[header image: CharlesFred | Flickr]
Just before the summer break, several university leaders, institutional change agents, and educational experts from across the world got together in Amsterdam at the KNAW’s home base, the Trippenhuis, to share insights into how they evidence, recognize and reward university teaching achievements and to discuss new activities developed by members of the Advancing Teaching community, such as the Teaching Cultures Survey 2022. The two-day event was led by dr Ruth Graham, the academic leader of this global initiative and the main designer of the teaching career framework. 4TU.CEE is a long-term promotor and sponsor of dr Ruth Graham’s work and our four technical universities actively participate in the Advancing Teaching network.
The meeting, in particular, touched upon the process of changing institutional reward and recognition systems for teaching: approaches to supporting institutional change, career pathways, professional development systems, annual appraisal approaches, mentorship systems, funding allocation models, embedding systems to support diversity, equity and inclusions, and the value of educational leadership for change. Participants shared their insights into the change process, including the challenges of changing academic cultures and aligning national frameworks.
Several 4TU staff pitched developments in our technical universities. Ena Voute, TU Delft’s university Recognition and Rewards program lead, explained the Delft approach to career paths. Frank Baaijens, TU Eindhoven’s Rector Magnificus explained the national changes in the Netherlands and how Eindhoven university has adopted these in its career pathway policy.
In the Netherlands, the recognition and reward of academics are intensively discussed across all universities. As part of the national ‘Sectorplan Onderwijs Bètatechniek’ 4TU.CEE leads a project ‘Advancing university teaching and educational careers’ focused on strengthening educational career paths in bèta universities with an emphasis on bèta and technology-specific characteristics of engineering education.
text: Remon Rooij, 4TU.CEE TU Delft co-leader