Evaluation and Compensation Plan Policy: Procedure During Lean Years

Op3.08-3 Evaluation and Compensation Plan Policy: Procedure for Lean Years

Rational for the revised policy

In response to ongoing state budget constraints and in order to simplify the evaluation/compensation process the President in the Fall 2010 semester charged the Compensation Committee to reconsider the current evaluation/compensation process.

The revised evaluation process detailed below incorporates the recommendations of the Compensation Committee, which were approved by the President.

Note that the performance evaluations generated by this revised evaluation process may be used to recognize accomplishments during lean years when the raise pool again rises to above 2%. The process by which that is done will be determined at a future date.

Guidelines for the evaluation/compensation process during lean years

All departments, regardless of the evaluation process adopted, must incorporate the essential principles identified below into their evaluation process:

  1. All full-time faculty are required to submit annual reports to their department head every year and will be evaluated every year. This is a requirement of employment.
  2. Department heads must evaluate all full-time faculty annually.
  3. Soon before or in January of each year, faculty will meet with department heads to discuss and set performance weights for their teaching, research, and service for that calendar year. See Appendix A for guidelines for Performance Weights and Workloads. Department heads will forward results of these meetings to their deans by the end of January.
    1. The performance weights may be renegotiated if changes in faculty assignments have an impact on the existing weights for teaching, research, and service.
  4. The criteria for evaluation (and changes to existing criteria) must be developed by the department, then approved by the faculty, department head, dean, and the Office of the Provost.
    1. In the development of departmental criteria, all contiguous levels should be communicating so that the criteria are both appropriate for the particular discipline and equitably rigorous across the college.
    2. In the spring after the evaluation process, the departmental review committee should determine if criteria are adequate or require change. Any changes made must be approved by the faculty, department head, dean, and Office of the Provost. (The approval process is not necessary if criteria are not changed.)
    3. Criteria used for evaluation must align with criteria used for reappointment, tenure, and promotion decisions.
  5. Evaluation processes will vary from department to department, but all departments must follow these general guidelines:
    1. All faculty members are evaluated according to the departmentally approved criteria that were developed for the merit system. Departments have the flexibility to use the peer review process (with or without numerical scoring) or other processes of evaluation, such as self-evaluation combined with department head review.
    2. The process of evaluation must be approved by a majority vote among the faculty, and is subject to department head and dean approval.
    3. Department heads meet with each faculty member in their departments to discuss the prior year’s performance and discuss performance goals for the upcoming year.
    4. The results of the faculty performance evaluation are drafted by the department head and signed by the faculty member for documentation purposes. These reports will be kept on file, with copies sent to the respective deans.
  6. So that there is clarity in the process, there must be communication between all the levels that may be involved in the evaluation process, especially when there is disagreement between levels.
    1. If department heads change the scores of a departmental review committee (if this is part of the evaluation process), they must provide a written rationale to faculty members affected and to the departmental review committee.

Note: For current dates for the evaluation/compensation process please see the Master Calendar for Annual Faculty Evaluation.