5e. Unit Evaluation of Professional Education Faculty Performance
5e1. How are faculty evaluated? How regular,
systematic, and comprehensive are the faculty evaluations for
adjunct/part-time, tenured and non-tenured faculty, as well as for graduate
teaching assistants?
All non-tenured faculty follow the purple book process for
promotion and tenure. This process requires annual goal setting (in the form of
a document of expectations) and review. Annual review takes place at the
department level for every faculty member involved in this process and more
substantive review (beyond department level) is done biannually depending upon
length of faculty contract (one or two years). Example purple books are
available for review in the documents room. The Unit does not use graduate
teaching assistants.
5e2. How well do faculty perform on the unit’s
evaluations? (A table summarizing faculty performance could be included here.)
Because of the comprehensive nature of the
faculty review process, very few faculty reach the tenure decision year
(generally the 6th year) without being able to succeed. Faculty receive detailed responses to their purple book
review from their department every year that outlines areas of strengths and
weaknesses tied to department, unit and university standards in research,
teaching and service. A full formal review is conducted in the second and
fourth years and faculty may be given a shorter contract if deficiencies are
found. In the past five years 17 faculty were given tenure. Of these 11 were
granted tenure early. During that same period, 5 faculty were denied tenure,
including one who was denied in the 4th year.
5e3. How are faculty evaluations used to improve teaching, scholarship and
service?
Faculty evaluations are systematic and comprehensive. The
document of expectations and supporting purple book materials are presented to
the department and detailed written feedback is given to the faculty member
under evaluation. The faculty member must report on the actual achievement of
set goals through a lengthy narrative on research, teaching and service. Part
of each narrative addresses improvements made, changes and adjustments based on
the things learned since the last review. The established criteria at each
department level are consistent and align with the basic components of the
conceptual framework. Fixed term faculty (ad hoc and academic staff) are
evaluated on an annual basis using a similar process as stated earlier.
Graduate assistants are not engaged in teaching activities; therefore they are
not subject to this type of formal review. Candidates have the opportunity to
evaluate faculty through course evaluations and follow-up studies. Data from
course evaluations on teaching abilities are required for the promotion and
tenure process. Tenured faculty are only required to submit course evaluations
every three years, but most faculty continue to perform written evaluations
every year. An examination of purple books indicate that faculty are highly
qualified in their teaching and use data from course evaluations to improve
their performance.
