Annual Faculty Performance Review
Questions about the Annual Faculty Performance Review? Please contact your academic dean's office or email the Office of the Provost.
Annual Faculty Performance Review
All faculty members, including temporary and regular, full- and part-time, are evaluated regularly by their designated academic leader.
This review is associated with the determination of any merit-based compensation change for the subsequent academic period. Merit raises are determined each year based on faculty members' annual evaluations. The Faculty Workload and Merit Evaluation Policy (BU-PP 706) governs how various faculty workloads affect the determination of the annual evaluation and, thus, the merit raise.
Faculty performance for the calendar year is evaluated based upon the areas of assigned responsibility (ie, teaching, research, service, and administrative duties). The distribution and weight of the areas shall have a logical relationship to the faculty member's assigned workload.
The evaluation with written comments and performance ratings is conducted at the department/division level by the chair (or similar leader) and shall include a face-to-face meeting to review the faculty member's recent performance and discuss plans for the year ahead. Written documentation of the department/division level review goes to the respective dean, who also provides an overall rating for the faculty member. There is some variation to this based on the structure of the academic unit. Once the Annual Performance Review is complete, a copy of the finalized review should be provided to the faculty member.
Regular Faculty | Temporary Faculty (full- or part-time) |
|---|---|
The department chair or similar academic leader, depending on the administrative organization of the school or college, will fill out the Annual Faculty Performance Evaluation Form (Opens in Box - Please download the form to your computer and open with Adobe Acrobat) and send it to the dean. All full-time regular faculty will also fill out a dean-approved version of a "Planning for the Year Ahead" document. A version of that document that may be used (Planning for the Year Ahead) is available online, with supporting guidance available via the Planning Document Instructions. The Annual Faculty Performance Evaluation Forms are due to the dean from the department chair or similar leader by February 12 of each year. The dean will return all evaluation forms by the opening of the merit process in Ignite (see deadlines below). | Each semester, the department chair or similar academic leader, depending on the administrative organization of the school or college, will complete the Evaluation of Temporary Faculty Instruction Worksheet and submit their evaluations of full- and part-time temporary faculty to their respective dean. |
After Annual Faculty Performance Reviews
Instructions for dean's offices on uploading completed faculty performance evaluation materials to the Office of the Provost are available online.
After annual faculty performance reviews are completed, each dean's office will send a copy of its faculty performance evaluation materials to the Office of the Provost.
Merit Process Deadlines in Ignite
Instructions for deans and chairs on entering annual faculty review ratings in Ignite are available in the HR job aid.
| Step | Start Date | End Date |
|---|---|---|
| Deadline for all chairs (or deans) to finalize the submission of evaluation ratings in the Ignite system | March 2 | |
| Department chairs (and associate deans, as applicable) enter merit recommendations | March 5 | March 16 |
| Business officer reviews submissions | March 17 | March 20 |
| Deans enter merit recommendations | March 23 | March 27 |
| Office of the Provost finalizes recommendations | April 10 | |
| Annual contracts or pay change statements issued | May 1 | |
| Annual contracts and merit increase effective date August 1 | ||
Workload and Service Frequently Asked Questions
Service has always been expected of Baylor faculty and is evaluated in the annual performance review process. However, in the previous policy, that expectation was not accompanied by a specific percentage assigned to the faculty member in the annual workload calculation. Without clear service expectations in workload, faculty have found it difficult to determine if they are meeting service expectations, and leaders have struggled to recognize under- and over-performance in service.
The four areas are teaching, research, service, and administration. Due to the differences in faculty tracks (lecturer, tenure, clinical, etc.) and roles, not all faculty members will be assigned responsibilities in each area, resulting in varying percentages of workload. While preserving this reasonable and appropriate variation, academic leaders within each unit shall make workload assignments in a consistent and equitable manner.
That is difficult to answer because Baylor is home to several faculty tracks distributed across various academic and professional disciplines. What is appropriate for one faculty member may not be reasonable for another. However, it is helpful to conceptualize the total workload for a full-time, regular faculty member as equivalent to 12 semester/trimester hours of teaching plus faculty service, with adaptations made to the teaching load for research activity and administrative duties.
The general principles of workload are established in BU-PP 706 and are applicable to all faculty. This provides a structure to which the colleges/schools add their unit-specific detail. Together, the university and college/school expectations create a framework for individual academic leaders to discuss and set the workload for each faculty for the next academic year. Such discussions are meant to take place within the annual performance evaluation process.
The annual evaluation shall provide reflections on all areas of the faculty member’s assigned duties, with appropriate weight given to that area based on the workload. For example, those with a larger percentage of their time assigned to research would be expected to be proportionally more productive with that assigned effort.
By policy, one credit hour is 7.5% workload (thus, two credit hours is 15% and three credit hours is 22.5%). A faculty member is considered to be teaching at full load if they are assigned 12 credit hours of teaching in a regular term (or the reasonable equivalent for studio teaching hours or courses offered on the quarter system). Establishing and managing college or school-level practices regarding teaching overloads is the purview of the dean.
Deans have the discretion to create and apply variations to the per credit hour percentage of workload. This allows each unit the flexibility to better account for very large enrollment courses, respond to unique course and/or program expectations, acknowledge team teaching, and address other specific needs.
The college or school establishes appropriate norms for service in the academic unit; University policy says that faculty are typically assigned 5-10% service in their workload each term. Service expectations shall be appropriate to the rank, contract, and assigned duties of the individual faculty member. Service may be internal or external to Baylor.
Assigned faculty service internal to the university could include standing departmental committees, undergraduate and graduate recruitment, search committees, college or school task forces, advising of official University student groups, and committee participation on undergraduate or graduate thesis projects or dissertations (unless accounted for in the teaching workload through credit hours).
Examples of faculty service external to Baylor may include leadership roles in organizations for the academic field or the profession, invited expert review of academic manuscripts or grant applications, and selection to perform program evaluations. Personal community service is greatly appreciated, but is not tracked as external service in annual workload documentation.
Time given to clinical work that is volunteer, unpaid, and/or pro bono can be considered external service in the faculty workload. Clinical time that is compensated by another entity (i.e., payment to the faculty member from the clinic) is outside work, not external service, and may not be considered as a fulfillment of the expectation for service in the faculty workload. All clinical activity must also comply with the Outside Activities and Interests Policy (BU-PP 800).
Faculty are also expected to maintain professional conduct, attend faculty meetings for the unit and other meetings called by their academic leaders, and communicate regularly with faculty, staff, and students. Baylor faculty members are expected to join and participate in a local faith community or religious congregation. These expectations, and others, are included in the Faculty Handbook.