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Evaluation of Academic Faculty Teaching, Scholarship, and Service to the College Community

Evaluation of Teaching

The following means for the evaluation of teaching include both required procedures and procedures that provide departments with certain options. The evaluation procedures used within a department must in any case be uniform for all untenured department members within a given year. Decisions about which of the non-mandated procedures to use (if any) are made by each department following its usual modes of decision-making.

The Student Couse Survey (SCS)

Use of the Student Course Survey (SCS) is required in all courses taught in the College. The SCS consists of a page of questions to which students give numerical ratings and a page inviting descriptive commentary ("blue sheets") primarily for the benefit of the instructor. The numerical ratings are computed by the Director of Institutional Research, who also produces detailed comparisons of individual results with divisional, departmental, course level, peer group and all College results. Each faculty member receives the analysis of his or her own results. Results for all departmental members are sent to the chair. Tenured members collectively make their own interpretations of the results of untenured members of their department. The data and the numerical comparisons for all faculty members are made available to the CAP. untenured members may wish to share their "blue sheets" with chairs, but this is not required.

Procedures for Gathering Individual Student Opinion

Departments choose which procedure for gathering individual student opinion best suits their needs, so long as the same procedure is used for all untenured members in a given year. The alternatives are: a) interviews, b) letters, c) departmental questionnaire (administered in class or through the mail, or d) either b or c with follow-up interviews. (If interviews are chosen, see following protocols.) Whatever procedure is selected, it will have a standard format devised in consultation with the untenured members of the department.

Departments should make a good faith effort to gather at least ten individual student responses per year for each untenured member, with proportional adjustment for those teaching less than a full load. They should be gathered as late in the term as possible. In any event they should be completed in time for the results to be included in the next departmental staffing report.

The students selected should fairly reflect the range of the untenured member's experience during the academic year with majors and non-majors, large and small classes, lecture and discussion classes, and introductory versus advanced level classes. The grade of each respondent will be noted.

A good faith effort should be made to select roughly half the students from a list provided by the untenured faculty member; the rest will be chosen by the department.

The department should have a written record of each student's responses. All materials will be confidential.

Departments' evaluations of these responses will be communicated annually to untenured members by department chairs in accordance with existing procedures governing communication between departments and untenured faculty (see Departmental Governance: Communication).

Optional senior exit interviews or questionnaires and letters solicited from alumni or alumnae will be in addition to the minimum of ten timely student responses collected over the course of the year in which the classes being evaluated were taught.

Protocols for Conducting Interviews

Students coming to an interview will have received either a letter of invitation explaining the purpose of the interview and the general areas to be reviewed or a copy of the questionnaire which the department uses.
Only one student will be interviewed at a time. There will be no group interviews.
Interviews will be conducted by one or more tenured members, two tenured members being the preferred number. The interviewer(s) will be any tenured member(s) of the department. If a department has only one or two senior members, the chair may request the Dean of the Faculty to assemble an advisory committee of tenured members from other departments to assist in these interviews.
If possible, interviews pertaining to a given untenured member in a particular year will not all be conducted by the same person; as many tenured members of a department as possible are expected to take part over the course of the untenured members' years at the College.
Students who have taken courses from more than one untenured instructor in a department can be asked to comment on each one of them. Comparative comments may be elicited. Students may be asked about all the courses they have taken from a given instructor, including those within the preceding year. Although all interviewers should raise the same questions, the departments' procedures should allow interviewers flexibility in pursuing issues raised by students' responses to specific questions.

Peer Reviews and Class Visits

Although no common form of direct faculty assessment has been mandated, each department is required in its annual staffing report to give an interpretation of all available data on the teaching effectiveness of its untenured members. Many departments maintain programs of class visits, and, in some, tenured and untenured faculty regularly exchange visits to each other's classes. Other departments have opportunities for team-teaching or departmental colloquia in addition to regular opportunities for interaction at departmental meetings. By such means the departments have a context for interpreting student opinions.

