Date: 27 January 2005

To: Dr. David Hornbeck, Interim Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dr. Wilson Barnes, Dean of Architecture, Civil Engineering Technology, and Construction

Dr. Alan Gabrielli, Dean of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Michael Murphy, Dean of Computing and Software Engineering

Ms. Dawn Ramsey, Dean of Extended University

Dr. Wayne Unsell, Dean of Engineering Technology and Management

Cc: Dr. Becky Rutherfoord, Moderator of the Faculty

Academic Department Chairs

2004-05 Department Peer Committee Chairs

2004-05 School Peer Committee Chairs

From: President Lisa A. Rossbacher

Re: Observations on the 2004-2005 faculty review process for tenure and promotion

This year's faculty packages for tenure-and-promotion consideration represent notable progress over previous years. In our efforts to support continuous improvement, I have summarized my observations about how I believe we can further strengthen the quality of the packages and their documentation.

Department chair letters

As with all evaluation letters, those from department chairs need to directly address the criteria for the action being considered. In the current round of reviews, the letters did not always do this. In addition, unrelated criteria were used. For example, one department chair's letter emphasized the argument that, if the recommended action was not approved, the department would be inconvenienced by having to initiate a search for a new faculty member. Such considerations are not relevant to the evaluation of a faculty member's qualifications and have no place in the tenure-and-promotion evaluation process.

Narrative self-assessments

The narrative self-assessments continue to improve in quality. The best ones are truly reflective, augment (rather than repeat) the information in the curriculum vitae, and include a clear discussion of future goals, as well as past accomplishments.

The narrative is where faculty members have the opportunity to explain the significance of their efforts. Simply attending a workshop does not constitute noteworthy activity; the critical information includes why the faculty member attended, what the outcomes were, and how the participation has benefited SPSU and the faculty member's teaching, scholarship, or service. The strongest narratives included this information.

The listings of activities in some packages were redundant, with the same items included under multiple categories. The narrative is the place where faculty should make the case for how a particular activity contributed to one of the evaluative areas. Without an explanation of the benefit and impact, reviewers of the package have no basis for understanding the significance of the activity.

The narrative is also the place where faculty members should explain which of their publications were peer-reviewed and their level of contribution to publications with multiple authors. For example, a faculty member being listed as second or third author on a publication could have a variety of meanings. In some cases, the principal investigator on a grant may require first authorship, even if other colleagues performed the vast majority of the work. In other cases, people may be added to the list of authors for relatively minor contributions to the work being presented. The narrative is where the faculty member needs to explain the role that he or she played in producing the scholarly work.

Evaluations of teaching

The personnel packages continue to rely too much on SIRS as the primary, and too often the only, source of information about the quality and effectiveness of teaching. A few departments are doing a good job of including peer reviews of teaching; some packages provided no evidence that the department engages in peer review at all. To be more useful, SIRS data must be provided in a clear context, with appropriate benchmarks and specific evidence of how the information has been used to improve teaching effectiveness. Only one department provided benchmarking data for the entire department that put individual faculty SIRS data in context. Where it was provided, this information was both valuable and useful.

Grades awarded by faculty in classes do not constitute an evaluation of the quality or effectiveness of teaching.

Many of the packages would have benefited from a clearer distinction between the activities that are considered minimally required for teaching and those that are truly noteworthy. Staying current in one's academic field, holding office hours, revising courses, and returning graded assignments in a timely manner are required as part of the job; they do not signify noteworthy achievement in teaching, nor should they be listed as such.

Evaluations of scholarship and professional achievement

As a community, we are making progress in addressing questions of scholarship and academic achievement, but the tenure and promotion packages still exhibit some confusion and lack of understanding about what constitutes scholarship. Many of the examples of scholarship cited in the documents and references by the review letters were actually professional development, rather than scholarship.

I have attached a page from Scholarship Assessed (Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff, 1997) as an illustration of the criteria that should be considered in the evaluations of the personnel packages. This book is available in the Center for Teaching Excellence, and its discussion about what constitutes scholarship can be a helpful part of the faculty evaluation process.

The personnel packages would be strengthened by a much clear distinction between grant activity (both proposals and awards) from on-campus sources vs. external agencies. A grant from an external agency (like the National Science Foundation or NASA) is an entirely difference level of achievement than an on-campus award (such as a successful Technology Fee proposal).

Evaluations of professional development

A minimum requirement for teaching performance is maintaining currency in one's academic discipline, so this is not an appropriate argument for noteworthy accomplishment in the area of professional development.

Evaluations of service

The quality and usefulness of presentations about service in this year's packages varied widely, and they included some surprisingly inappropriate items. The evaluation of service should focus on the impact and contributions of the service. For example, what's important is the result that is accomplished through committee service, not the fact that someone was appointed or elected to be on the committee. The number of committee assignments is irrelevant; the effectiveness of committee service is critical.

Activities that were listed this year as evidence of “noteworthy service” included donating blood, making a financial contribution to a non-profit organization, paying dues to belong to the SPSU Athletic Association, teaching a Sunday School class, and attending campus holiday parties and the Chili Cookoff. These are certainly forms of involvement in the community, but I do not believe they merit being cited as examples of noteworthy service. Some campuses only permit activities related to the faculty member's academic discipline to count as service. Here at SPSU, we take a somewhat broader view, but the engagement must be a meaningful contribution, and it is the faculty member's responsibility to make that case.

Evaluations by external reviewers

Some of the letters from external reviews this year were excellent: they were thoughtful and insightful, providing context for the consideration in question and explicitly addressing the faculty member's personnel package and SPSU's criteria. Other letters actually detracted from the case under consideration. These were generally letters of uncritical support, rather than evaluation, and some of these were written by former graduate school advisors, fellow graduate students, and personal friends, rather than by professionals in the faculty member's field. Some of these letters were unsigned and not printed on letterhead. Some also addressed only activities the faculty member engaged in prior to joining SPSU.

We are making progress, but we still have significant room for improvement in ensuring that the external letters of evaluation make meaningful contributions to the evaluation process.

Attached curriculum vitae

Some of the curriculum vitae that were part of the personnel packages were out of date. It's hard to imagine that faculty members undergoing review need to be reminded to update these documents before submitting them for tenure or promotion consideration, but perhaps this is the case.

As the first level of review, the Department Peer Committee should be responsible for reviewing the tenure and promotion packages and ensuring that they contain the required information. Packages that contain incomplete or obsolete information should be returned to the faculty member by this Committee, so that the package can be revised prior to the Department Peer Committee's review and recommendation.

Many other universities avoid the issues I have raised here by having departmental- and school-based guidelines for tenure and promotion, which clarifies expectations about many of the issues I have identified here. I strongly encourage the deans to take a leadership role in pursuing this goal. Some excellent examples are available from other schools that should be very helpful in this process.

In previous years, I have addressed my comments about how to improve this review process to the academic vice president. Although I asked that this information be shared in Academic Affairs, I don't know whether this information was ever communicated. Thus, I am attaching my memos from previous years (from 2000-01, 2001-02, and 2002-03), to ensure that this information is being communicated to deans and department chairs. Some of the issues I raised in previous years have been addressed. Others still need attention. However, I believe strongly that we are making real progress in the quality of the information that is available to support informed decisions on requests for faculty personnel actions. I appreciate all the work in Academic Affairs that has contributed to these improvements.

LAR/ms Attachments