The University of Alabama
Steering Committee Meeting Agenda 

October 9, 2001
3:30pm—307 Ferguson

Student Affairs (Dexter Gordon and Alvin Winters)

Resolution Creating a System of Faculty Feedback for Deans and Chairs

Academic Affairs (Don Desmet and Beth Macauley)

Posting (on the web) of student evaluations

Inconsistent tenure and promotion standards between departments and colleges

Financial Affairs (Terry Royed and)

Intellectual Property Rights proposal

Health insurance for graduate students

Planning and Operations (Bill Keel and John Mason)

Research and Service (Bing Blewitt)

Senate Operations (Steve Miller and Harry Price)

A Proposed System of Faculty Feedback For Deans and Chairs

(Developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on the Evaluation of Deans and Department Chairs)

 

Whereas this proposal was drafted with input from five University’s experts in performance evaluation. And all of these experts agree that annual systematic feedback for deans and chairs is a better approach than our current system of evaluating deans and chairs, and

Whereas annual systematic feedback reduces the bias in the unsystematic feedback that most deans and chairs currently receive, and

Whereas annual feedback helps deans and chairs determine what to start doing, what to stop doing, and what to continue doing. In other words, it helps improve performance, and

Whereas evaluating deans and chairs once every five years does not provide frequent enough feedback to ensure a timely response to faculty concerns and a positive evaluation by faculty, and

Whereas three hundred and sixty degree feedback and evaluation is the preferred practice in contemporary public and private organizations. That is, securing feedback from the top, bottom, and equivalent levels in organizations is a contemporary "best practice" of management. And whereas, a system of faculty feedback for administrators at UA is an essential element in a system of 360 degree feedback, and

Whereas allowing faculty to provide feedback to chairs and deans, who they have usually known for years, is only fair because we allow teenagers to evaluate faculty based on a one-semester exposure to a professor. In other words, failing to allow faculty to provide annual feedback to deans and chairs, while requiring faculty to allow students to evaluate their classes, is a demoralizing inconsistency that is far too top-down management for an institution whose primary service provider typically holds a Ph.D., and

Whereas the system of annual performance evaluation that was proposed by the Faculty Senate in October of 2000 was rejected by the Council of Deans and the Provost because it was perceived to be threatening and an undue administrative burden, and

Whereas the proposed system of faculty feedback is nonthreatening to deans and chairs because it is for private use. One’s superior will not see the feedback, and

Whereas a system of faculty feedback for deans and chairs would not be an administrative burden. It would add roughly 1 percent to the 150,000 student evaluations that are already circulated each year and, if administered on-line, would be even less an administrative burden.

Therefore be it resolved that the Faculty Senate proposes the following system of faculty feedback for deans and department chairs:

 

 

A PROPOAL FOR A System of Faculty Feedback for Deans and Chairs

 

The consensus of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Evaluation of Deans and Department Chairs is to propose a system of faculty feedback for the purpose of professional development, or to help deans and chairs improve their performance. This system will not be used as a system of performance evaluation for the purpose of determining retention or salary raises. As such, deans or chairs will have exclusive rights to their faculty feedback.

We propose that a base, or core, feedback instruments be developed by the experts serving on the Ad Hoc Committee. This includes experts in public sector performance evaluation, private sector performance evaluation, continuous quality improvement, and psychometrics. These experts will develop instruments with the input and insights of the Provost, deans, chairs, and faculty. To tailor the instruments to the unique nature of different dean and chair positions, deans and chairs will be invited and encouraged to make additions and modifications to the base instruments.

The consensus of our committee is that the system of faculty feedback should be administered annually to all faculty. However, to reduce the administrative burden of processing enormous volumes of written comments for the dean of Arts and Sciences (A&S), a random sample of A&S faculty should be surveyed or all A&S faculty should be surveyed and a random sample of their written comments word processed.

We further propose that feedback instruments be administered in one of two ways: (1) on-line or (2) according to the administrative mechanisms currently used to administer over 150,000 annual student evaluation instruments. We feel that a pilot study should determine which mechanism yields the highest response rate. A pilot study should also be administered in order to determine the questions that will ultimately be used in the base instruments (i.e., questions that provide deans and chairs the most meaningful information).

