[Pols-l] HNY, news, and AR

Tue Jan 3 23:11:20 CST 2017

Happy New Year to you all.

Some good news. We received two large donations to the departmental general development fund in the past month from alum that received degrees in the early 1960s. I've decided to place these funds in a new endowed account called the Lance F. Johnson Fund for Collaborative Research. This will generate a bit less than $3,000 in spendable funds each year. The model for this fund is based on how we have been using the Thompson funds for collaborative summer research between faculty and graduate students over the past several years. However, the University will not be able to draw out of this account for UG scholarships as they have been doing with the Thompson fund. I hope to be able to draw donations to this new account so if you have ideas please let me know.

Also, the new year means another round of the beloved annual evaluation process. The details are below and the deadline is 2/21. Please feel free to ask me questions and ask the POLS and PRO staff for assistance.

Best wishes for the new year.

DHM

Department of Political Science

Annual Evaluation Requirements and Instructions

            We’ll soon begin the process of evaluating faculty as part of the annual evaluation for the year just concluding.  You should use the annual report generated from the PRO system, but you can submit the old departmental form as well.  The instructions are below.  The deadline is February 21, 2017 by 5 p.m. The Advisory Committee will review your file during the spring semester and will make collective assessments of your performance.  Please refer to the departmental bylaws for the specifics of this process.

            University and Departmental policy requires all faculty members to submit an annual report for use by the Advisory Committee for the annual evaluation process.  These evaluations are also used in making merit recommendations to the Dean when merit raises are available.  The report includes the attached form and any supplemental materials you wish to submit. You are reminded that the penalty for not submitting this report is an automatic rating of poor.

General

(1)   You must submit a completed Faculty Annual Report; you can use the traditional form or generate the form out of the PRO system (which has been adapted to include nearly all of the material on the traditional form) into a word processing document. If you generate the form from PRO you would have to add any narrative you would like to include and you may want to add additional detail about student advising and committees.

(2)   Also submit a PDF version of up-to-date electronic copy of your vita (which you can generate in PRO).

(3)   You will need to update your electronic account on PRO either way

(4)   If for whatever reason you cannot submit electronic copies of materials please let the chair know and provide the materials to the chair; if you need assistance with the PRO system please inform the chair.

Submit your materials on the G drive, folder “Annual Review Files” and within that “2017 Annual Review Files” (if a folder with your name has not been created please add one). This is where you should upload your files. Let me know if you have any problems; otherwise you can email your files to me directly.

Teaching

            We employ portfolio evaluation on teaching, so you are welcome to submit syllabi, examinations, and other relevant course materials for the spring and fall semesters (and summer if relevant) of the past calendar year. You are reminded that we employ the following guideline. "In general, there has been too much emphasis on 'overall teaching effectiveness' scores from student feedback. Developing new courses, teaching larger numbers of students, mentoring and advising students – in short, the overall teaching contribution – should be our primary concern." The quantitative scores of teaching effectiveness will be available to the Advisory Committee electronically and you do not need to submit these scores.

Research

            To facilitate assessment of your research you can submit abstracts, letters of acceptance along with a full set of referee comments, and published reviews of your publications.  It is helpful if you include in your dossier the complete manuscripts of work completed, accepted, or published this past calendar year.

            You can add a section on "Intellectual Development" at the end of the research section of the annual report. Here you may describe major undertakings to acquire new skills (e.g., computer technologies, research methods, foreign language, or interdisciplinary understandings) or begin a new research endeavor that has yet to bear papers or publications (e.g., field work).

Service

            Please submit any documents you believe are relevant to supporting the service portion of your annual review form.  This might include letters of thanks, letters of appointment, and the like.

            If you have the understanding that your contribution will be evaluated on some other basis than the normal 40-40-20 weighting of research, teaching, and service, please confirm such understandings with the chair when you submit your annual review materials.

            On a final note, the Advisory Committee uses a rating of 0 to 10 to rate each faculty member on research, teaching, and service; a weighted average (40-40-20) is used to provide the overall rating. The committee is working under instructions to reserve ratings of 9 or 10 only for truly exceptional performance and that ratings of “good” (4-6) should often be the norm and should not be viewed as a negative rating. Any scores of 3 or below are considered marginal or unsatisfactory and would require the chair to take corrective action.

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