Scope

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Policy Statement

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Reason for Policy

Review provides a formal, systematic mechanism for faculty to have input into assessment of administrators. Well-designed reviews at regular intervals also provide opportunities for input and feedback for the improvement of administration, provide opportunities to acknowledge successful administration, and encourage both the administration generally and the individual administrator to set appropriate goals for the unit in question and to assess the administrator’s success in reaching those goals.

Review extends beyond the review of the individual administrator because, in general, it stimulates internal review of the units for which the administrator is responsible, and it allows those most directly affected (i.e., the faculty, students, and staff) to study the administrator's responsibilities.

Formally detailing separate review procedures for Deans of Core Schools is desirable due to the inevitable complexities of administration in these multi-campus programs

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Procedures

1. For each of these Deans, a comprehensive review (hereafter referred to as review) shall be conducted early in the fifth year in office and at recurring intervals of four years or more frequently if desired by the Provost/Chancellor. In addition, independent of these comprehensive reviews, each Dean shall be evaluated by a survey distributed to the faculty of the Dean's unit at the beginning of the Dean’s third year in office (see section 9). The Provost or Chancellor will provide reasonable and adequate staff and financial support for these review activities.

2. In the spring semester of each academic year, the Provost and/or Chancellor shall provide the University Faculty Council with a list of all Core School Deans subject to review the following year. The Provost/Chancellor shall request the creation of Review Committees simultaneously with the announcement of the Deans to be reviewed in order to allow at least one semester for completion of the Review process. Review committees will normally be established early in the fall semester and each review process will normally be completed early in the succeeding spring semester, or before. Each review committee will be assured of enough time to complete its work in a manner consistent with its charge. 

   The Provost/Chancellor shall have responsibility for selecting the members of the Review Committees according to the following procedures:

   1. The Executive Committee of the Indianapolis Faculty Council and the Nomination Committee of the Bloomington Faculty Council shall seek names from the Advisory Committee, Policy Committee, or similar faculty-elected committee (whichever is appropriate) of the unit being reviewed, and from other relevant groups, to be considered for inclusion in the list to be provided by the University Faculty Council Agenda Committee. The majority of the members of each Review Committee shall be full-time faculty from the unit whose Dean is being reviewed. Relevant members of the community may be nominated for membership on the review committee.

   2. The University Faculty Council Agenda Committee shall submit a list of prospective Review Committee members to the Provost/Chancellor. The UFC Agenda Committee’s list shall contain approximately one-third more names than the number of committee members anticipated by the Chancellor/Provost to be on the Review Committee, so as to provide him or her with some choice in the selection of members for the committee. Only those individuals nominated by the UFC Agenda committee shall be appointed to the Review Committee.

   3. The number of faculty selected from each campus in the Core School shall roughly mirror the proportion of faculty from each such campus.

   4. In addition to receiving nominations for the Review Committee from the University Faculty Council, the Provost/Chancellor shall solicit nominations from appropriate representative student and staff bodies as well as other constituencies, as appropriate, on both campuses.

   5. The Dean under review shall not provide any nominations for the Review Committee.

   6. Before being finalized, the composition of the Review Committee shall be reviewed by the Dean, who may object to any nominee for cause. The Provost/Chancellor shall give appropriate weight to these objections in forming the Review Committee.

   7. The Provost/Chancellor shall select a senior faculty member, preferably a current or former Dean, to chair the Review Committee.

3. The Provost/Chancellor and the co-Secretaries of the UFC shall convene the Review Committee. The Provost/Chancellor shall provide the Review Committee with a description of the duties and responsibilities of the Dean under Review, and the Dean to be reviewed will provide a statement of her or his own goals and objectives. The Review Committee shall respond with data to the following questions as a minimum:

   1. How has the Dean exercised leadership of the unit, including working with appropriate constituencies to establish, maintain, and facilitate clear goals and objectives?

   2. To what extent does the Dean facilitate the achievement of these goals and objectives?

   3. How effectively does the Dean represent and promote the school to constituencies outside the university, including state stakeholders, national peers, and international groups?

   4. How well has the Dean managed resources to maintain the integrity of the unit when faced with outside pressures?

   5. How is the unit perceived by its faculty and staff? How is the unit perceived on each campus of the Core School and throughout the university system?

   6. How effectively has the Dean led the unit in carrying out unit and campus policies on both campuses, including implementing affirmative action plans and aligning the campuses’ and school’s strategic plans?

   7. How effectively has the Dean worked with and implemented policies adopted by relevant faculty governance bodies?

   8. What are the Dean's strengths and weaknesses and their impact upon his or her effectiveness?

4. Review of Core Campus Deans is both important and complex. Therefore, it is important for Review Committees to consider the following guidelines:

   1. Opportunities for involvement should be provided to all stakeholder groups, including students, who can reasonably be assumed to have valuable input on the Dean’s effectiveness. This involvement should include opportunities to suggest questions in addition to those listed in Section 5 that may be important within the context of the Dean’s specific unit.

