Quick Overview
- Submit final job announcements for composite advertisement
- Indicate to Dean of Faculty’s Office whether your unit wants to participate in the Bolin Fellowship search process for the upcoming year
- Gather materials from assistant professors being considered for reappointment.
- Collect updated CV’s and brief activity report on past year’s activities from assistant professors for whom no decision is pending
- Remind assistant professors returning from AP leave that leave report due September 1
- Update unit’s statement of “Methods to Evaluate Teaching, Scholarship, and Service”
- Make available to tenured faculty those items that they will need to evaluate non-tenured faculty
- Set schedule of meetings for tenured members of the unit, and full professors, if necessary
- Monitor course enrollment figures for the fall semester
- Welcome new faculty
Hiring
The Office of Strategic Planning & Institutional Diversity will advertise faculty positions in the Chronicle of Higher Education and higheredjobs.com. Please send drafts of all faculty position announcements for review to Peony Fhagen, José Constantine, and Rakan Safa.
See Faculty Recruiting and Hiring Guidelines for steps to take early in the search process, if your unit is conducting a search.
Evaluation
Unit deadline: Reappointment materials from assistant professors being considered for reappointment in the fall are due to chairs. These materials are not to be submitted to the dean of the faculty office until the entire reappointment report has been prepared.
As the “no decision pending” reports are due to the CAP in mid-September, chairs should request an updated CV and brief statement from their junior colleagues in early August.
The College strongly suggests that each non-tenured member of the faculty provide an annual activity report to their unit chair. In years three and six, these reports are required to be statements of self-evaluation, to inform the reappointment and tenure review process. But even during years when no reappointment or promotion decision is pending, non-tenured members of the faculty should be encouraged to submit a brief report on their professional activities during the past year and minimally an updated C.V. You might suggest faculty draw from format of January activity report that all faculty may submit to the dean of the faculty.
Finally, remember to remind faculty returning from AP leave to submit AP leave report by September 1.
Be sure that your unit’s statement of “methods to evaluate teaching, scholarship, and service” is updated and accurately reflects the process by which decisions will be reached in your unit. This statement should be submitted along with the Staffing Report, Part II (due in September) in order to inform the CAP of your unit’s evaluation procedures. It should also be sent to all new faculty—as well as to all continuing non-tenured faculty—preferably before the beginning of the academic year. Indeed, if the procedures are in any way changed, all non-tenured faculty must be notified of such changes. Although evaluation procedures may vary somewhat from unit to unit, and a unit may even choose to alter its procedures somewhat from one year to the next, the Faculty Handbook clearly states: “The evaluation procedures used within a unit must in any case be uniform for all non-tenured unit members within a given year.” (Faculty Handbook, II-M)
Make available items to tenured faculty who will be evaluating non-tenured faculty.
1) For non-tenured faculty not standing for tenure or reappointment:
- A complete report of SCS scores for each non-tenured faculty member. These should be on file in the unit, but copies and other information can be obtained from the director of institutional research, if needed.
- Written reports on student interviews regarding non-tenured members of the unit.
- Reports from tenured faculty on their visits to the classes of non-tenured faculty in the spring and fall of the previous academic year. (Note: this applies only to those units that use class visits or class exchanges as a means of evaluating non-tenured faculty.)
- Updated curriculum vitae.
- A brief activity report for the previous year, if available.
2) For non-tenured faculty standing for reappointment or tenure in the fall – in addition to the first four items above, the following materials are required, all of which should have been requested from the non-tenured faculty member earlier in the year (see February):
- Copies of scholarly writings or artistic works.
- Reviews of scholarly work or artistic works that have appeared in professional or other publications.
- Self-evaluation.
- Course syllabi and other relevant material.
- Any other materials or information that the non-tenured faculty member would like to have considered.
Set a schedule for meetings of all tenured members of the unit. Note that senior faculty members on leave must either participate fully in the reappointment and promotion evaluation process of all candidates for reappointment and promotion in that year, or submit a letter evaluating the work of each candidate.
Set additional schedule, if necessary, for meetings of all full professors in the unit. These meetings are necessary if a decision on Promotion to Full Professor is pending. You will be informed by the Dean of Faculty Office which associate professors in your unit should be considered in a given year, although you may also call the Dean of Faculty Office if there is confusion over a professor’s year in rank. If you, as unit chair, are not a full professor, the dean of the faculty will appoint a full professor of the unit (or, in rare instances, a full professor from another unit) to lead these reviews and you will be absolved of any responsibility for coordinating them. The deadline for submission of Promotion to Full Professor Report to CAP is mid-January.
Staffing/Hiring
Check with faculty eligible for leaves in the next academic year to see if they have any additional information about their leave plans. All of this should have been included in the Staffing Report, Part I, already submitted in April. However, some leaves may have changed from “tentative” to “definite,” some funding issues may have been resolved, the exact semester may have now been determined, and so on. All of these minor changes can have staffing implications, so it is important to stay on top of them. Please report any definite changes to the dean of the faculty office.
Curriculum
Monitor course enrollment figures for the fall semester.
Welcome New Faculty
Welcome newly arriving faculty in your unit. Encourage them to attend college orientation events and participate in First 3.
Remind new colleagues about the services provided by Cecilia Hirsch, Manager of Spouse Partner Resources. She provides career counseling and job search support to spouses and partners of current and prospective faculty and administrative staff. A full description of those services is available here.