Minutes: FACAS Meeting, 11/29/07
Time and Location: 10:30 – 11:55 am, KL 505
Present: D. Biers, G.
Doyle (chair),
Absent: C. Letavec
Guest: F. Pestello, J. Untener
1. Minutes of 11/15/07 were approved as amended.
2. The committee summarized key opposition to the Peer Consultation as expressed at the October Senate meeting
a. Why is it necessary to have peers review each other? Professionals can be trusted.
b. Faculty see a work load increase.
c. Benefits to the review are not clear.
d. There are summative reviews already in place; these should be adequate.
e. PTR by peers may produce ill-will within departments
3. The Provost expressed the wishes of the Board of Trustees
a. The Board has been “promised” for many years that a PTR policy would be implemented soon.
b. The PTR should be done by peers.
c. Faculty should look at the review as an opportunity to enhance their career, and improve the goals of the department and unit.
d. There should be some consistency across units.
4. Resources: The Provost will increase finances in a faculty excellence fund to support development requests resulting from the PTR. He suggested that the deans might also contribute if the development plan was important to the unit. Funds for underperformers would only be available if judged to be helpful.
5. Tying PTR to the sabbatical may be problematic because sabbaticals can occur over a three year window of opportunity.
6. Policy must illustrate how it benefits the individual faculty member. It would also be beneficial if it had a positive effect on the department/unit/university.
7. It was suggested that we should investigate the annual summative reviews already in place. Are they well-done; are they reasonably consistent across departments/units?
8. If the summative reviews are judged to be adequate, how do we develop a formative review that provides value-added to the faculty member?
9. The introduction to the philosophy of the Peer Consultation must clearly present the summative evaluations that presently exist.
10. The implementation of the policy must be written to minimize the work load on the faculty.
11. The next meeting will be at 10:30 am on Thursday, Dec 6, 2007 in KL 205.