Williams College Employee Handbook
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Academic Program Governance
The Responsibilities of Program Chairs
The chairs of interdepartmental programs are appointed by the President in consultation with the Dean of the Faculty. There is no fixed term of service. Each program has an advisory committee, whose members are appointed by the Dean of the Faculty after consultation with the program chair. The committee advises the chair on such matters as curricular planning; the staffing of required and elective courses; outside speakers; library acquisitions; program activities and projects; and the methods to be used in evaluating the teaching of non-tenured faculty. These methods should be in compliance with faculty legislation on such matters and are subject to review by the Dean of the Faculty.
Program chairs bear the final responsibility for most matters pertaining to program governance and planning, although some of these responsibilities may be delegated to the advisory committee or to individual faculty members. Chairs are responsible, for example, for the preparation and submission of the annual program report; the annual budget requests; the scheduling of classes that carry only a program prefix; the preparation of the course package for the Committee on Educational Policy; arranging for the evaluation of the teaching of courses that carry the program prefix only and are not cross-listed in departments; negotiations with department chairs regarding the staffing needs of the program; and meeting with departments' job candidates who have an interest in contributing to the program.
The College expects that department and program chairs will work out mutually agreeable allocations of faculty time that will allow for the staffing of the courses in both the department and the programs to which the department contributes. The procedures set forth in the following section are intended to facilitate the needed cooperation.
Annual Program Report
In April, the chair should submit to the Dean of the Faculty the yearly program report in response to the CAP's annual staffing memorandum. In preparing the report, the chair should consult with members of the advisory committee and with the chairs of those departments that have been making some contribution to the program, taking into account relevant staffing projections (including leaves, anticipated openings, and departures).
FTE Requests for Required Courses
To ensure coverage of required courses that carry only a program prefix, the CAP asks that every program chair, after consulting with the relevant department chairs, submit to those chairs and to the CAP a written request that the departments involved commit themselves to contributing up to a specific number of FTE's over a three-year period. Department chairs will respond to the request in Part I of their annual staffing report, and the CAP, during the annual staffing allocation process, will take into account the contributions to which the departments have committed themselves.
Cross-listed Required Courses
To ensure coverage of required courses that are cross-listed in departments, the CAP asks that the program chair (again, after consulting with relevant department chairs) convey to the CAP, in the annual report, any anticipated difficulties in staffing such courses over at least a three-year period. Department chairs are requested to do the same. The CAP will also consider these anticipated difficulties during the allocation process.
Elective Offerings and the Overall Curriculum
The annual program report should include a review of any significant changes (actual or anticipated) in the program's elective offerings and the reasons behind them.
Summary Tables
The chair is responsible for filling out two summary tables appended to the report: Table I, Staffing for Required Courses; and Table II, Number of Elective Courses.
The Evaluation of Contributions to Programs
The program chair should report in writing to the chairs of the home departments on the performance of non-tenured faculty members who teach in the program. The report should be submitted to the relevant department chair by early September.
Non-tenured Faculty Who Teach Courses That Carry Only a Program Prefix
The procedures for the evaluation of non-tenured faculty (including part-time continuing faculty) who teach courses that carry only a program prefix are modeled on those used in departments' Evaluation of the Teaching of Non-tenured Faculty. They include the analysis of SCS results in courses that carry only a program prefix, printouts of which will be sent to the program and the department chair; a report on the opinions of individual students, gathered according to the methods chosen by the program advisory committee; and class visits, if the non-tenured faculty member and the program chair both agree to them. The assessment should also include any other relevant information, such as scholarly accomplishments in the discipline, arranging for outside speakers, advising students, supervising honors theses, and other contributions to the program. These full-scale evaluations are required only in those years when the faculty member is due for a renewal, reappoint, or tenure decision. They may occur at other times upon the mutual agreement of the chair and the non-tenured faculty member.
Non-tenured Faculty Who Teach Cross-listed Courses
The evaluation reports on non-tenured faculty who teach cross-listed courses should comment on the importance of the non-tenured faculty member's curricular contributions and, depending on the level of participation and the information available, on any other relevant matters. The faculty member may wish to send a copy of the SCS results for the cross-listed courses to the program chair. The gathering of individual student opinion and/or class visits may take place upon the mutual agreement of the faculty member and the program chair. These evaluations are required only in those years when the faculty member is due for a renewal, reappointment, or tenure decision.
Outside Reviews of Scholarship for Non-Tenured Faculty Who Teach in Programs
Non-tenured faculty members who contribute to inter-departmental programs may request to have included in their tenure review an outside evaluation of their scholarship in the field represented by the program. If so requested, the program chair will normally solicit two such outside reviews. One of the reviewers shall be drawn from a list suggested by the candidate, the other from a list drawn up by the program chair in consultation with the tenured members of the program's advisory committee. The department chair may also be consulted.
How best to include these outside appraisals in the tenure report that the department submits to the CAP should be decided by the program chair in consultation with the department chair. The same outside review(s) may serve a dual function, providing an assessment of the candidate's scholarship for both the department and the program, if the candidate and both chairs agree to this.
In all other respects, the procedures governing this process shall be the same as those described under Evaluation of Scholarship.
The Communication of Evaluations to the Faculty Member
For faculty with a departmental home, the program chair sends a written report to the department chair in the early fall of the year in which the faculty member is up for a renewal, reappointment, or tenure decision. The department chair incorporates this report into Part II of the department's annual report. The report is also summarized in the annual letter to the faculty member, except in those cases when a tenure decision is involved. If class visits are used, the required letter on the visit should be sent to the faculty member, with a copy to the program chair, as close to the time of the visit as possible. For those few faculty members whose appointment is entirely or primarily in a program rather than a department, the mode of communication is the same as for departments.
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