Faculty Evaluation

As chair, you will be involved in some form of annual faculty evaluation--Third-Year, Tenure, Promotion, and Post-Tenure Reviews—all of which are part of a cycle for you and your colleagues. Fortunately, you will not be involved in all of these reviews in each academic year. You may, however, be asked to serve as an outside reviewer for a colleague in a department other than your own. Because we are very aware of the time demands placed upon CAS chairs, we make every attempt to stagger faculty evaluation involvement.

Procedures for each form of review are part of this chairs' resource link, but let's focus on the two evaluations that will require more advance preparation on your part as chair. Third-Year and Tenure Reviews should include a written evaluation from colleagues outside your department but in related disciplines. Remember the terms “cluster, “Division,” and “School?” We believe it is essential to give colleagues outside your department the opportunity to provide feedback regarding a candidate's qualifications for continuance and/or tenure. The smaller the department, the more important it is to see how your colleague is perceived by others in related disciplines. The awarding of tenure is potentially a career long commitment and mission fit is a primary consideration. Do refer to the documents on Faculty Standards for Tenure and Promotion , which provides a description of considerations and the working assumptions of the Faculty Status Committee (FSC) who will be reviewing candidates' files. Also, check the document for a sample survey questionnaire to adapt to your particular department needs and distribute it to your “outside” colleagues for feedback a month or so before convening a Third-Year or Tenure committee meeting.

You will want to give yourself enough time to summarize the qualitative and quantitative data from the surveys before the departmental vote and before the committee meets and votes on the candidate. A summary of the discussion at this meeting should be put into writing and included in the candidate's file. The chair usually writes this summary, but a “volunteer” present at the meeting may write the summary. Before the summary is included in the candidate's file, a confidential draft should be made available to those present at the meeting for comment.

Lastly, the chair writes a letter that is included in the candidate's file summing up the review committee's evaluation of the candidate's qualifications and this letter should incorporate the results of the survey.

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