Guidance on Disruptions for Faculty Evaluations
Faculty work has been affected in recent years by various external circumstances, including those related to COVID-19 and to actions on behalf of the federal government that have impacted funding for scientific research. We recognize that these disruptions have affected individual faculty members in different ways and that these effects may or may not be known to those in leadership roles. These external impacts may have created situations in which some normally expected activities were not possible to accomplish or were significantly curtailed, or may have resulted in changes in the pattern or types of research, teaching, or service activity in which faculty members were involved.
As we engage in all modes of faculty evaluation, it is important that we enable faculty members to document any impacts arising from these events and have review committee members document how they took those impacts into account in their evaluations.
Thus, all faculty have the option to address the impact of disruptions on their teaching, research, scholarship, creative, or artistic work (hereafter, scholarship), service, and professional performance in their candidate statements and/or other materials normally provided in evaluation processes. If a current evaluation process does not provide an opportunity for any narrative or statement, faculty may choose to write such a narrative or statement addressing external impacts and add it to their materials as a separate document. While not required, the Office of Faculty Affairs encourages faculty to supplement any materials required in their dossiers/reports as applicable, given the challenges raised by external impacts due to COVID-19 and federal government actions.
For privacy reasons, candidates should not share any personal circumstances in their statements but rather focus on the impact to outcomes in the areas of scholarship, teaching, service, and/or professional performance. The inclusion of this supplemental information about external impacts will allow chairs, deans, and committee members to carefully review faculty records and conduct fair evaluations of whether faculty are meeting the necessary standards.
What Faculty Members May Choose to Do
For all evaluations, faculty members should prepare their evaluation materials in accordance with unit-level policies and process. Evaluation materials may include items that were affected by external impacts (e.g., scheduled presentations that were canceled, grants that were funded but subsequently canceled).
Faculty members may choose to incorporate the effects of external impacts into their candidate statements or other narratives on teaching, scholarship, service, and professional performance. If there is currently no space to provide a narrative or statement on unit-level forms, faculty members may choose to write a separate statement.
Below is a non-exclusive list of impacts that faculty members may choose to address in narratives or statements.
- Changes to teaching modes, loads, or responsibilities (e.g., due to lack of funds for teaching “buy outs”)
- Changes in teaching topics or areas of focus, including new courses or changes to existing courses
- Additional work needed to support students (e.g., special circumstances of international students)
- Impacts on specific aspects of teaching such as field courses, service learning, performances and exhibitions, professional development conferences, or study abroad
- Changes in scholarship topics or areas of focus
- Impacts on grant funding, including changes in the priorities of granting agencies and cuts to available funding
- Cancellations of review panels, conferences, fellowships, etc.
- Lab closures or capacity reductions
- Loss of access to data or research materials
- Loss of or delays in access to research participants
- Changes in response times of reviewers for books, journals, or proposals
- Impacts on recruiting, hiring, supporting, retaining, and replacing research personnel and graduate students
- Delay in arrival or inability to hire international graduate students/postdocs
- Inability to travel or delay in ability to travel for scholarly purposes
- Collaborators/research team members impacted
- Time spent on service related to external impacts
- Impacts on external service responsibilities such as journal editorships, chairing of academic conference sessions, or professional organization service
- Added work adapting activities to new instructional and communication modes and approaches
- Additional time and coordination required to serve and attend to the varied needs of students, faculty, and staff
- Disruptions to public education or outreach efforts
What Chairs/Directors, Deans, and Review Committees Need to Do
Review unit-level policies and processes for annual evaluation.
If a faculty member does not mention external impacts in their submitted materials, evaluate following existing criteria and procedures for the respective area of faculty work.
If impacts are mentioned, ensure that any mention of disruptions due to external impacts is addressed in written evaluations for each area of faculty work (i.e., teaching, scholarship, service, professional performance).
Review unit-level policies and processes for instructional faculty comprehensive review and promotion.
