October 2002

Marjorie Hall Haley

Faculty Members Reflect on What It Takes to Be a Good Teacher

By Robin Herron

"This institution values excellence in teaching. Those who achieve genuine excellence in teaching shall be rewarded in tenure decisions to the same degree as those who achieve genuine excellence in research."

Those statements are recommended additions to the Faculty Handbook, suggested by a Board of Visitors committee in its recently concluded report on faculty rewards and incentives. The statements reaffirm the university's focus on the importance of teaching, which began in May 2001 with the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges (SACS) recommendation that George Mason establish a center devoted to the study and improvement of learning.

How does one achieve excellence in teaching? And how is it measured? The current Faculty Handbook says: "Effective teaching is demonstrated by the clarity, appropriateness, and efficacy of course materials, methods, and presentations." The handbook goes on to say that developing new courses, programs, and materials; training and supervising teaching assistants; mentoring graduate students; and advising students also go into effective teaching.

But those things are just the tip of the iceberg, according to teachers at George Mason.

Last fall, participants in a workshop held by the Center for Teaching Excellence - the unit established as a result of the SACS recommendation - generated a list of more than 30 factors that go into good teaching, ranging from "knows the subject" to "learns from students." The center's director, Laurie Fathe, says it's impossible to identify any single item on the list as the most important factor in good teaching. However, she feels that the best teachers not only have a solid philosophy of teaching but are continually assessing their own performance and adjusting to improve it.

"Part of it is caring whether you're a good teacher," she says. "If you want to be a good teacher, you can learn how, just the way you can learn to play tennis. Not everyone will be a Pete Sampras, but we can teach people to be pretty good at it. I've seen young faculty come in and become marvelous teachers. But it takes time and effort. Good teachers are good learners."

"We're all lifelong learners," agrees Marjorie Hall Haley of the Graduate School of Education's Center for Multilingual/Multicultural Education. Haley is a teacher of teachers as well as a Teaching Excellence Award winner. Her opinion is that a good teacher has respect for everyone in the classroom. "Everyone in the class is part of the community," says Haley. "We care about each other and look out for one another." Haley says that caring often extends beyond the classroom, and she stays in touch with many of her students, as they do with each other, long after the course has ended. "The other part is to stay abreast," she says, "not only with technology and pedagogy, but keeping up with trade journals, presenting at conferences, and having your work reviewed at the national and even international level."

Another Teaching Excellence Award winner who strives to give his students more than content is Peter Denning, Computer Science. He has been a pioneer in teaching what he calls "value dynamics," which stresses generating valuable offers and delivering valuable results to one's customers and clients. Denning believes that value dynamics is especially important for engineers, who are often seen as technically skilled but lacking in interpersonal skills. Coaching students in value skills, he feels, provides them with tools that will give them a far more successful and satisfying career than simply being - as he puts it - a "geek-technician." He went through a long process of learning the practices himself, which contributed to his ability to connect with his students and inspire their trust.

"My whole philosophy," he says, "is to help students become aware that learning takes place in their whole bodies, not just their brains. Their emotions, energy, moods, history, experience, culture - all these things show up in their mannerisms, body language, and the way they react to situations, influencing their successes and failures." Graduates of his design course from a decade ago still keep in touch with each other and with him; many say their experience was "life altering."

Assessing a teacher's performance is done in several ways, but one important way is through student evaluations. Fathe and others on a Faculty Senate task force studying the evaluation form feel that the current tool is only a starting point. "What we've concluded is that the university forms need to be supplemented," says John Miller, Applied and Engineering Statistics, who heads the task force. "We're suggesting that individual units need to develop their own evaluations, and that unit heads should be required to produce a report on teaching that would go to the provost," he says.

Fathe feels that individual academic units need to evaluate teaching according to their own specialized criteria. "You have to consider what are the local goals. Individual departments know what needs to be done within the discipline, even though there is a lot of commonality across the disciplines."