, 2025, with preparation effort (meetings with relevant professional staff, professional development activities) occurring during the summer period.

Application Process

Applicants should be current full-time faculty members at the University (tenured, tenure track, and CIRE faculty are all welcome to apply). To apply, you should submit a letter of interest (no more than three pages, single spaced) addressing the following questions:

• What is your interest in the assessment of the Common Curriculum?
• What would you offer as a fellow given your experience and expertise?
• What would you hope to learn or gain through the fellow experience?
• Beyond this fellowship, what are some of the long-term possibilities for the work you would like to engage in related to learning outcomes and assessment?
• What are some potential indicators of success for your participation in this program?

Each application should also be accompanied by a letter of support from the department head (or dean for non-departmentalized schools) indicating their support for the applicant serving as an Assessment Faculty Fellow in academic year 2024-25. The name of the faculty member who is applying should be included on letters of support.

Both the nominee’s letter of interest and the letter of support can be emailed to: commoncurr@uconn.edu . Please put “Faculty Fellows” in the email subject line.

Please email Pamela Bedore at pamela.bedore@uconn.edu with any questions about the Faculty Fellows position or the application process.

Deadline for applications: Friday, March 18, 2024

Decisions communicated by March 29, 2024