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Protocols & Procedures

College Protocols and Procedures

Chapters

    1. Faculty Recruitment and Appointment PDF
      Tenured/Tenure-Track Recruitment and Appointment
      Tenure-Track Search Advertisement
      Target Hires/Searches
      Rank Ordering of Candidates for Tenure Track Positions
      Senior Lecturer Appointments
      Lecturer Recruitment and Appointment
      AYAL Recruitment and Appointment
      QAL Recruitment and Appointment
      AYALReappointment
      QAL Reappointment
      Private Instruction Appointment
      Sponsorship of Foreign Nationals
      Special Faculty Appointments for International Scholars
      Telephone/Video Conference Interviews for Tenure-Track Searches
      Interviews at Conferences
      Faculty Leaves
      Supplemental Assignments
      Inclusive Excellence Postdoctoral/Post-MFA Fellowships
    2. Faculty Promotion, Rank, and Tenure (See Provost's Evaluation, Reappointment & Promotion page)
    3. Faculty Evaluations DOC
      Evaluation Weightings
      Policies and Procedures for Faculty Evaluations
      Categories and Rubric for Tenure-Stream Evaluations
      Categories and Rubric for Lecturer Evaluations
      Categories and Rubric for Adjunct Lecturer Evaluation
      Faculty Merit Evaluations
      Access to Evaluation Information
      Appeal of Faculty Evaluations
    4. Faculty Teaching Loads and Course Releases (revised 15-16) PDF
      Teaching Loads
      Assignments and Course Releases
      Overloads for Faculty Receiving Course Releases for Service
      Adjustment of Scholarship Course Releases
      Salaries in Externally Sponsored Projects
    5. Chair Issues and Resources (revised October 2017) DOC
      Chair Selection Process
      Stipend and Course Releases
      Evaluation of Chairs
      Academic-Year Planning Process
    6. Curricular and Program Development (revised 15-16) PDF
      Course Syllabus
      Course Evaluation
      Final Exams
      Changes to Degree Requirements
      Non-Departmental Academic Programs
      ASCI Courses
    7. Staff Hiring and Performance Review (revised 15-16) PDF
      Staff Hiring
      Staff Performance Review
    8. Financial Issues (updated September 2020) PDF
      Dean's Grants, Start-up Funds, and Professional Development Grants
      Staff Search Expenses
      Program Review and Improvement Grants
      Faculty Relocation
      Department/Program Operating Budgets
      Budget Returns and Summer Rebates
      Guest Speakers / Honorarium
      Current Faculty or Staff Payment
      Independent Contractors
      Signature for Contracts
      Signature for Reimbursements
      Volunteers
      Fundraising
      External Relations
    9. Student Disputes and Conflict Resolution PDF
      Grade Disputes
      Unfair Treatment by Faculty

Appendices

Faculty FARs and Evaluations

Faculty Evaluation Information Sheet DOC

FAR for Full Professors Only DOC

FAR DEI Support PDF

CAS Faculty Evaluation Letter Cover Sheet (Probationary Tenure Track) DOC

Faculty Evaluation Template (AYAL) PDF
Faculty Evaluation Template (AYAL) DOC

Simplified Faculty Evaluation Form (Tenured, RTL, and SL) DOC

Five Evaluation Categories for Senior Lecturers and Lecturers PDF

Faculty Searches

AYAL ad template

QAL ad template

Partial Template for Tenure Track Job Ads

AYAL Search Processes

QAL Search Processes

 


University Policies and Procedures

(Links to the Office of the Provost Faculty Affairs website)

Faculty Affairs

Mid-Probationary Reviews

University Grants

External Grants

The College Protocols are not new policies invented out of whole cloth by the dean. The Protocols are guidelines that the Dean’s Office develops in order to implement the Faculty Handbook.
 
The Faculty Handbook is our law, our Constitution and, like the Constitution, it is often vague, sometimes frustratingly vague, and the Dean’s Office must “fill in the blanks.” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes remarked that “General propositions do not decide concrete cases.” And that is true with the Faculty Handbook; its general propositions do not always provide clear and specific answers.

  • For example, the Faculty Handbook says that faculty will be evaluated “at regular intervals.” In the Business School, they do it every year; that’s how they interpret and apply this provision. The College has different evaluation cycles for each faculty rank. That is our approach, which is laid out in our Protocols.
  • The Faculty Handbook also requires that the dean “ensure appropriate standards” in evaluating faculty. Here too, the Dean’s Office has had to flesh out the meaning of that phrase and develop protocols and procedures which insure rigor and fairness in the faculty evaluation process.

Sometimes the Dean’s Office has to alter the College Protocols in order to reflect Faculty Handbook changes and new administrative practices. For example, when the Faculty Handbook added “Lecturer” as a new faculty category, the Protocols had to be updated. As another example, when PeopleAdmin came on-line, hiring procedures described in the Protocols had to be updated to reference PeopleAdmin. Sometimes the Protocols merely restate university policies, as in the case of the rules for paying independent contractors or signing contracts.
 
The most important point to understand about the Protocols is that they are the Dean’s Office attempt to be consistent and transparent in following the Faculty Handbook.

  • First, we try to be consistent rather than arbitrary and capricious. When questions come up about hiring or faculty evaluations or tenure and promotion, we neither want to “make it up as we go along” nor provide different answers to the same question. We want uniformity and consistency.
  • Second, we write the guidelines down and publish them, so they are transparent, not opaque. The other Schools do not publish their protocols or invite faculty feedback. We---the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office---publish our Protocols because of our commitment to transparency. The Dean’s Office updates the Protocols every summer and invites the department chairs to review them each September. After all, chairs are on the front lines, actually applying these Protocols; their feedback has proven to be essential. In addition, town hall meetings inviting faculty feedback were held in both the 2013/14 and 2014/15 academic years.