Procedures and Criteria for Annual Faculty Evaluation for Salary Adjustments

Revised 8-20-07

In accordance with the UM’s Collected Rules and Regulations 310.015 entitled “Annual Review of Faculty Performance,” every tenured and untenured regular faculty member is to be reviewed annually.

This document is a complete description of the department’s policies relating to annual faculty evaluation and all salary adjustments resulting from such annual evaluation.

The goal of annual salary increments is to promote the mission of the Department, for instance, to reward and encourage notable and sustained productivity in research, quality teaching, and service to the department, College, University, and profession. The College of Arts and Science workload distribution 40-40-20 (40% efforts for research, 40% efforts for teaching, and 20% efforts for service) shall serve as the basic framework for assigning ratings and salary adjustments. The ratings will be based on the accomplishments of all regular faculty members during the preceding three calendar years in research and the preceding calendar year in the categories of teaching and service.

I. Procedures for Annual Faculty Evaluation:

1. The Chair invites each member of the department to meet with him/her in the fall to discuss the faculty member’s teaching, research, and service plans for the next year.

2. Each faculty member will submit a copy of his/her Annual Addition to the Cumulative Faculty Record and an updated CV to the Chair by February 15th each year, together with reprints or typescripts of work published or accepted for publication the preceding calendar year, teaching portfolio, evidence of service and other pertinent evidence of accomplishments. Authors of jointly authored papers should identify their percentage contribution and describe their role in jointly authored projects.

3. This material will be available to all regular faculty members of the Department.

4. The Chair meets with the Raise Advisory Committee prior to April 1st to discuss the performance of faculty members and arrive at a tentative performance rating for each faculty member in the categories of research, teaching, and service.

5. By April 15th the Chair shall inform each faculty member of his/her tentative ratings and shall make available to regular members of the department anonymous information about tentative merit ratings. The information will be anonymized by category, resulting in anonymous information for research, teaching, service, and overall score.

6. The Chair will meet with any faculty member who so requests to discuss his/her tentative performance ratings.

7. By May 15th, the Chair shall inform each faculty member of his/her final ratings and shall make available to regular members of the department anonymous information about final merit ratings. The information will be anonymized by category, resulting in anonymous information for research, teaching, service, and overall score.

8. For each of teaching, research, and service, each person will be rated—with 1 being standard performance, 1.5 being 50% above, etc.

9. The Chair shall preserve the confidentiality of information related to annual evaluations to the degree allowed by this and other department or university policies.

II. Guidelines for Annual Faculty Evaluation to be used by the Raise Advisory Committee and the Chair:

1. Research

Standard performance in research typically involves a substantive paper in a refereed journal or the equivalent of such.

The evaluation for research will be based on such considerations as authored books published; authored monographs published; philosophical translations published; authored papers published; edited books published; the reputation and selectivity of the journal or press that publishes the books, monographs, translations, or papers; the refereed or invited status of publications, including whether the publication was assisted by a subvention; presentations made (especially when invited or refereed), including commentaries; citations or reprints of past research; grants and fellowships received; awards for research and related achievements; and journal editing. “Publication” is here understood to include electronic publication on the worldwide web.

The importance assigned to each of a faculty member’s achievements will be affected by the contribution that the achievement makes to the faculty member’s overall research agenda and to his or her national or international reputation. The importance assigned to each achievement will be affected by its quality and the scholarly accomplishment it represents.

2. Teaching

The evaluation for teaching will be based on such considerations as the number of courses, new preparations of courses, and students taught (including special readings courses and students), excepting additional courses taught as compensated overload; the character of all courses taught (e.g., large lecture, seminar, or Writing Intensive); the grade distribution in each course taught; the quality of the teaching (as indicated by such considerations as student evaluations, reports of visiting colleagues, appropriateness of course content and design as revealed by the syllabus, course materials prepared by the

instructor [e.g., handouts], and evaluation methods employed [e.g., true/false quizzes or multiple-draft term papers]); evidence of student learning, such as a student’s publication of a course paper; the number of graduate or undergraduate students whose thesis work is supervised; the number of philosophy majors or undeclared freshmen to whom one is a general academic adviser; documented contribution to number of students who major, minor or enroll in philosophy courses; the writing of, or contribution to, published pedagogical materials (e.g., textbooks); and visiting lectures in classes at MU or elsewhere.

The importance assigned to each of these considerations will reflect the importance of each to the teaching mission of the department. The research rating is based on the accomplishments of the previous three calendar years. More specifically, it is the average of the annual research ratings of each of the previous three years. Thus, each year, the Chair and Salary Advisory Committee rate the research accomplishments of each faculty member for the previous calendar year only, and this annual rating is then averaged with the annual rating for the preceding two years to obtain the three-year average research rating. For 2003, the first year of application, the Chair and Salary Advisory Committee will assign annual research rating for 2001, 2002, and 2003.

3. Service

Standard performance in service involves fulfilling the departmental duties assigned by the Chair in the initial committee assignments.

The evaluation for service will be based on such considerations as the number and kind of both ongoing and ad hoc administrative duties undertaken on behalf of various bodies (e.g., the Philosophy Department, the College of Arts and Science, the MU campus, the UM System, and regional, national, and international organizations); the actual burdens imposed by these duties; the success with which they are performed; and the benefit they provide to the University of Missouri. Such activities as refereeing for journals or professional associations, grant reviews, and tenure reviews will be treated as contributions to service, as will non-scholarly philosophical presentations to audiences not composed of students (e.g., presentations to the general public or to faculty in other MU departments).

