Dr. Dana Cox, Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs, shared various efforts and transitions made at Miami, and how they are changing the cultures. Among many, the following were focused on: 1) Job posting descriptions that clearly show equal opportunities and welcome international faculty regardless of of residency, 2) Mentoring opportunities for TCPLs, 3) Broadening the evaluation of teaching effectiveness– from solely relying on the summative end-of-year course evaluations to multiple measurements: 

• teaching narratives that show efforts made by faculty and their improvement of teaching,
• formative midcourse evaluations (CTE) that positively impact end-of-year course evaluations. 

IFSAM: Changing the culture of evaluations from students that sometimes hurt the international faculty on the promotion process. Having an English accent often results in negative course evaluations. IFSAM supports the administration developing multiple measures of teaching evaluations for promotion and retention. The departmental culture can take a while to change, so sometimes the university mandate might work in favor of the faculty. 

Dana Cox: “APIEP will enable us to take in the broader university picture. Perhaps a different model of teaching evaluation is important. IFSAM needs to be more visible, and the new faculty has to be introduced to more affinity groups including IFSAM. Mentoring is important in this regard. The TCPL mentoring is going on. We can learn from that and transfer the best practices to the associate mentorship who are eyeing the promotion to full.”

Hiring international faculty:

Collin Baer (Associate Director of Investigation, OEEO): “We should not shy away from looking at the international faculty during the hiring process since we have in place legal means to hire somebody and ensure their ability to come. The search committees should not make any assumptions or decisions made on the basis of the fact that the faculty needs a visa. The legal matters come into consideration when hiring.”

Other topics discussed:

• Equal opportunities for award nominations and selections for international faculty in various university-wide faculty awards
• Transparency in promotion 
• Role of letter of recommendations in the hiring process. Does that hurt international faculty or the faculty of color? Various genres of letter of recommendation received internally and externally; what needs to be considered when reviewing the letters.