What has and what does the Students’ Union do to ensure you are receiving outstanding instruction?
Teaching Excellence Awards: Every year students nominate professors who have gone above and beyond the call of duty in their classrooms. From the nominations received a committee surveys the classes taught by these outstanding professors. At the end of the winter semester the Teaching Excellence Award committee selects thirteen winners and honorable mentions. These awards are taken vary seriously by the university and help professors in annual assessment, promotion, and tenure. Nomination forms for these awards will be available shortly.
Universal Students Rating Instrument: About five years ago the Students’ Union worked collaboratively with the university on a project to evaluate the instruction students were receiving in classes. Those pesky evaluation forms that you have to fill out for each class at the end of the semester are actually really important documents. They help to give feedback to both your professors and the university about the state of instruction at U of C. This year there is an online pilot project where in some classes you may be able to fill the USRI evaluation from the comfort of home! There are no excuses for not filling these forms out!
Quality of Teaching: Last year the Students’ Union was consulted on how the university should spend $830,000 to improve the quality of the undergraduate experience. Over half of these funds went toward programs to help faculty improve their teaching, which in the end benefits both the professor and students.
Teaching is a very important task and students must continue to advocate for high quality instruction. This year the SAA will continue to focus on this very important issue by making faculty-specific recommendations on how to improve quality. For further information on this issue or if you have a concern with the quality of teaching at the University of Calgary, please contact me at suvpaca@ucalgary.ca or by phone at 220-3911.
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