Faculty Evaluation Development - Essay Example

Faculty Evaluation Development The primary goal of faculty evaluation development is the advancement of the mission of the organization, in this case, the university. Such an exercise is designed to provide feedback to the faculty to improve the effectiveness of their teaching. It also provides information to the committee to make recommendations concerning recruitment, renewal and termination of faculty as also awarding tenure, promotion, and merit pay increases. Thus, the faculty evaluation development committee has the onerous task of conceptualizing benchmarks and operationalizing them to assess faculty performance.

Faculty evaluation usually involves assessment of the faculty members based on a set of performance indicators such as teaching, scholarly activity or creative endeavors, professional development and institutional/university involvement and community service. Such evaluations should use multiple sources including students, peers and the faculty members themselves (Paulsen, 2002). As the chairperson of the Faculty Evaluation Development committee of the University, I would like to co-opt the following members to the committee and for reasons detailed below.1. All Academic Deans of the university who will be responsible for providing collated data obtained from students, peers and faculty through the department heads/chairpersons.

These data will be used to evaluate each faculty member. The deans will also be entrusted with the responsibility, at the end of the annual performance appraisal, of holding discussions with the faculty members under their jurisdiction to motivate and guide them to better their performance. The department heads/chairpersons, on the other hand, will hold private discussions with each of their faculty members on their assessment and also make discussion on assessment a regular part of departmental faculty meetings. 2. External expert/consultant.

This person will be an important component of the committee to deal with the faculty concerns that are bound to be there to the evaluation system. Having an outside consultant as a conduit between faculty and the administration could help overcome faculty resistance to the evaluation process (Arreola, 2007). A consultant could also help to convert the ambivalent faculty. It would help if the consultant is someone preferably trained in educational psychology and of an affable and non-threatening demeanor. 3. Academic administrator.

Will be responsible to have in place a corresponding and concomitant element in the faculty development program to every aspect of the faculty evaluation program. This approach is to ensure that faculty have institutionally supported recourse when the evaluation system detects a weakness in their performance (Arreola, 2007). In conclusion, the various members chosen to form the faculty evaluation development committee are necessary adjuncts to provide a comprehensive data on the faculty members’ contributions to the mission of the university.

The final ratings arrived at by the committee would uphold procedural fairness and justice while the action plan formulated by the committee would help in the advancement of faculty performance and career goals.Reference List:Arreola, R.A. (2007). Developing a comprehensive faculty evaluation system: A handbook for college faculty and administrators on designing and operating a comprehensive faculty evaluations system (3rd ed.).  Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc. ISBN: 978-1-933371-11-5 Paulsen, M.B. (2002).

Evaluating teaching performance. New Directions for Institutional Research, no. 114, p.8, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Retrieved from http://edweb.sdsu.edu/bober/montgomery/Article07.pdf