Faculty Senate Administrative Policies Committee
Members
Al Brown, Chemistry, Chair
Jim Brenner, Chemical Engineering, Past Chair
Wendy Helmstetter, Library
John Cain, Aeronautics
One recurring role for the Administrative Policies Committee
is to coordinate the biannual
Evaluation of Administrators by Faculty.
The guidelines for this evaluation are contained at the top of the above link.
In January, the evaluation went to a Web-based form that resulted in
about a 50% increase in the number of faculty responding and almost a
doubling of the number of total evaluations. Part of the reason for
this increase was that, for the first time, all administrators, not just
department heads and above, were evaluated. I have not heard from anyone
yet about confidentiality problems since this change. Future
administrative policies chairs will have to reply upon Jim Brenner
in order to access results of the administrator surveys.
Such results are stripped of any IP addresses and other
personal identification. To get such information would require
passwords from both Prof. Jim Brenner and Sharon Ainsley, the
university webmaster.
This committee also has responsibilities associated with changes to
the Faculty Handbook. In the last two years, these responsibilities
have centered on what got mislabeled a "Teaching Track to Promotion",
but instead should be considered "Clarification of Promotions Guidelines".
The Provost wanted to see the possibility that faculty who have large
teaching loads and some evidence of scholarly activity or research
have an opportunity for promotion, at least to Associate Professor.
After significant debate, the committee agreed to narrow the scope
of any proposed changes to pages 266-267 in the following file:
archive.tif
For the above link, right click on the link, save the file, then open it.
Do NOT use QuickTime to open it.
The most important outcomes from this work were that
a) the university-wide promotion committee needed to follow each college's
promotions guidelines rather than applying their own college's or their
own personal standards (The College of Aeronautics was particularly affected
by this.); and
b) that "the relative weightings of the teaching and research portions of
any dossier may be in any ratio mutually agreeable to the dean, department head,
and faculty member". Given this, I think that it would be in every faculty
member's best interest to get this down in writing because administrators change
over five-to-ten year intervals.
Other Topics Addressed by the Committee
A) the now no-longer-used Planned Power Outage policy that resulted in
many thousands of dollars of losses, most significantly to the
Department of Biological Sciences;
B) the improvements in the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs,
particularly in the Grants Accounting office;
C) policies that faculty members approach us with that are a hindrance
to faculty members' productivity; and
D) the faculty load form.
For any of the topics below, right click on the link in archive.tif,
save the file, then open it. Do NOT use QuickTime to open it.
Discussion on Merit Raises - page 283
Library Promotions and Rank - pages 1-10, 14, 16, 48, 52
Evaluation of Teaching for Promotion - pages 22-23
Promotions Criteria - Teaching vs. Research - pages 26
Faculty Load Form - pages 38, 39, 59-60,
Late Penalty Policy for Grad Students - page 46
Promotions Guidelines for each college from the Faculty Handbook - pages 140-163
How another institution weighs various promotions criteria with a point system - pages 165-187