Faculty evaluation processes and outcomes

Education - Faculty Evaluations

ESTABLISHING RATIONAL FACULTY EVALUATION PARAMETERS

Teaching Role Parameter - 60%:

Teaching is the primary role of faculty members and therefore, the most fundamental measure of instructor performance. Ineffectiveness in this essential role directly undermines the most important objective of the institution and its matriculated students because it compromises learning and educational development. That is not to suggest that other evaluation parameters are unimportant; on the other hand, effective instruction by knowledgeable faculty members should be viewed as the most important single parameter in which a high performance standard is merely the minimum requirement necessary for all other faculty performance parameters to have any relevance. Conversely, even extraordinary performance in all other parameters is, in effect, virtually meaningless to the extent faculty members do not fulfill their primary teaching role.

Professional Development Parameter - 15%:

In principle, professional development may be viewed as a component part of the more general teaching role with combined teaching/professional development parameter accounting for 75% of performance evaluation together. This is particularly true with regard to dynamic courses of study such as science, technology, law, political science, and business administration, because instructors who fail to pursue their own continuous education quickly become comparatively ineffective by virtue of excluding the most up- to-date perspectives and specific progress in their respective academic fields.

Even comparatively static historical academic fields such as history and literature require a lifelong commitment and dedication to professional development to ensure that lectures and course materials incorporate contemporary academic views and evolving retrospective analyses. Failure to pursue professional development gradually relegates all academic instruction to the mere presentation of history instead of the transmission of applicable knowledge conducive to the professional competence of students.

Service to the College Parameter - 15%:

If teaching (including its professional development component) account for 75% of faculty responsibilities, the remaining 25% relate to professional efforts that relate indirectly to serving the college by facilitating learning on the part of students and to maintaining and continually improving the learning institution. Within that general parameter, the larger responsibility is to benefiting the college with the remainder benefiting the general community.