This review process applies to individuals with full-time faculty appointments. This does not include individuals going through 2nd and 4th year reviews, non-tenure line promotion reviews, tenure reviews, AC-40 reviews, and reviews for promotion as they are already going through a comprehensive review process.
Given the nature of this process, all information that is shared during the process as well as any conversations that take place within evaluation committees must be held in confidence. Everyone is free to discuss the general process and criteria, but specific cases should not be discussed even with those individuals. Individuals with questions regarding the outcome of this process should speak with the Dean.
For each faculty member, the following materials will be considered:
- Current Year’s FAR completed using Activity Insight. Reporting period is January – December. It is expected that materials will be submitted via Activity Insight using Annual Evaluation of Faculty Performance report.. Individuals going through a 2nd year, 4th year, tenure, promotion, NTL promotion or extended post-tenure review do not have to complete the faculty annual review.
- Research Report for Each Faculty Member (obtain from Sponsored Research Office). This should include a list of proposals submitted for external support during the year as well as any proposals that were funded during the year.
- SEEQs and student comments for courses taught on-load during the evaluation period.
- The Finance office will provide:
- Number of IST students paid by each faculty member on a research grant
- IST faculty serving as Co-PI on grants and supervising students
- Post docs, RAs or wage pay payroll students funded using external funds by each faculty member
- Personal narrative statement providing context while highlighting interactions and relationships between your activities and/or between your activities and strategic initiatives of the college or university. In addition, faculty have the option to include a descriptive (not evaluative) summary of the work they have done with the [Schreyer Institute] consultant as part of their FAR materials if desired.
- Non-tenure Line Faculty responsibilities beyond teaching will be clearly documented and provided by Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs so committees know what is expected.
Process
One committee (i.e., the Area Committee) will be established within each faculty area to provide input to the PiC to assist in the annual evaluation process for all faculty with a primary affiliation with the area. The Area Committee will provide input on each individual’s teaching, research, and service-related contributions. Each committee member will provide an individual rating for each member of the faculty for each area of activity (i.e., teaching, research, and service as appropriate) based on review of the appropriate FAR materials along with comments that support their ratings. The Area Committee, as a whole, drafts a brief narrative for each area of activity (i.e., teaching, research, and service). The primary Area faculty are reviewed by the Area Committee, including committee members and the PiC. When reviewing a member of the committee, the individual under review is recused from the process. The committee’s feedback regarding the PiC goes directly to the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs. The PiC uses the ratings, comments and brief narratives for all other Area faculty to draft the annual review for each faculty member, including a narrative that summarizes the individual’s activities for the year.
Ratings for each area of activity range from 1 to 5. A rating of 1 corresponds to unsatisfactory performance in the area being evaluated. A rating of 2 corresponds to performance that needs improvement. A rating of 3 corresponds to performance that meets expectations. A rating of 4 corresponds to performance that exceeds expectations. Finally, a rating of 5 corresponds to performance that significantly exceeds expectations. While there is no required distribution, a majority of faculty members are rated as meeting expectations or exceeding expectations. Often the number of individuals in these two categories are similar. Significantly exceeding expectations is the next most common rating, but this rating is used much less often than meeting or exceeding expectations. Needs improvement is the fourth most common rating, highlighting situations where there are concerns regarding performance. Unsatisfactory is used least frequently and is chosen to indicate serious concerns in one or more areas of activity.
The Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs (ADFA) will meet with the PiC, individually or as a group as necessary, to discuss and review draft annual reviews, with a focus on calibration across Faculty Areas, while also finalizing the annual reviews. While the exact nature of this calibration process may vary in any given year or for any given area, in general it will include a meeting of all PiCs and the ADFA, where each PiC summarizes the accomplishments of faculty members who received a rating of significantly exceeds expectations in any one area of activity (i.e., teaching, research, service). In addition, each PiC will summarize the accomplishments of two or three individuals with weak performance but who was rated meets expectations for each area of activity. The goal is to help calibrate expectations across the three Faculty Areas to ensure that comparable thresholds are in operation for minimum requirements for meeting expectations as well as minimum requirements for significantly exceeding expectations. PiCs will be able to adjust their ratings for individuals as they deem appropriate prior to forwarding materials to the ADFA. The ADFA and the Dean use their input to finalize the annual review for each member of the faculty.
The annual faculty evaluation is intended to be both formative and summative. It is formative in that it should provide useful guidance to the faculty regarding their activities and plans thereby helping them plan more appropriately for the future. At the same time, it is summative in that this is the official appraisal of one’s activities for the previous year.
