Caucuses and Committees

This caucus is charged with addressing faculty members’ experience in the classroom. Last year, the caucus surveyed Dornsife department chairs about course release and overload assignments and began considering how to ensure equitable evaluation in student learning evaluations. This year, the Teaching and Pedagogy Caucus will continue their work related to increasing transparency around course release and overload assignments, and the caucus will begin developing resources related to Artificial Intelligence in the classroom, collaborating with campus stakeholders to do so.

Chairs:  Kristiana Willsey, Doug Becker

This year, the caucus will focus on continuing the effort to build community and engagement among faculty in Dornsife. The caucus will also collaborate with campus stakeholders to create and sustain mentorship for faculty, and offer community building workshops. 

Chairs: Keasha Worthen, Rita Barakat

This caucus is concerned with most aspects of our faculty’s professional lives outside of the classroom, including research, professional development (merit review, promotion, and tenure), university policies, and pay and benefits. Last year, the Faculty Affairs Caucus launched a flexible merit review rubric that was adopted by several department in Dornsife. This year, the Faculty Affairs Caucus is continuing the work on the review of the process assigning course releases and will launch a College-wide by-laws project. The Caucus will continue its collaboration with the deans on the Merit Review Rubric and Process. 

Chairs:  Steve Hsu, Tracy Mayfield, Mary-Ann Murphy

This caucus addresses issues that uniquely affect research, teaching, practice, clinical, and part-time faculty. In previous years, the RTPC/Part-Time caucus has focused on equitable teaching loads for part-time faculty, securing professional development funds, formalizing faculty onboarding and mentoring practices, and ensuring equitable compensation for RTPC faculty who were assigned Director of Undergraduate Studies in their department. They developed a Companion Guide for Dornsife faculty with helpful resources. This year, the RTPC and Part-Time Faculty Caucus is considering a variety of charges, including best ways to mentor and support part-time faculty.

Chairs: Gayle Stuart Fiedler-Vierma, Leah Pate, Richard Jones

If you are interested in serving as a member for any of these caucuses (or know someone who would make a great advocate for the interests of Dornsife faculty), please submit your nomination(s) to DFC Secretary Jason Buhle at buhle@usc.edu.