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February

Quick Overview

  • Schedule class visits and exchanges for the spring semester, as appropriate
  • Discuss requirements for the following year with those colleagues who will stand for reappointment, tenure or renewal
  • Curricular planning continues. Check the curricular review timeline for deadlines.
  • Discuss your unit’s class schedule.
  • Staffing requests for new tenure-track appointments due March 1
  • Staffing requests for visitors and leave projections due April 15
  • Meet with the dean of the faculty and associate deans of the faculty to discuss concerns and annual updates

Evaluation

For departments and programs that include class visits or class exchanges as part of their review process, these class visits should be arranged for the spring semester. Since coordinating schedules is often a challenge, these arrangements should be made early in the semester. Guidelines for class visits are outlined in the Faculty Handbook.

For non-tenured faculty returning from Assistant Professor Leave in the spring semester, a written report of scholarly activities during the leave should be submitted to the chair, with a copy to the dean of the faculty. The AP Leave report will be assessed as part of the evaluation of scholarship for tenure. [due mid-February]

This month and early March, you will receive memos regarding faculty in your department or program who are standing for tenure, reappointment, or renewal in the coming fall, together with instructions on what you will need to receive from them in the coming months. You should discuss these requirements with the non-tenured faculty member as early as possible and inform the dean of the faculty of this by submitting the signature form for tenure or reappointment.  With the exception of outside reviews, the components of a reappointment decision are essentially identical to those for a tenure decision. You’ll want to collect these materials from the appropriate non-tenured faculty members by July 1 (for tenure candidates) or early August (for reappointment candidates).

  • Self-evaluation
  • Updated curriculum vitae
  • Copy of scholarly writings or artistic works
  • Reviews of scholarly or artistic works that have appeared in professional or other publications
  • Course syllabi and other relevant material
  • Any other materials or information that the non-tenured faculty member would like to have considered

Those non-tenured faculty who will stand for tenure in the coming fall should also be compiling a list of three to six potential outside reviewers. This list should be submitted to the chair by the end of spring break, preferably earlier. Prior to soliciting the reviewers, the chair should submit to the dean of the faculty potential reviewers’ names and institutions as well as their relationship to the faculty member, if any.  Templates for the letters to be sent to external reviewers, inviting and confirming their participation, can be found in the online Chairs’ Handbook in the Additional information, forms and templates section. See Faculty Handbook for details on the selection and solicitation of outside reviewers. (Faculty Handbook, II-M)

Staffing/Hiring

As your searches conclude or enter the final stages, remember that Cecilia Hirsch, the Manager of Spouse Partner Resources is available to answer questions that you or your candidates might have about employment for spouses and partners.

Please notify the dean of the faculty office of the results of your searches.

Please send a signed copy of the offer letter and acceptance letters along with a CV for all successful searches as soon as possible.

You received in January a memo regarding Part I of the annual Staffing Report, which deals with requests for new and visiting faculty positions, and with ongoing faculty staffing levels. Requests for new tenure lines are due on March 1; the rest of the staffing report is due in April. To complete Part I of the staffing report, you probably will wish to schedule a unit meeting. Issues to consider should include, but not be limited to:

  • What does staffing look like over the next five years, considering leave patterns, anticipated retirements, etc.?
  • What are the unit’s curricular needs, and how do these resonate within the context of the overall college curriculum?
  • What areas of the college curriculum would the unit like to see developed?
  • How able is your unit to serve its non-majors or concentrators as well as its majors?

In addition, chairs should contact the chair(s) of any interdisciplinary program(s) that will be requesting staffing contributions from your unit over the next several years. As stated in the Faculty Handbook: “The College expects that unit chairs will work out mutually agreeable allocations of faculty time that will allow for the staffing of courses both within the unit and its major and within a interdisciplinary program’s concentration or major…. Regular consultation between unit chairs is essential to addressing the concerns and meeting the needs of each.”  Faculty Handbook

Curriculum

Finalize course descriptions and start talking with faculty about your unit’s class schedule. For more information about deadlines, refer to the CEA webpage.

Other

Meetings are scheduled by the dean of faculty’s office in February and March for each unit (with FTE) chair to get together with the dean of the faculty and associate deans of the faculty. The purpose of the meeting is twofold:

1) The chair will help the dean of the faculty and associate deans of the faculty interpret the annual updates from their unit colleagues, so that they may make a more informed judgment on merit raises, specifically contextualizing SCS results, enrollments, and self-evaluation of faculty teaching performance; contextualizing scholarship or artwork, i.e. helping the dean of the faculty, provost, and president to understand the significance of scholarship or artwork; and contextualizing community service, especially, but not only, within the unit. Faculty members who do not submit an annual update are not eligible for merit raises.

2) The chair should take the opportunity to raise any issues of concern to the chair and/or members of the unit with the dean of the faculty, provost, and president.

Please be sure that new faculty are aware of the First3.  First3 lunches are open to all faculty in their first and second years, and they are held during the noon hour once each week, either Mondays or Thursdays. If it is possible to avoid scheduling young faculty in the noon time slot on those days, they should be able to participate in this valuable program. Making it possible for them to attend is especially important in the spring semester if they had a conflict which prevented participation in the fall.

New faculty (those beginning in the spring semester) should be invited to the February faculty meeting, where they will be introduced by the dean of the faculty. When you receive a list of new spring semester faculty, please check it over, both to ensure that the list contains no errors or omissions and so that the new faculty may be properly introduced.