Guidelines

TRUSTEES’ TEACHING AWARD

In June 2000, the Trustees of Indiana University reviewed the Teaching Excellence Recognition Award (TERA) which had been established by the trustees in 1997. The review process considered surveys of faculty across the campuses of IU and resulted in a series of recommended changes. The trustees formally replaced TERA with the Trustees’ Teaching Award (TTA) in June 2000 and amended the new award in January and February 2001. In February 2015 and 2019, the award was again amended by the University Faculty Council.

The TTA is to be awarded before the completion of each academic year to tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty whose primary duty is teaching and who have demonstrated that they are outstanding teachers. However, this award is not to be construed as sufficient evidence of sustained teaching excellence by awardees and review committees. A cash award of $2,500 will be given to each faculty member and awards will be disseminated to no more than six percent of the total eligible faculty in each of the three categories. A faculty member who receives the reward in a given year will not be eligible for the award until two years have passed.

ELIGIBILITY: Tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenure-track faculty and librarians engaged in teaching are eligible including faculty in the School of Medicine who may be located at medical centers or be paid by institutions other than Indiana University (e.g., IU Health Physicians, Eskenazi, VA). Each academic unit is responsible for setting criteria and developing a selection process for the TTA within these general guidelines. Each unit has been assigned a proportionate number of the total campus awards and will select the faculty to receive awards within the unit.

The allocation spreadsheet (received by the schools and not posted here) indicates a division of awards proportionate to the numbers of tenure-track and non-tenure-track in your schools. You are not bound by this division; you may distribute awards according to your own guidelines. However, you must not exceed your school’s total allocation; over time you should respect the proportions of faculty in different appointment types; and you must abide by the rules outlined in the guidelines and university policy.

The TTA honors individuals who have a positive impact on learning through the direct teaching of students, especially undergraduates. Award recipients must have demonstrated a sustained level of teaching excellence in the form of documented student learning and must have completed at least three years of service at IU Indianapolis to be eligible (thus, faculty in their third year at IU Indianapolis at the time the selection is being made would not be eligible). Eligible individuals automatically will be considered each year without special application or nomination by relying on the Academic Insight report as the means to provide required documentation. The award is based on the calendar year's activities in the Faculty Annual Report.

DOCUMENTATION: The Faculty Annual Report should ordinarily be the basis of making decisions regarding actual awards. All eligible faculty are to be considered within their schools without special application—hence, the use of the Faculty Annual Report through Elements@IU. Up to a maximum of three additional pages may be added to document teaching excellence at the unit’s discretion, but the objective of focusing documentation on existing evidence should be preserved. Increasingly, however, documentation should include evidence of student learning. Extra burdens on faculty, review committees, and deans should be kept to a minimum. The guidelines were developed by a campus advisory committee to provide some consistency across diverse academic programs but required documentation will be determined by each academic unit. These recommended factors should be considered, but not all of them may be equally applicable in all units. While some persons who are selected for the TTA may not meet all of the criteria or offer evidence to document achievement in a particular area, there is an expectation that such items will be considered in selecting individual recipients.

SELECTION: Ordinarily, an existing school or departmental faculty committee is to be responsible for administering the award process. Committees should be composed substantially of faculty peers and faculty should be consulted about the method of composing the committee. Once identified, the committee should use the criterion of excellence in teaching as the primary factor for selection. It is the responsibility of this selection committee to review the documentation relating to teaching for each faculty member; to select those faculty members who best meet the university, campus, and school criteria; and to recommend the winners to the academic dean who will be responsible for making the final determination and for presenting the award on behalf of the trustees.

DEADLINE: Each school should complete its selection process and report the selected names by completing the online TTA Recipient Reporting Form no later than 5 p.m. on the first Monday in March. Schools may establish earlier deadlines as necessary to meet this campuswide requirement.

FREQUENCY: The Indiana University Faculty Council amended the guidelines to require the waiting period for eligibility for the award to be increased to two years after receipt of a TTA award. Accordingly, a faculty member who receives the reward in a given year will not be eligible for the award until two years have passed. Faculty remain subject to school-specific determinations and may receive multiple TTA awards during their tenure at IU Indianapolis, but only one award may be received by an individual in any year. Example:

School with two allocations/year
2019: Jones, Faculty #2
2020: Faculty #1, Faculty #2
2021: Faculty #1, Faculty #2
2022: Jones, Faculty #2

THE AWARD: Each award will be $2,500. The award takes the form of a cash supplement and is not added to the recipient’s base salary. The award is subject to income tax withholding. Each school is responsible for creating the e-docs which will pay recipients; the e-docs should be completed and submitted no later than May 31st.

NOTIFICATION: Schools should formally notify their selected recipients by the first Monday in March.

RECOGNITION: Beginning in 2019, the TTA recipients will be celebrated outside the Chancellor’s Academic Honors Convocation. Each unit should establish an appropriate public occasion when TTA recipients can be recognized and awards presented. The occasion might be a special reception or part of a school faculty meeting, but there should be a public announcement of the occasion and an opportunity for peers to attend. In addition, TTA recipients will be celebrated in an article in IU Indianapolis Today.

Each academic unit will develop an appropriate plaque where the names of TTA recipients can be permanently recorded and displayed. This plaque will be hung in an area where both students and faculty peers will see the display.

If you have a particularly outstanding faculty member, consider nominating them for an IU Indianapolis or IU teaching award. (IU Indianapolis awards and a link to the IU awards website can be found on this web page).