Academic Policy  1405.00 

Personnel Documents

Each college and school and the library has a personnel document which contains that unit’s evaluative criteria, procedures, and general standards for initial appointment, successive appointments, promotion, tenure, and annual and post-tenure review of faculty (including, as applicable, non-tenure-track and part-time faculty members) and professional staff (including all non-classified employees).  The documents and subsequent revisions must be approved by the college, school, or library faculty, the dean, the provost, the chancellor, and the president before implementation.  Revisions proposed to the documents must also be provided to the professional staff of the unit for their review and comment if the provisions apply to them.  Revisions forwarded to the provost’s office must be submitted with the current document red-lined for ease of locating what has been revised. The effective date of the revised Personnel Document shall be the date of the President’s approval.  The documents must be made available to all employees (faculty and professional staff) covered by their provisions and should be posted to the college, school, or library web site for ease of reference.  All forms used in evaluation processes should be included with the personnel document wherever it is made available.

College, school, and library policies may be supplemented by policies of the individual departments.  Department documents and revisions to them are subject to the same approval and review provisions as college, school and library documents.  College, school, library and department policies are required to be consistent with the policies of the university as set forth in Board of Trustees policy, 405.1 and in three campus policy statements, those on (1) University Professorships, (2) Distinguished Professorships, and (3) Evaluative, Criteria, Procedures, and General Standards for Initial Appointment, Successive Appointments, Promotion and Tenure.  In case of conflict, the board policy, the campus policy, the college or school or library policy, and the department policy will have authority in that order.  Copies of the university policies are available in the Faculty Handbook.

Personnel documents should address all issues identified or specified by the university policy statements (identified above) as requiring college, school, or library policy statements or definitions.  The College/School seeks to develop and sustain nationally and internationally prominent programs in teaching and research/creative activity.  A faculty dedicated to high national standards is essential to this effort.  The College’s standards for promotion and tenure reflect these high expectations.

Ordinarily, attainment of tenure requires outstanding performance in teaching and research/creative activity; merely good or satisfactory performance is not considered sufficient for a favorable tenure decision.  Attainment of tenure requires a high standard of performance in both teaching and research/creative activity and a clear indication that such a performance level will be maintained over a career as a faculty member at the University.  Contents should be sufficiently specific to assist probationary faculty to understand the standards and criteria on the basis of which reappointment, promotion, and tenure decisions are made.

The document should not duplicate the entries or forms found in the three major university policy statements, elsewhere in the Faculty Handbook, or in the Academic Policy Series.  Instead they should include reference to the original. Examples include Family Leave Policy (see Staff Handbook), Probationary Period Suspension (see Evaluative Criteria Document), Sexual Harassment (see Faculty Handbook, Faculty Review Checklist (see Faculty Handbook), and forms and annual calendars such as nomination forms for promotion and tenure and the Schedule of Deadlines (in the Academic Policy Series).

Consistent with university policies and practice, college, school, and library documents are required to include certain elements and address certain issues.  Among them are the following:

  • Standard cover sheet or its equivalent (sample attached).
  • Non-discrimination statement  consistent with the university statement (in the Faculty Handbook)
  • Criteria and standards for all ranks, titles, and positions in use in the unit or in prospective use (such as University Professor and Distinguished Professor) and procedures to the extent that college, school, or library procedures supplement those in the campus policy statement.
  • Information on how peers and administrators participate in the annual review process.
  • Information on how students participate in the annual review process in the evaluation of all who teach, including part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants.
  • Information on how the annual review results are related to merit salary increases.
  • Information on how the annual review results are related to the assignment and workload for the subsequent year.
  • Explicit statements on extramural evaluation of scholarly and creative activity for promotion and tenure.
  • Post-tenure review procedures including, at college or department level, explicit definition(s) of satisfactory performance and unsatisfactory performance.
  • Standards and criteria for professional performance for the  non-teaching tenure track faculty positions
  • Forms specific to the college, school, or department, such as those for an Annual Review, Post-Tenure Review, Annual Plan of Work (Workload, Assignment), Faculty Service Review, Peer Evaluation of Faculty, etc. (Forms should be appended to the document.)

Attachment:
Sample Cover Sheet for Personnel Document

Reformatted for Web September 30, 2014
10/26/09