UTPB Lecturer of English Clark Moreland talks about his selection to the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers and the launch of "Eighty Steps: Tales on College Teaching," co-edited with Professor of psychology James Olson. (Ruth Campbell|Odessa American)
University of Texas Permian Basin Lecturer of English Clark Moreland is humbled by his upcoming induction into the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers.
“People keep coming to me like hey, congratulations you’re a member of the Academy and I feel like I’ve won an Oscar,” Moreland said.
UT System is the only university system in the country to have a group of faculty as an academy who foster and support high quality, inclusive teaching.
“It’s really a special thing and I’m grateful to the Board of Regents and the System and the Chancellor and all those who created it and continue to support it, because it’s important work,” Moreland said.
Every year, the System awards between four and eight Regents Outstanding Teaching Awards. By now, Moreland said, there’s a pretty large community of people who have won these awards.
“Shortly after they established the Regents award, they wanted a smaller group that would be drawn from those award winners. Every member of the Academy is a Regents Teaching Award winner. What the members of the Academy do is to not only gather people for conferences and try to collect best practices for teaching across the UT System, but also to publish those ideas,” Moreland said.
The book they published was the Little Orange Book with teaching stories from people across the UT System. The Academy sponsors that and publishes the book.
At UTPB, Moreland and Professor of Psychology James Olson edited a book called “Eighty Steps: Tales on College Teaching,” a local version of The Little Orange Book.
“We were inspired by that and did our own collection of teaching tales. That’s the kind of work the Academy does. This summer, they will be putting a conference together for all UT System faculty members and I’ll be a part of that. It’s also in collaboration with the directors of various centers for teaching and learning across UT System, of which I’m a member of as well,” Moreland said.
“They do share resources, and they advocate for teaching in UT System and across the state of Texas. It’s a really neat group … I think there are anywhere between 30 to 40 members of the Academy right now. This year, the academy will be inducting four members. I’m one of them. I’ll be the second UTPB faculty member to be inducted. The first was Dr. Sophia Andres, who it turns out just by chance happens to still be in my department. She’s a mentor of mine. It’s been really gratifying to follow in her footsteps. But there are three others from the UT System that will be inducted formally to the Academy,” he added.
Moreland said he’s terribly humbled by the selection.
“I know just how many of my fellow faculty here as well as across the system are so deserving of it. I’m a third-generation graduate of this university. My grandmother got her degree here. Both of my parents, my wife and my sisters, all Falcons and they’re all educators. So for me to be able to take all of the wisdom and all of the service that the faculty and teachers have given not just to me but to my family and to pour that back into the university to represent the university in the Academy and to be able to do my part in serving the Academy, the system and this university is just such a privilege. I don’t deserve it, but I’m sure going to take it and I’m going to do my best to make sure that we continue to tell the UTPB story in Austin and elsewhere.”
The induction is expected to occur in the fall in Austin, but an exact date has not been set.
Moreland said they invited all the faculty to participate in “Eight Steps: Tales on College Teaching.” There were 22 contributors.
“We got a lot of different tales, stories and perspectives on teaching, but they did center around a few common themes; empathy was a big thing that came up. We know that good teachers are caring teachers. They put themselves in their students’ shoes. They remind themselves of what it’s like to be a student,” Moreland said.
He added that another common theme was service learning.
“Then there was some really practical advice that the contributors gave to new teachers in particular, about how to grade,” which is always a source of anxiety for new faculty, Moreland said.
Also, how to balance work and life; research and teaching. Another item that came up was learning students’ names.
“I know that seems like such a simple thing. But Jim Olson, my co-editor and of course he’s a Regents Outstanding Teaching Award winner as well. Jim has actually done research with UT System with all of the Regents Outstanding Teaching Award winners about what are the teaching practices that work for you? One of the things that he’s learned and he wrote his chapter about was learning students’ names, the names they want to go by; learning them early on in the semester; and then also establishing a rapport and trust with them early on, by having them refer to him as not Dr. Jim Olson, but just as Jim,” Moreland added.
He said it removes some of those barriers and allows students to realize that he’s human, too.
“We talked in our preface about how we hope all of these tales act as a sort of orientation. We plan on giving these out at new faculty orientation. For all of our new faculty members we want to get in this book and say, welcome to the university. Here are some people you can count on. Here’s a friend, someone that you can talk to and ask questions about teaching and someone that you can trust,” Moreland added.
The word orientation originally meant the positioning of a building. The cathedrals and chapels would always face east, so you would orient them.
“It’s almost like a pay attention and look this way. That’s what the word originally meant. That’s what we hope this book does for our new faculty is to say, here’s what really matters. When you get into teaching, your first year, a lot of stuff you just don’t know about until you’re actually a teacher; until you’ve been in that classroom. It’s a kind of magic that is involved when you stand up in front of a group of students and say, I’m going to be your teacher. … We wanted to give them kind of a nudge in the right direction,” he said.
Faculty that come to the university right after earning their PhD may have very little teaching experience or none at all.
“We looked at some research last year that said … I think it was 60% of faculty coming into the university have had no pedagogical training. They’ve maybe been expected to teach at one time or another, but they haven’t been taught how and how to do it well, and how to engage students and how to reach different student populations. Then of course, you know, there are unique constraints and situations here at UTPB. We have a different student population than other universities. We serve primarily students who are first-generation. We’re an HSI (Hispanic Serving Institution). We’re very proud of these things. But we have different students here, which means we should teach to their needs, and equip them so that they can succeed. It’s not like teaching at another university. So we hope this book will acquaint them to who we are and how you can be an effective teacher here,” Moreland said.
Olson said he wishes a book like “Eighty Steps: Tales on College Teaching” was available when he started.
He said the stories people submitted were creative and inspirational.
Olson was on the committee that helped select Moreland, he said there’s no one better.
“He’s just superb, an excellent choice. I’m glad we had the opportunity to offer him to the UT System outstanding faculty. I’m really delighted that that group did the second job of selecting. It was a two-tiered process. We had to nominate him from UT Permian Basin and then the big committee in the sky had to pick him. He worked for and he deserves it. He’s outstanding. (I’m) glad he’s a colleague,” Olson said.
