Performance Standards

Assessment:  The careful assessment of faculty scholarship, teaching, and service at the time of appointment and promotion is essential to building and maintaining a world-class faculty.  As the nature of scholarship and teaching evolve and the range of faculty activity expands, SAS must ensure that this assessment continues to capture and properly evaluate the entire spectrum of faculty achievements. Innovative new types of research raise important questions about how to evaluate such scholarship, whether it is interdisciplinary inquiry, collaborative work in fields where research has traditionally been done independently, or scholarship carried out in new media.  Questions must also be asked about the evaluation of new forms of pedagogy. Changes in academic publishing and the external funding climate raise questions about the traditional benchmarks for scholarly production. While research and teaching remain the cornerstones of faculty reviews, assessment must also ensure appropriate consideration of other activities, including involvement with interdisciplinary programs, administrative service, curatorial work, mentorship, and academically-based community engagement.  Accordingly, the School will appoint a task force that will be charged with involving the entire standing faculty in an extended discussion about, and making recommendations regarding, these complex but important issues.

Mentoring: The School’s investment in the success of its faculty at all stages of their careers must include the personal support of a community of experienced colleagues that offer regular guidance and advice. For junior faculty, the School will strengthen its existing mentorship program that monitors progress on scholarship, teaching, and overall career development as they progress toward the tenure review. After promotion to associate professor, faculty require a new kind of mentoring: they are often balancing new commitments such as administrative service while continuing to advance their research and teaching toward timely promotion to full professor. The School will develop a more comprehensive mentoring program that addresses the more nuanced needs of faculty at all ranks and stages of their career.