Quick Overview
- Identify students to interview for evaluation of non-tenured colleagues, as appropriate
- Begin Bolin application review
- Budget Requests are due mid-December
Evaluation
Solicit names of students to be interviewed who are currently in the classes of non-tenured faculty members. See Faculty Handbook, Section II-M for details of the student interview process. Typically, half of the students interviewed come from those recommended by the non-tenured faculty member; the other half may be chosen by the department, at the discretion of the chair. Some departments opt to have these students randomly selected by the Registrar’s Office.
Remind new and visiting faculty that they are required to use course evaluations at the end of the term. Advise them as to how the evaluation forms are to be administered.
Staffing/Hiring
For those units participating in the Bolin Fellowhip search process, review of applications begins in mid November. The Gaius Charles Bolin Fellowship was established in 1985 to underline the importance of encouraging able minority students to pursue careers in college teaching, and now members of all underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply. Applications are submitted and reviewed online by each department or program, with evaluation methods at the discretion of individual units. Chairs should submit a shortlist of top candidates (if any, and no more than 3) to the associate dean of faculty in mid December. Before the end of the semester, the Bolin Fellow selection committee will review the nominations from all departments and programs and approve candidates for videoconference interviews. Units will conduct virtual interviews in December and early January. Nomination statements for the finalists (no more than 2) the unit would like to hire should be forwarded to the associate dean of faculty by mid-January. The CAP will make a decision in early February. We aim to appoint two Bolin Fellows each year, for two year stints. Details of this process will be provided by the associate dean of the faculty.
On the Institutional Diversity & Equity website, please see Questions Not to Ask: Avoiding Bias and Discrimination. It outlines acceptable and unacceptable questions during the interview process, as established by the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
To safeguard against fraud or identity theft, as unlikely as it may be in faculty hiring, the College makes employment ultimately contingent upon a successful background check. This mandate certainly does not require that recruitment, interviews, and offers be played out in an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust. To the contrary, we will continue to assume that applications are submitted in good faith and that they are entirely accurate and truthful in their representation of a candidate’s credentials. We must nevertheless ask all individuals to whom we are offering a position that they provide us with transcripts or other certifiable evidence of their academic degrees.
Refer to the Hiring Guidelines for guidelines on recruiting, conducting interviews, writing offer letters, and other faculty search procedures.
Curriculum
In the event your unit is considering major curricular changes, especially those tied to the next academic year, this is the time to reach out to the chair of the Committee on Educational Affairs (CEA) to begin planning your submission timeline.
Winter Study registration is usually resolved by early December. The Registrar’s Office or the dean of the faculty office will contact you if courses offered by your department are under enrolled and therefore must be cancelled.
Monitor course enrollment figures for the spring semester.
Budget
The budget requests are due mid-December. Chairs should therefore begin preparing these requests as the holidays, combined with other end of the semester responsibilities, seem to shorten this month considerably. Please contact the Budget Director with any questions.