If a faculty member does not mention external impacts in their submitted materials, evaluate following existing criteria and procedures for the respective area of faculty work.
If impacts are mentioned, ensure that any mention of disruptions due to external impacts is addressed in written evaluations for each area of faculty work (i.e., teaching, scholarship, service, professional performance).
Use the following to ensure consistent documentation in evaluations:
- Comment on whether the candidate still meets the established unit-level criteria for comprehensive review, regardless of external impacts.
- If the candidate's record does not meet expectations according to unit-level criteria, provide a preliminary rating and indicate whether the stated disruptions due to external impacts have any relevance to the rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work unrelated to the stated disruptions due to external impacts, provide reasoning to support the rating. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work impacted by disruptions due to external impacts, consider the record of accomplishments in light of general university criteria for rank and promotion for instructional faculty (Teaching Professor Job Title Series Guidelines). Explain whether, given the stated impacts:
- It is reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria in such a way to produce an adjusted rating that is higher than the preliminary rating. Describe the adjustment(s) to the criteria in light of general university criteria. The adjusted rating then becomes the final rating; or
- It is not reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria. In this case, provide an explanation for this decision. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
Review the instructions provided on the forms for P&T. If you have questions, please contact the Office of Faculty Affairs (facultyaffairs@ku.edu).
If a faculty member does not mention external impacts in their submitted materials, evaluate following existing criteria and procedures for the respective area of faculty work.
If impacts are mentioned, ensure that any mention of disruptions due to external impacts is addressed in written committee evaluations in each section of the form (i.e., teaching, scholarship, service, professional performance).
Use the following to guide discussion and ensure consistent documentation in evaluations:
- Comment on whether the candidate still meets the established specific criteria (rating of good or higher) in unit promotion and tenure guidelines, regardless of external impacts.
- If the candidate's record does not meet expectations for recommending promotion and tenure according to unit-level criteria, provide a preliminary rating (i.e., a marginal or poor rating in any area) and indicate whether the stated disruptions due to external impacts have any relevance to the rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work unrelated to the stated disruptions due to external impacts, provide reasoning to support the marginal or poor rating. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work impacted by disruptions due to external impacts, consider the record of accomplishments in light of the general university criteria for promotion and tenure in that area (FSRR 6.2). Explain whether, given the stated impacts:
- It is reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria in such a way to produce an adjusted rating that is higher than the preliminary rating. Describe the adjustment(s) to the criteria and explain whether the resulting adjusted rating(s) supports promotion and tenure based on both the adjusted criteria and the general university criteria for promotion and tenure. The adjusted rating then becomes the final rating; or
- It is not reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria. In this case, provide an explanation for this decision. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
Review the instructions provided on the forms for PTTR. If you have questions, please contact the Office of Faculty Affairs (facultyaffairs@ku.edu).
If a faculty member does not mention external impacts in their submitted materials, evaluate following existing criteria and procedures for the respective area of faculty work.
If impacts are mentioned, ensure that any mention of disruptions due to external impacts is addressed in written committee evaluations in each section of the form (i.e., teaching, scholarship, service, professional performance).
Use the following to guide discussion and ensure consistent documentation in evaluations:
- Comment on whether the candidate still meets the established specific criteria for “demonstrating progress toward tenure” based on unit promotion and tenure guidelines, regardless of external impacts.
