The ITE Tenure & Promotion criteria document includes a description of the Teaching Function (one of three primary faculty functions) and the sources of evidence for meeting the criteria.  Two of several indicators of teaching quality are the responses from the formal College of Education Student Course/Instructor Evaluations and the reports from the Departmental Peer Review of Teaching.  All full-time ITE faculty members shall participate in both the College's Course Evaluation process and the Department's Peer Review of Teaching.  Within the ITE annual review process (conducted by peers who review teaching, scholarship, and service), teaching is evaluated based on a consideration of student evaluations, peer review of teaching, and other documentation presented by the faculty member. 

The Department requires a peer review of teaching during specified time frames.    Tenured faculty shall be reviewed at least once prior to each Post-Tenure Review.  Clinical and non-tenured teaching faculty shall be reviewed annually.  Peer review includes observation of teaching and the review of appropriate course documents (e.g., syllabus, handouts, assignment descriptions, scoring guides, tests, student products, etc.).  The peer review may also include interviews or other feedback from students.

1. In January of each year, each faculty member participating in peer review will submit the course title(s) and semester scheduled to be the focus of the peer review during that calendar year as well as the names of three tenure-track faculty members who might be selected to conduct the review.  This information will be submitted to the Department Chair with the Annual Review materials on a form that will accompany the Annual Review forms given by the Department Chair's Office. (Tenured faculty members are responsible for ensuring that at least one peer review takes place  prior to Post-Tenure Review to comply with USC Post-Tenure Review policy set forth in the Faculty Manual.)

2. The Department Chair will write a letter of confirmation to the faculty member being reviewed naming the course to be reviewed and appointing a peer reviewer from the list of three submitted by the faculty member, whose responsibility includes classroom teaching observation and review of related course materials. 

3. Faculty members being reviewed have the responsibility of contacting the peer reviewer early in the semester to establish a date for the observation, providing a set of appropriate course materials, and providing review guidelines and instrumentation.   The peer reviewer will follow and use approved departmental guidelines and instrumentation for conducting the teaching and course materials review.

4. Within two weeks of the observation, the peer reviewer will confer with the faculty member to discuss the evaluation, and will subsequently provide an electronic version of the review on the accompanying peer teaching and course materials review guide to both the faculty member and the Department Chair.

5. A faculty member may request a second peer review, with the same or different reviewer, at any time during the year.

6. Faculty in their first year of full-time teaching in higher education will be assigned a first-semester mentor who will conduct the first semester review.