Notes on the Evaluation of Temporary Faculty

August 31, 2006

Campus policy can be found online at http://www.sonoma.edu/uaffairs/policies/periodicpolicy.htm.

Campus policy is based on Article 15 of the collective bargaining agreement, available online at http://www.calstate.edu/LaborRel/Contracts_HTML/CFA_CONTRACT/article15.shtml

Who May Evaluate Temporary Faculty? As with other faculty evaluations, full-time tenured faculty and academic administrators.

Probationary faculty may conduct peer observations of temporary faculty and provide assistance with or comments on the development of the evaluation.

Which temporary faculty must be evaluated?

Faculty in academic-year or longer appointments must be evaluated. For most faculty, it is sufficient for the chair or chair designee and the dean at his/her discretion to conduct the evaluation, though a department committee may offer recommendations or comments. The evaluation of full-time faculty must be conducted by a department committee and by the dean at his/her discretion. These requirements are also shown in the document mentioned.

Faculty in one-semester appointments or appointments of similar duration may be evaluated at the request of the faculty member or at the discretion of the department or dean; if the department or dean choose to evaluate faculty in such appointments, all such faculty in a department must be evaluated.

Coaches and counselors have special requirements.

What are the deadlines? Deadlines are covered at the end of the campus policy; the Office of the Provost develops a schedule annually, taking into account that year’s weekends and holidays.
Who is responsible for the material in the file, and what material should go in the file? As with other evaluation processes, the faculty member is responsible for the assembly of material, and the chair, department, or dean may also place material in the file. Material that has been placed in the Personnel Action File in the Office of the Provost, or material in the department’s files, is not automatically placed in the file for evaluation. If it is desirable for such material to be in the file, someone must place it there. Campus policy, in Section III, discusses the content of the file. If a department conducted an evaluation previously, material used in that previous evaluation will not normally be included.

Departments need to assign someone responsibility for the completion of the file and such associated duties as providing the faculty member copies of any materials placed in the file by others.

May a department develop its own criteria and procedures? Section VII of the policy states, “Departments may develop procedures and criteria to implement this policy. Such procedures shall be in writing and shall be provided to the temporary faculty member at the time of hire and whenever any change is made to the department procedures and criteria. A complete copy of this policy will accompany the department procedures.”
What materials must go forward to Faculty Affairs when the evaluation is complete? Section VI(C) of the policy states,

When the evaluation is completed, the following materials shall be forwarded to the Faculty Affairs Office for filing in the Personnel Action File: summaries of student evaluations of teaching effectiveness, peer observations, evaluations by all levels of review, rebuttal statement(s) by the faculty member, and a list of any other materials used in the evaluation of the faculty member. Evaluations for temporary faculty without instructional assignments may include not more than four pages of other material used in the evaluation process which demonstrate the faculty member’s performance in his/her assignment….This section shall not preclude the forwarding of materials not listed above for inclusion in the Personnel Action File by the faculty member, the chair, the dean or appropriate administrator, or other university administrators, as long as these materials were introduced during the evaluation process and are known to the faculty member.