I hope you are able to take some time to enjoy Spring Break, which is on the academic calendar for March 13-17. After sharing a monthly “Dear Colleagues” letter with our faculty and staff for more than a decade, I’ve decided to make a change this month. Moving forward, I’ll be using “Academic Matters” as the name of my monthly messages in order to sharpen the focus on why academics matter here at Mississippi State University.

To that end, I want to share a few details about my open meeting with our deans and department heads a few weeks ago. This meeting had one topic: the recognition and promotion of excellence in teaching. I was elated to see the enthusiasm in the room about this topic and intrigued with some of the suggestions that came forward. Since then I’ve had numerous emails and phone calls of support and suggestions. I wanted to provide a summary of some of the things I said and heard, and use this as a starting point for the campus community to stimulate further discussion and ideas:

• We are an academic institution that is a leading research university. But without a high-caliber teaching program, we are not accomplishing our fundamental mission. Said differently, if we fail in the classroom, we are failing in every respect. And please remember: This is the former research vice president stating this!
• In some units on campus, we need to send a much clearer signal that teaching is just as important as research. Some P&T documents indicate excellence in research is the only way that P&T can happen, which goes against the spirit of the language in the Faculty Handbook. I plan to work with the campus community over the next year to address this disconnect.
• We must do a better job of identifying teaching excellence in the hiring process. Some departments, but not all, have candidates provide a teaching lecture as a part of their interview. This should be standard practice for all faculty with teaching appointments.
• We must also do a better job of recognizing teaching excellence. In the recent Faculty Confidence Survey, a comment was made that I all too often recognize research accomplishments in my Kudos section, but do not recognize teaching. That’s a very valid point that I have taken to heart. I asked the department heads to give me more suggestions for my Kudos and Congratulations highlights in teaching, and there were several good ideas suggested on how to do that. Look for these changes in future letters.
• Our discussion also centered on how we can better prepare new faculty. Using myself as an example, I only taught one lecture of one class before I stepped into my faculty role. We discussed potentially onboarding new faculty in July rather than August, and having a three-week intensive course through the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) on effective teaching. I’m working with administration, Human Resources Management, and Budget and Finance on options that we could consider for this possibility in the fall of 2024.
• Last year we increased the number of teaching awards to further recognize our excellent teachers. We are considering other means of recognition as well.
• The CTL is developing plans to greatly enhance the training that we offer for existing faculty on best practices in teaching. Much more information will be coming forward soon on that front.

Again, I present this information in order to continue our discussion about teaching excellence and to spark new conversations about this important issue and where we will go with it in the days and years to come.

Final Words

Thank you for taking time to read this month’s letter, and if you were wondering, I will bring back my Kudos and Congratulations notes next month. I have a lot of great things to share! As always, I welcome your thoughts, questions, concerns, and ideas about these topics or anything else on your mind.

Hail State!

David

Dr. David R. Shaw is Provost and Executive Vice President at Mississippi State University. His email address is david.shaw@msstate.edu.