Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. As teaching track faculty we share common challenges and opportunities. This year, our discussion will focus on changing nature and structure of our courses.

Now, more than ever, there is a need for computer scientists and data scientists to be socially responsible about the algorithms they design and the products they build. We all have to conscientiously analyze the impact of our work, particularly on historically marginalized communities. As we look towards creating a more just future, this means we also need to provide our students appropriate training, so that we can all address existing social inequities and prevent further social inequities from creeping into our work. Data science1 provides an ideal opportunity to train students to identify existing bias and explore ways to address it. This special session equips educators with tools to bring about this training. The presenters will share their experiences in incorporating data science for social justice in their courses, introducing CS through a social justice lens, and interrogating the collection and use of data. Through moderated group discussions, this special session will collate ideas and strategies from the participants of their respective experiences. The presenters will create and share a repository of the collated ideas to enable a broad swath of educators to incorporate data science for social justice in their respective courses to train the future generation.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. This year, we plan on discussing the impacts of evaluations of teaching faculty. Student evaluations of teaching, which are known to be biased, are often weighted heavily in teaching faculty merit review, contract renewal, and the promotion process. Our discussion will encourage teaching faculty to share the extent to which student and other types of evaluations influence their career progression, how transparent expectations around evaluation outcomes are, and what they believe would be a true evaluation of teaching excellence.

We implemented a model for grading weekly assignments in an intermediate data science course that explicitly gave students useful feedback on their code while not evaluating it on the traditional metrics of correctness or style. This ungrading policy was used in a 150-student course led by 2 instructors and 11 Teaching Assistants (TAs). Our ungrading policy was designed to extend empathy towards students and to give them useful, actionable feedback. Our policy reduced the stress that students felt each week, stabilized the amount of time they spent on assignments, and ask them to reflect on their code to request feedback from the teaching team. Students could receive full credit for a homework assignment even if it was incomplete, making office hours less hectic. Students could also submit their homework after working on it for a certain number of hours, even if a bug still existed. Our ungrading policy also helped our TAs feel valued. They gave feedback based on general expectations rather than a point-based rubric, allowing them to share their own expertise. TAs gave feedback only when requested, which was therefore more likely to be read.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools. This year, we plan on discussing the impacts of institutional leadership on teaching faculty. Our discussion will encourage teaching faculty to share the extent to which they are included and valued in leadership positions. It will also ask teaching faculty the extent to which they have support and advocacy among non-teaching-faculty leaders at their institutions.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools, and to provide opportunities for schools considering such positions to gather information. This year, we plan on discussing challenges we face in continuing- / post-COVID-19 classrooms, and lessons-learned from over a year of pandemic teaching. We will also celebrate our teaching and career successes from the past two years of teaching.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer-term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools, and to provide opportunities for schools considering such positions to gather information. This year, we plan on discussing teaching load, particularly as it relates to expanding class sizes and limited budgets for teaching staff support (e.g., TAs, graders, etc.). We will also discuss office hours strategies for both faculty and TAs in light of the same large class-size concerns.

Many computer science departments have chosen to hire faculty to teach in teaching-track positions that parallel the standard tenure-track position, providing the possibility of promotion, longer- term contracts, and higher pay for excellence in teaching and service. This birds-of-a-feather is designed to gather educators, both experienced and new to teaching track positions, who are currently in such a position to share their experiences as members of the faculty of their departments and schools, and to provide opportunities for schools considering such positions to gather information. In particular, we will discuss how to support for new teaching track faculty, as many CS departments are expanding and adding teaching track positions.