- If the candidate's record does not meet expectations sufficient for “demonstrating progress toward tenure” according to unit-level criteria, provide a preliminary rating/evaluation (i.e., either “improvement required for continued progress toward tenure” or “record not sufficient for progress toward tenure”) and indicate whether the stated disruptions due to external impacts have any relevance to the rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work unrelated to the stated disruptions due to external impacts, provide reasoning to support the rating. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work impacted by disruptions due to external impacts, consider the record of accomplishments in light of the general university criteria for promotion and tenure for that area of work (FSRR 6.2). Explain whether, given the stated impacts:
- It is reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria in such a way to produce an adjusted rating that is higher than the preliminary rating. Describe the adjustment(s) to the criteria and explain whether the resulting adjusted evaluation supports either “demonstrates progress toward tenure” or “improvement required for continued progress toward tenure”, based on both the adjusted criteria and the general university criteria for promotion and tenure. The adjusted rating then becomes the final rating; or
- It is not reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria. In this case, provide an explanation for this decision. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
Review the instructions provided on the forms for PTTR. If you have questions, please contact the Office of Faculty Affairs (facultyaffairs@ku.edu).
If a faculty member does not mention external impacts in their submitted materials, evaluate following existing criteria and procedures for the respective area of faculty work.
If impacts are mentioned, ensure that any mention of disruptions due to external impacts is addressed in written committee evaluations in each section of the form (i.e., teaching, scholarship, service, professional performance).
Use the following to guide discussion and ensure consistent documentation in evaluations:
- Comment on whether the candidate still meets established specific criteria (rating of “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations”) in unit post-tenure review criteria for each area of work, regardless of external impacts.
- If the candidate's record fails to meet expectations according to unit-level criteria, provide a preliminary rating and indicate whether the stated disruptions due to external impacts have any relevance to the rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work unrelated to the stated disruptions due to external impacts, provide reasoning to support the rating of “fails to meet expectations”. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
- If the preliminary rating is based on work impacted by disruptions due to external impacts, explain whether, given the stated impacts:
- It is reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria in such a way to produce an adjusted rating that is either “meets expectations” or “exceeds expectations”. The adjusted rating then becomes the final rating; or
- It is not reasonable to adjust specific unit-level criteria. In this case, provide an explanation for this decision. The preliminary rating then becomes the final rating.
What Units May Choose to Do
In light of external disruptions, units may choose to revise their unit-level evaluation policies to modify requirements (e.g., requiring funding from particular sources). If such revisions are made, revised policies must go through the standard approval processes and be published in the KU Policy Library.
Information Specific to the Promotion & Tenure Process
Instructions on the forms provided by the Provost Office for P&T are updated to reflect this option for candidates to provide an additional impact statement with their dossier, and when completing the evaluation forms, chairs/directors/deans/review committee members are required to indicate how they considered the stated effects of disruptions due to external impacts in their written evaluations.
All tenure-track faculty who were in their probationary period in 2020 had their tenure clocks automatically extended by one year due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. At their choosing, faculty can go through the P&T process on their original schedule. This extension does not count as one of the two extensions allowed under KBOR policy for birth/adoption/foster placement of a child or other extenuating circumstances.
Untenured faculty members in tenure-track appointments who have not yet entered the mandatory review year may request an extension of the tenure clock under the interruption of the probationary period policy. The circumstances which provide a basis for an application for an interruption of the probationary period for one year include: (1) personal or family medical leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), (2) birth, foster placement, or adoption of a child, (3) non-scholarly leave without pay, (4) a part-time appointment, (5) leave due to accommodations through the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and (6) other unexpected special and extenuating circumstances that justify an extension of the tenure clock.
General Reminders
Teaching: Spring 2020 student surveys of teaching are not to be used for evaluation purposes. For Fall 2020, Spring 2021, and Summer 2021, faculty have the option to include student surveys in their evaluation materials but are not required to do so. Candidates will not be penalized for having opted to exclude the student survey reports for these semesters, but FSRR 6.2.2.2 does require of candidates for promotion and tenure: ". . . a demonstrated commitment to student learning, efforts to improve teaching skills over time . . .". Reflecting on feedback about one’s teaching, including data from student surveys, and demonstrating responsiveness to this feedback is an important way to meet this standard.
The Office of Faculty Affairs recommends review of CTE guidance on ways to use multiple sources of information to document and assess one’s teaching effectiveness.