The importance assigned to each of these considerations will reflect the importance of each to the service mission of the department.

III. Principles to be used by the Chair in developing his/her Raise Recommendations:

Faculty will be rated annually in each area: teaching, research, and service. A total score for each faculty member will be obtained by taking the weighted averages of the member’s ratings in the areas of teaching, research, and service. For tenured faculty teaching full time with a 2/2 load, research and teaching are weighted 40% each and service 20%. For tenure-track assistant professors teaching full time with a 2/2 load, research and teaching are weighted 45% each and service 10%. For a faculty member on modified assignment, the weighting of the teaching rating will be reduced or enlarged by the appropriate percentage (25% for faculty teaching a three-fourths load, 50% for faculty teaching a half load, etc). Service weightings for directors of undergraduate and graduate studies will be increased to compensate for the 25% reduction in teaching weightings.

1. If the Chair, after consultation with the Raise Advisory Committee, deems the performance of a faculty member to be overall unsatisfactory that faculty member will be ineligible for a raise.

2. At the discretion of the Chair and after consultation with the Raise Advisory Committee, a portion of the total raise pool for the department may be set aside for the following special purposes:

      a. addressing inequities and problematic instances of compression and inversion b. faculty retention

The amount set aside may be up to 25%, contingent upon the size of the raise pool (other things being equal, the greater the raise pool the lesser the percent set aside). The Chair will announce to the department the dollar amount, if any, set aside for these purposes. The grounds for allocating these funds are not limited to but may include average salaries in the AAU. Upon request, information about how and on what grounds this amount is distributed will be made available to faculty members.

3. The remainder of the raise pool (the total raise pool less the amount, if any, set aside in accordance with (2) above) will be distributed to eligible faculty members as follows:

      a. Half of the remaining amount will be distributed as flat dollar amounts in direct proportion to overall faculty rating scores.

      b. The other half of the remaining amount will be distributed as percent raises. The percentage for each faculty member will be determined in direct proportion to overall faculty ratings scores.

IV. Appeals Procedures

Any faculty member who disagrees with his or her ratings or raise recommendation is encouraged to resolve the dispute informally with the Chair or through campus mediation services, but if he/she remains dissatisfied may, by the following September 1, pursue a departmental appeal. Pursuing an appeal within the department in no way precludes a faculty member from pursuing any other available avenues of appeal, but faculty members are encouraged to try to settle disputes within the department. Departmental appeals will be done under the following procedures:

1. Any appeal shall be initiated by delivery of a letter or written memorandum by September 1, signed by the faculty member, to the appeals chair (appointed by the chair together with an alternate (in case of an appeal by the appeals chair) at the beginning of each year, in reverse alphabetical order from the tenured faculty, excluding members of the Raise Advisory Committee and the chair of the prior year).

2. The grievant will, within 14 calendar days of sending the initial letter, send a written statement of the charges to the appeals chair. The written statement of charges must contain a clear statement of the grievance and the desired remedy. The appeals chair will then send a copy of the written statement of charges to the Appeals Committee, the Chair and the rating/recommending Chair, asking the rating/recommending Chair to respond within 14 calendar days. A copy of the response will be sent to the grievant and the Appeals Committee. If after receiving the rating/recommending Chair’s response, the grievant is satisfied and informs the appeals chair of such, the appeal will end.

3. The appeals chair will call an initial meeting of the Appeals Committee (all tenured department faculty, except the Chair, the rating/recommending chair, and any tenured faculty making appeals that year) during the first two weeks of September. During this meeting, the appeals chair will schedule future meetings keeping in mind the timeframes given below, and discuss other organizational issues regarding managing the process of hearing.

4. No later than 14 calendar days after receiving the rating/recommending Chair’s response, the Appeals Committee will meet separately with the faculty member and the rating/recommending Chair. The faculty member will present his or her case to the Appeals Committee with any relevant documents. The members may ask any questions or request any additional documents necessary. The rating/recommending Chair will present his or her case to the Appeals Committee with any relevant documents. The members may ask any questions or request any additional necessary documents. The Chair is required to give to the appeals chair, upon request, any information directly relevant to the appeal and already made available to the Raise Advisory Committee.

5. Within 14 calendar days after completion of the hearings, the Appeals Committee will meet to deliberate and prepare a written report of its findings and recommendations including suggested remedial action as necessary. Prior to the meeting, the appeals chair is encouraged to consult the Chair about the feasibility of possible remedies. The appeals chair will report its recommendation by letter to the department Chair and the rating/recommending Chair with a copy to the faculty member making the appeal as soon as possible but in no case later than 7 days of the preparation of the written report.

6. The department Chair will decide whether or not to accept the Appeals Committee’s recommendation and report his or her decision in writing to the committee and to the faculty member appealing within 14 days of the receipt of the written report.

7. The Appeals Committee’s recommendation and the Chair’s reply will be included in the file of the faculty member appealing.

8. Normally, any suggested adjustment in raise recommendations made by the Appeals Committee and accepted by the Chair will be acted on in the year following the appeal.

APPENDIX A

Raise Advisory Committee

The advisory committee consists of three tenured faculty members plus the Department Chair ex officio, with the chair of the committee being the present Department Chair. The Committee advises the chair on (1) annual performance ratings and proposed salary adjustments and (2) ideas for special salary adjustment requests to the Dean. Service on the committee will be limited to a term of three consecutive years. Each year one of the three members will be replaced, so that there is always some continuity in membership from year to year. A faculty member who misses a part of his/her three-year service will serve the remainder of his/her term after the substitute has completed his/her three-year term. Appointment will be by alphabetical order of last name.