Faculty Senate-approved Recommendations: Criteria and Evaluation for Promotion and Tenure

Appendix: Considerations for Formulation of Evaluation Procedures for Promotion and Tenure

The procedural guidelines described below are intended to help each unit establish its own standards for evaluating its faculty for promotion and tenure decisions. These guidelines will facilitate the type of faculty participation and consensus building that should allow each unit to develop a promotion and tenure process that reflects its own priorities and values as well as those of the college and university.

In addition to making decisions about how the promotion and tenure evaluation system will work generally for the faculty group, it is necessary to specify an individual's role within the unit. For each performance period, there should be a written assignment clarifying expectations of each individual.

1. Determine critical dimensions of performance. The promotion and tenure evaluation plan begins with each unit determining those critical dimensions of behavior that move the goals and objectives of the unit forward. For example, traditionally with the performance review of faculty responsibilities, one includes information about teaching, research, and service dimensions. However, there are emerging interests in considering other faculty responsibilities such as professional development and these may be incorporated in performance plans consistent with objectives and budget constraints.

2. Describe activities to be included in each performance dimension. The faculty of the unit should further delineate activities to be considered for evaluation within each performance dimension. For example, teaching may include graduate and undergraduate teaching, supervising independent study courses, advising masters or doctoral students, etc. Scholarly research/creative activities may include publishing research in refereed journals, presenting exhibitions of creative works, obtaining grants or contracts, etc. In like manner units may describe more fully the nature of service by using subcategories such as outreach, community service, University service, and professional service. Additional examples of assignment activities that could become part of the faculty evaluation system are listed in Table I. One logical starting point would be to begin with the activities listed as examples and allow the faculty to add or delete items.

3. Identify key activities to be evaluated. After the set of possible activities has been identified, the next step is to develop a process that leads to the description of those key activities that will actually be included within the evaluation system. A given academic unit might accept only one-third of the items listed in this set. In contrast, another unit might decide to adopt the entire set listed because they feel these activities are representative of their collective interests. There is no prescribed list--the issue is simply to determine what the academic unit values and how they will go about obtaining and analyzing information (the more activities included--the more time needed for data collection and evaluation).

4. Determine weight ranges for each performance dimension. A key element in adapting the promotion and tenure evaluation system to the unit focuses on determining and assigning value or "weight"; ranges to each performance dimension. It should be understood that the quality of a faculty memberís performance in each dimension (teaching, research/creative activity, and service/outreach) should be evaluated independently of the weighting that is then to be assigned to that dimension for that faculty member. Minimum and maximum weights for each dimension are first determined at the unit level and then negotiated to ensure that they support the mission of the college and university. For example, a unit may hold the expectation that all faculty should carry on an active program of research or creative activity, but, at the same time, recognize that faculty assignments will vary as to emphasis between teaching, research and service. This would then be reflected in a weighted range of values for evaluation purposes, consistent with promotion and tenure guidelines of the unit and college. Different units may have different minimum and maximum ranges for each major dimension. Any unit may have individual faculty negotiate specific weights consistent with unit goals and individual needs. It is expected that the level of importance assigned to a given activity relates directly to the work assignment negotiated for the time period and indeed comes out of the work assignment, although the importance weights are not directly tied to time allocation.

Decisions regarding minimum and maximum weights are framed within the broader policy decisions that have already been established in the University community. University procedures and explicit policy about the allocation of resources within the University will provide boundaries within which units determine the minimum and maximum ranges for weighting of performance dimensions.

5. Determine sources of evaluation input. Next, the unit needs to determine what information must be gathered to obtain an assessment or rating of the activities included in each of the three performance dimensions. For example, if one is going to analyze teaching performance, decisions must be made about concerns such as; whether student ratings will be used and to what extent; will the unit head and/or peers be included as classroom observers; to what extent is self-evaluation of teaching considered in the process; will teaching materials and course syllabi be evaluated; how will the data be collected; etc. Examples of sources of information on which evaluations may be based are included in Table I.

6. Incorporate the following procedural aspects in the evaluation plan. In adapting the promotion and tenure evaluation system at the unit level, the following procedures support the design elements:

• Each unit will have established by January 1, 1998, those core dimensions that will guide the promotion and tenure evaluation system for the following academic year.
• Opportunities for multiple inputs must be identified and be an explicit part of each unit plan. For example, units might consider student evaluation of teaching, an elected peer review committee for research productivity, other stakeholders in research efforts and/or outreach activities to provide information on performance, etc. The specific role of the unit head and the faculty members in evaluating faculty performance also should be clarified.
• Standard procedures must be identified to assure fairness. That is, the performance goal-setting process involving each faculty member and the unit head will establish written expectations against which the faculty member will be evaluated. Every effort should be made to assure that faculty concerns regarding all aspects of work assignments are addressed fairly.