   2. Although surveys, as described in Section 9, are an important part of the review process, they should not be the only method through which data are collected. Interviews, focus groups, document analysis, and examination of extant data, among other methods, could all be used to gather information on the Dean’s effectiveness. Ideally, most findings – and all critical findings – should be checked using multiple methods.

   3. Multiple members of the committee, from both campuses, should be involved in the analysis of data to ensure that one person’s perspective does not dominate the summary and recommendations in the final report.

5. The report should consist of a description of processes, a narrative and critique, a summary of the committee's findings, supporting documentation, and recommendations. To ensure that the particular interests of each campus are represented, the report narrative should include a separate section summarizing the results for each relevant campus in addition to a general summary that cuts across all campuses for which a Dean is responsible.

6. Once a draft of the Committee's report is available, the Review Committee shall observe the following procedures:

   1. The Committee shall provide the reviewed Dean with a copy of the draft report.

   2. The Committee chair and a committee member of full faculty rank chosen by the Committee shall meet (not less than three days later) with the Dean being reviewed to discuss the draft report. The Dean should be given an opportunity to respond, in writing, to the committee's findings before the committee meets with the Provost/Chancellor.

   3. The Committee shall consider the Dean’s feedback, if any is offered, and prepare the final report.

   4. The Review Committee then shall meet with the Provost or Chancellor to submit and discuss its final report, including the Dean’s written response to the final report, if one is provided.

   5. The Provost/Chancellor shall meet with the Dean to discuss the final report.

7. Copies of the reports of the Reviews of the Deans listed in the Scope above shall be conveyed to the Agenda Committee of the University Faculty Council, the Agenda Committee of the Bloomington Faculty Council, the Executive Committee of the Indianapolis Faculty Council, and to the Dean's elected Policy Committee or corresponding elected governing body. A final report may be made public at the discretion of the Dean reviewed.

8. The Provost/Chancellor, in consultation with the UFC Agenda Committee and Review Committee chair, shall determine what elements of the final report and the Provost/Chancellor’s response should be included in a public summary document. That document must include an accurate characterization of the results of any data collection activities conducted by the Review Committee, although stakeholders’ verbatim quotes should not be included. The summary report should be distributed to all faculty and staff in the applicable core school.

9. Surveys shall be conducted as follows:

   1. survey shall be conducted at the beginning of a Dean's third year in office. Thereafter, a survey shall be conducted as part of each comprehensive review.

   2. The Provost/Chancellor shall appoint an independent agent (such as the IUB Center for Survey Research or the IUPUI Survey Research Center) to design and conduct the survey.

   3. The survey shall be in three parts:

      1. A set of approximately 10 questions, the same for all Deans, drafted by the University Faculty Council Agenda Committee in consultation with the survey agent and approved by the University Faculty Council. These questions will address such issues as the Dean's leadership, administrative skills, encouragement of faculty, and program development.

      2. A set of approximately 5 unit-specific questions prepared by the Review Committee in the case of a survey conducted in connection with a comprehensive Review, or by the Dean’s elected Policy Committee or corresponding elected governing body, in the case of a survey conducted at the beginning of the Dean’s third year in office.

      3. Sufficient space for written comments.

   4. The survey agent shall send a copy of the survey to each faculty member of the Dean's unit and collect all faculty responses within a specified period of time. The agent shall make a tabulation of the responses to the questions and a compilation of the written comments, without reference to the originator. Surveys should be administered in accord with customary practices designed to ensure the integrity of the process and to protect the identity of respondents by removing the names of respondents before survey results are released to the Dean under review, the Provost/Chancellor, or others.

   5. A copy of the written comments shall be conveyed to the Dean and to the Provost/Chancellor and shall be treated as confidential. The tabulated results of the remainder of the survey shall be conveyed to the Chancellor/Provost, to the Dean, and to the Dean's elected Policy Committee or corresponding elected governing body. In the case of a survey conducted in connection with a comprehensive Review, the results also shall be made available to the Review Committee. The tabulated results shall be treated as confidential unless confidentiality is waived by the Dean.

   6. In the case of a survey conducted in connection with a comprehensive Review, the tabulated results of the survey shall be reflected in the draft and final reports as stipulated in Section 8 above. In the case of an initial survey of a Dean, the Provost/Chancellor shall prepare a summary report of the tabulated survey results, in conformity with the procedures of consultation stipulated in Section 9 above.

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History

(University Faculty Council March 23, 2010)

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