Guidelines for Class Visits (for departments that have chosen this option):

Visits for the purpose of evaluation may begin in either the first or second year of an assistant professor's time at Williams, continuing each semester until, but not including, the semester of the tenure decision.
Each semester the chair should designate a tenured faculty member to visit each untenured faculty member's classes after consulting with the untenured member as to which tenured faculty member would be the most appropriate visitor in a given semester and which course would be the most appropriate to visit. The final decision on the visitor and the course to be visited should be the chair's.
To the extent possible, different tenured members should visit each untenured member's classes in different semesters. That is, over time as many tenured faculty as possible should visit each untenured person's classes.
Typically, tenured faculty visit two or three classes taught by the untenured faculty member. The untenured faculty member should suggest two or three classes, normally consecutive, which would be appropriate for the tenured faculty member to visit. Before the visits, the two should discuss the relation of the classes to the aims and structure of the course as a whole. Students should be told that the visits are a routine vehicle for evaluation and constructive feedback.
The visitor should discuss his or her observations with the untenured faculty member after the set of visits. A written statement of the strengths and weaknesses of the classes observed and suggestions for improvement should be given to the untenured faculty member and to the chair.
Departments' evaluations of classes visited during the year, based on visitors' written statements and departments' discussion of them, will be communicated to untenured faculty members by department chairs in accordance with existing procedures governing communication between departments and untenured faculty (see Communication under Academic Department Governance).

The Evaluation of Scholarship

In the spring or early summer prior to a tenure decision, department chairs should solicit outside reviews of the candidate's scholarship (artistic work, performance ability, etc.) The purpose of the reviews is to provide high-quality, unbiased assessments of a candidate's scholarship, in order to give the tenured members of the department or program, as well as the CAP, a sense of how the scholarship measures up to the standards of the relevant discipline or disciplines. These reviews, along with any reviews that have appeared in professional or other publications, should be submitted to the CAP along with the department's recommendation and any interpretation it wishes to place on the reviews. Outside opinion is a supplement to, and in no sense a substitute for, the department's own careful appraisal of the work.

The department shall solicit four external reviews of the candidate's scholarship. One reviewer shall be chosen from a list of three to six potential reviewers submitted by the candidate to the Chair of the department; in submitting this list, the candidate shall specify what, if any, relationship he or she has had to each person on the list. The candidate may also inform the Chair and the Dean of the Faculty if there are individuals who for personal or professional reasons might be unlikely to provide impartial, reliable review of the candidate's work. The Dean of the Faculty may authorize more than one reviewer from the candidate's list if there are compelling reasons for doing so. In all other respects the selection of the reviewers rests solely with the chair and the other tenured members of the department, and the names of the reviewers should be kept confidential. In order to assure that the credibility of the reviews is not undercut by a presumption of bias, dissertation and post-doctoral advisors should normally be excluded from the list. The candidate is free to solicit supplemental letters from such colleagues independently, but the staffing report should distinguish clearly between the reviews solicited by the department and the letters solicited by the candidate. All outside reviewers will be asked to specify what, if any, relationship they have had to the candidate.

In his or her contacts with the reviewers the chair should remain neutral with regard to the department's own views of the candidate. The letters sent to reviewers should assure them that we will make every effort consistent with state and federal law to keep their identities and opinions confidential. The letters should not ask for a recommendation regarding promotion. They should encourage the use of professional standards by, for example, asking for a comparison of the candidate's work with that of other scholars at similar stages of their careers, or by asking them to use the same standards they would use in deciding whether to recommend publication by a first-rate journal or university press.

Copies of the letters of solicitation should be sent to the Dean of the Faculty who should also be notified when the review has been received so that a stipend can be sent to the reviewer. The standard stipend is $150.00. If the chair feels that the amount of work is sufficiently great to merit a larger stipend, the matter should be discussed with the Dean of the Faculty.

The candidate shall submit by July 1 all materials to be assessed by outside reviewers. (For the convenience of the outside reviewers, a department may ask a candidate to submit a reasonable time in advance of this date any material that he or she has ready, and to supplement this with any additional material by July 1.) Additional material submitted after July 1, but by August 15, will be assessed by the department, but not in most cases by the outside reviewers. There is no guarantee that material submitted after August 15 will be assessed, but candidates may present their departments and the CAP at any time with evidence of any changes in the status of their work.

The Evaluation of Community Service

(see also Community Service)

The contributions of faculty members in carrying out departmental, program, and College activities are summarized and discussed in the yearly staffing report. The departmental activities to be considered include such things as the faculty member's contributions to advising majors and other students, recruitment activities, curricular development, co-curricular activities, scholarly projects involving colleagues, including the writing of grant proposals. The campus-wide activities to be considered include such things as First-Year Advising and participation on College committees, forums, and inter-departmental program advisory committees. The leadership potential or abilities of faculty members are also noted.

Faculty members are encouraged, when submitting this kind of information to department chairs, to provide more than a list of activities. The faculty member could elaborate, for instance, on what was accomplished on a departmental or College committee on which he or she served, or might mention miscellaneous activities of which the chair may be unaware (informal advising activities, meeting with prospective students, talks to alumni, and so forth). A faculty member is also welcome to ask his or her department chair to solicit a letter from the chair of a committee on which he or she has served. Such letters are appended to the annual staffing report.

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