Finally, our committee recommends that faculty feedback surveys should be administered in the spring or, to reduce administrative burden and overloading faculty with surveys, should be administered in the fall and spring (e.g., deans in fall, chairs in spring). However, we also feel that the issue of when to administer a faculty feedback survey should not stand in the way of acceptance of the feedback system. Hence, we propose that the deans and chairs can decide when during the year that they would like to have their faculty feedback surveys administered.

COMPARISON OF THE REJECTED AND NEW PROPOSAL

FOR A SYSTEM OF FACULTY FEEDBACK FOR DEANS AND CHAIRS

 

Factor New Proposal Rejected Proposal

Purpose of the evaluation professional development determine raises & retention;

professional development

Nature of the information performance feedback performance evaluation

Generated (no annual vote of confidence)

Publicness of the feedback private feedback only for information is for the evaluated the dean, not the Provost; dean and the Provost and the

private feedback only for the evaluated chair and his/her chair, not the dean dean

Faculty to be surveyed a sample of A&S faculty all faculty

and all faculty in the other

colleges/schools

Who develops the UA experts in performance unscientific instrument feedback survey evaluation, quality, and borrowed from another psychometrics University

Frequency of the annual annual

administration of the

survey

OPTIONS IF ANNUAL FEEDBACK SEEMS TOO FREQUENT

Faculty provide feedback to department chairs every year. Faculty provide feedback to deans every two years. Department chairs, assistant deans, and professional staff provide feedback to deans every year.

Faculty provide deans feedback every two years and chairs feedback every year (no annual feedback by chairs, assistant deans, and professional staff).

C. Faculty provide deans and chairs feedback every two years.

SIZE OF FACULTY BY COLLEGE

(for the purpose of documenting administrative burden in only the College of A&S)

College

Regular

Fulltime

Regular

Part-time

Temporary

Fulltime

Temporary

Part-time
A&S

321

1

59

47
Engineering

89

12

8
C&BA

88

4

17
Education

59

14

17
Communication & IS

40

1

14

4
Libraries

33

0

0
HES

31

1

5

11
Law

24

6

27
CCHS

23

5

1

1
Nursing

17

8

4
Social Work

16

7

15
Continuing Studies*

24
Graduate School*
Total

741

8

130

175

*Not represented in the Faculty Senate.

RESOLUTION COMMENDING PRESIDENT ANDREW A. SORENSEN, PROVOST NANCY S. BARRETT, AND THEIR EXECUTIVE TEAMS

Whereas U.S. News and World report has recently recognized The University of Alabama as being one of the top 50 universities in the United States, and

Whereas the funded research at The University of Alabama has climbed to over $71.5 million and has more than doubled over the last five years, and

Whereas the number of per-faculty scholarly publications from 1995 to 2000 has almost tripled the number of per-faculty publications from 1988 to 1992, and

Whereas the citations of faculty publications have increased from 7.9 per faculty member from 1988 to 1992 to 32.5 per faculty member from 1995 to 2000, and

Whereas The University of Alabama has been able to attract over 300 National Merit, Achievement, and Hispanic Scholars, and

Whereas The University of Alabama is enrolling record numbers of African-Americans, leads the nation in SREB Minority Doctoral Fellows, and ranks 32nd in the nation in total number of doctoral degrees awarded to African-Americans, and

Whereas numerous programs, schools, and departments at the University of Alabama have elevated themselves to national prominence in recent years. These include the School of Law, the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, the Culverhouse School of Accountancy, the Techno-MBA program, the Manderson Graduate School of Business, the doctoral program in health education, and the Department of Chemical Engineering, and

Whereas The University of Alabama has been repeatedly recognized by numerous publications as being one of the best buys and values in higher education, and

Whereas President Sorensen has made improving faculty salaries his number one priority throughout his tenure as University President.

Therefore be it resolved that the Faculty Senate commends President Andrew A. Sorensen, Provost Nancy L. Barrett, and their executive team for their leadership, stewardship, hard work, facilitation, persistence, vision, and inspiration that has been so critical to the unprecedented achievements of The University of Alabama during their tenures in office. Be it further resolved that the Faculty Senate expresses its sincere appreciation to President Sorensen and Provost Barrett for their accessibility, receptivity, and sensitivity to the Faculty Senate.