Area Committee membership should be established with the goal of ensuring that the diversity of perspectives and approaches within the area is represented. If possible, Area Committees should include at least three individuals with staggered terms of appointment, set at an appropriate length to ensure overlap in membership from year to year. For example, a committee of three may include two individuals with staggered two-year terms plus one individual with a one-year term. This will help ensure consistency from year to year while allowing membership to change each year. The Committee formation and the review processes will be as follows:
- Each Area selects their Area FAR Committees. Only faculty with a primary affiliation can serve on an Area Committee. The PiC selects the committee members using faculty input to guide the process. The committee membership is communicated to the faculty.
- Each committee will be responsible for providing input to the PiC for teaching, research, and service depending on the responsibilities of the individual being reviewed.
- Each committee member will have the opportunity to review all relevant materials for all faculty members being evaluated, so that they can complete the worksheet with their individual rank for each with comments/justification. After these individual reviews are complete, the committee will meet as a group to discuss all individuals being reviewed. During this discussion, committee members may update their feedback if appropriate. Importantly, there is no expectation of complete agreement by all members of the committee. The committee as a whole writes a brief draft narrative to the PiC regarding each area of activity. Both the individual worksheets and the collaboratively-written narratives will be submitted to the PiC.
- The committee will send the individual worksheets and combined narratives to the Office of Faculty Affairs administrative support staff member assigned to support the annual review process; the staff member will track and file information, and forward it to the PiC. The staff member will forward review of the PiCs directly to the ADFA with no involvement of the PiC.
- The PIC will use input from the committee to draft the annual review letter.
- The ADFA will meet with the PiCs as necessary to address calibration across faculty areas prior to finalizing the annual reviews. When draft reviews are complete, they will be delivered to the ADFA. The ADFA then finalizes the annual reviews.
- The FARs are distributed to individual faculty members electronically as PDF. No hard copy is necessary.
- The faculty members will return a signed copy (acknowledging receipt and review, not necessarily agreement) to the Office of Faculty Affairs admin support person via email or hard copy. The copies are all filed in individual faculty folders under Faculty Annual Reviews on the Faculty Affairs shared drive.
- When reviews are complete, the ADFA will meet with all faculty that receive a rating of unsatisfactory or below expectations in any of the areas of evaluation. The ADFA or Dean will also meet with any other faculty that would like to discuss the outcome of the annual review process.
- FAR appeals should go to the ADFA and Dean as he is ultimately responsible for the FAR and will make any changes if appropriate, notifying the individual and PiC. Any appeal brought to the PiCs should be relayed to the ADFA and Dean. FAR committees must maintain confidentiality and while they may discuss the process they are not to discuss individual cases with faculty.
- Following the completion and distribution of the FARs to faculty members, there may be a debrief meeting with the Area Committees, Dean, Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs, PiCs, and the admin support person.
Teaching
Teaching is evaluated based on the quality of the learning experience as assessed using the materials available such as SEEQs and peer reviews, as well as the significance and impact of the courses; supervision of independent studies, theses, and dissertations; new courses developed or existing courses that were revised; and related activities. Teaching is not evaluated based on the number of courses taught. Teaching may also include engagement in the pursuit of funding for activities that are most appropriately described as teaching (e.g., redesigning a course) as well as the execution of related activities. Unfortunately, there continue to be challenges with peer evaluations including results that are in stark contrast to other feedback about the same courses and the fact that our current process results in our only having peer evaluations for a subset of faculty. As a result, peer evaluations are not currently included as part of the annual review process. Schreyer Institute recommends bonus points for high SEEQ response rates – so we should not penalize faculty who do this unless the faculty are going to make some formal statement about the appropriateness of this approach.
Research
Research is evaluated based on the significance and impact of the outcomes produced and the venues in which the outcomes were presented, engagement in the pursuit of funding as well as the execution of externally funded research activities, and related activities. External funding may count toward research, service, or teaching – depending on the nature of the resulting activities and the primary area to which a grant contributes.
Service
Service is evaluated based on an individual’s engagement with department, college, and institutional service as well as service to the profession including engagement in the pursuit of funding for activities that are most appropriately described as service (e.g., funding for student scholarships) as well as the execution of related activities. Consider service to community only if it leverages the specialized knowledge regarding information sciences and technologies that are the reason for an individual being a member of the IST faculty. It needs to connect to the focus/mission of the college in some way.
Revised: 8/22/18 kw
Revised: 10/31/19 kw
Revised: 7/27/22 kw
Revised: 5/2/23 kw
Revised: 12/18/23 kw
Revised: 5/8/24 kw
Revised: 2/12/25 kw letterhead