By Brian Sato

As institutions of higher education grapple with increasing enrollments and a desire to improve the quality of their undergraduate programs, teaching-focused faculty are becoming more prominent. These positions may be particularly important at research-intensive institutions which are often marked by significant disparities in academic outcomes for students from minoritized populations. As a system that prides itself on being minority serving, the University of California (UC) is home to a unique tenure-track, teaching-focused faculty position, known as either the Professor of Teaching (PoT) or Teaching Professor. As opposed to traditional research-focused faculty, whose success is evaluated primarily on the strength of their research program, PoTs spend a majority of their time on classroom instruction. But like their Research Professor colleagues, PoTs are expected to participate in scholarly activities and are expected to engage in service roles within and outside of their home institution. These responsibilities that extend beyond the classroom differentiate PoTs from the most prominent class of teaching-focused faculty, the adjunct lecturer. In this piece, I describe our group’s efforts to characterize individuals within PoT faculty positions and identify how PoTs may be serving as drivers of pedagogical change. This work has been made possible due to two National Science Foundation grants (DUE 1612258 and 1821724).

Our initial characterization of the PoT position has come from data from two surveys administered to UC PoTs (Harlow et al., 2020 and Paine et al., 2024). PoTs comprise 5-10% of the tenure-eligible faculty across the system, although are found to widely varying degrees at each UC campus. These individuals are trained primarily within their discipline (e.g. a PoT in a Math department likely has a Math Ph.D.), although they are more likely to participate in pedagogical professional development relative to their research-focused peers. PoTs spend roughly two-thirds of their time on classroom instruction with their remaining time split between professional service and scholarly activities. These scholarly activities can take a variety of forms, including discipline-specific research, discipline-based education research, or facilitating professional development for faculty, graduate students, or K-12 teachers, among other endeavors.

PoTs are embedded within departments and have the potential to serve as change agents due to their pedagogical expertise. We have found that PoTs are more likely to implement active learning practices (Denaro et al., 2022) and have more advanced conceptions of teaching and learning (Rozhenkova et al., 2023) relative to Research Professors. They also serve as key pedagogy resources within departments (Grunspan et al., 2021 and Wilton et al., 2024), a function which has also been noted by administrators tasked with the hiring and mentoring of PoTs (Harlow et al., 2022).

Despite these positive impacts, there have also been a number of barriers to PoT success that are likely also faced by teaching-focused faculty beyond the UC (Harlow et al., 2022).  This includes a lack of complete departmental integration, possibly due to inequitable faculty rights relative to their Research Professor colleagues. For example, roughly 20% of PoTs across UC do not have the same voting rights as Research Professors and 60% state that they cannot chair a Ph.D. thesis committee. There also appears to be a misalignment in training in that few have an education research background yet individuals are increasingly expected to engage in discipline-based education research (Harlow et al., 2020). And a lack of clarity regarding the evaluation of PoTs for merit and promotion purposes reflects broader issues surrounding persistent uncertainty with the evaluation of teaching excellence (Harrison et al., 2020).

Moving forward, it is clear that teaching-focused faculty positions are gaining in prominence, and as such, administrators leading academic departments need to consider how to best leverage these faculty, while interested graduate students and postdoctoral scholars should be mentored to prepare themselves for these roles. In regard to administrators, we find that hiring of teaching-focused faculty often focuses primarily on the immediate instructional needs of the department and less on how the position can fit within the department’s broader strategic plan. And while efforts to diversify the professoriate are becoming more common, I would argue that this is particularly necessary for teaching-focused faculty positions, in light of research that has highlighted the benefits that students from minoritized groups can experience from having instructors from a similar background (Atkins et al., 2020). Compared to Research Professors, teaching-focused faculty interact with more students due to their heavier course loads and are more likely to be assigned to teach introductory courses, which historically have less equitable student outcomes. This has led to another NSF project aimed at developing more inclusive hiring practices for teaching-focused faculty positions (EES 2113355).

For graduate students and postdocs looking to pursue teaching-focused faculty positions, it is critical that they gain teaching experience as an instructor of record – whether that be at their home institution or a neighboring four- or two-year college. As teaching becomes a more scholarly activity, it is also important to become familiar with evidence-based teaching practices by reading pedagogy-focused journals or attending education-focused meetings (such as the Research in Undergraduate Mathematics Education annual meeting). If individuals from non-education/social science backgrounds aim to pursue discipline-based education research (DBER), it is critical that they receive formal training, by enrolling in social science-focused course work, participating in professional development opportunities, and collaborating on research studies led by established DBER scholars.

Regardless of our current roles, we all aim to improve the educational experience for the next generation of students. Teaching-focused faculty are key contributors to this goal and thus an increased awareness of the impacts of these positions will facilitate not only their success, but that of all members of the broader higher education ecosystem.

Editor’s Note: This is the third post in a series that arose from the Bringing Innovation to Scale: Teaching-Focused Faculty as Change Agents workshop at SLMath (formerly MSRI). Teaching-focused faculty at research institutions are gathering online to share ideas and provide each other support. If you’re interested in joining the conversation, you can access their Zulip community here via either the web or the Zulip app. After you create a free account, organizers request that you introduce yourself on the #Welcome stream.

Dr. Brian Sato is a Professor of Teaching in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry as well as the Associate Dean for the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation at the University of California Irvine. Dr. Sato’s research focuses on creating more equitable and inclusive STEM programs in higher education, identifying impacts of teaching-focused faculty, and examining teaching and learning from both the instructor and student perspective.