Dear Peter--
Thanks for the invitation to contribute my thoughts on the PTR legislation. Feel free to do as you please with this note, including excerpting parts of it for further distribution.
The two points that I want most to stress are that the review processes should be kept as close to home as possible and that the faculty role in them must be kept separate from actual salary determination.
Before I get into my reasons for these conclusions and explain more fully what I mean, let me state what I think are the potentially positive aspects of post-tenure reviews and comment on their connection with the other personnel reviews we conduct.
For many years the only formal reviews we ran were for tenure and for promotion. Consistently with practices throughout academe, these reviews have become more and more thorough, first by systematically bringing in the judgments of external referees to establish disciplinary standards, and more recently by explicitly attempting to evaluate teaching. A few years back we also introduced the practice of formal third-year reviews for untenured faculty, and established general policies for regular reviews of tenured faculty.
The tenure review is still far and away the most important and most rigorous of all of these evaluations. In my experience, we do as well as one reasonably can at these. It is always possible that the materials presented in support of tenure are inaccurate for one reason or another or that the faculty member, once awarded tenure, may not live up to the promise that seemed truly evident in the tenure file. I have seen examples of both, but they are exceedingly rare. More commonly, in those few cases that we later find disappointing, the evidence is there to see all along, but is explained away by supportive colleagues, or wishful thinking prevails over realism in the review process. These latter weaknesses are potentially present in any review processes that we develop for whatever purposes.
The review for promotion to professor follows the general plan of a tenure review, but is less crucial, since the major decision--on tenure--has already been made. Still, it provides a good chance for the institution to validate the earlier decision or, when promotion is deferred, to serve notice to the faculty member of expectations still unmet.
In my view, the addition of the untenured third-year review to the two promotion reviews has been the most valuable step in recent years. When such reviews are thoughtfully carried out, they can be genuinely helpful to junior faculty members and to their departments, who in the past might have tended to ignore early warning signs and later feel guilty about not having provided support. I would support any proposals to enhance their value.
What we're talking about now, though, are post-tenure reviews. As I said at the Senate meeting, I was initially persuaded of their value, sight unseen, and have tried to make successful those in which I have been involved. I remain weakly supportive, and in any case such reviews are mandated; I take it as given that we will be conducting such reviews at 3-year intervals from now on. The only actual good I've seen come from them has been in cases in which people chose to retire rather than face such reviews and in cases in which people's colleagues had been underrating them until the reviews brought out strengths that had not been widely known. Both of these are positive outcomes.
I see the potential for another extremely positive effect on teaching. If systematic peer review of teaching becomes part of the process, then such reviews will no longer be seen as prima facie evidence of bad teaching, and they will offer the chance for some genuinely useful guidance to faculty members who would welcome it but feel loath to ask for help from their colleagues. Mind you I haven't actually seen this work, but I'm an optimist.
I haven't mentioned another important sort of personnel review that we undertake systematically from time to time, and that's the review for determining salaries. More on this later, but it should not be overlooked as we think through the whole package.
My own experience of all of these things has been as an associate dean, as a member of the FPC and the CAS Dean's Advisory Committee, as a department head, as a member of the departmental PTR committee, as a reviewee, and as a member of the departmental salary advisory group.
It should be made absolutely clear that the members of the FPC and DAC are not attempting to judge cases on their own, though judgment is obviously their role. Rather, they look at all of the supporting information available, ask for more if more would seem to help clarify the situation, and then make a recommendation based on their reading of the collective views of people in the candidate's discipline. The discipline and department establish the standards, and the outside and inside letter writers give their opinions as to how well the candidate meets them. Teaching information is also provided by the departments. In fact, except in rare instances in which more information is desired, all of the material used in the reviews is available to and provided by the departments, and forms the basis of their own recommendations.
In the College of Arts and Sciences it's obvious that people from one science can't be expected to be experts in others, that people in languages won't be experts in philosophy or religious studies, and so on. Even in smaller schools, such as AAA, it's not the case that people in such diverse areas as art history, arts administration, public policy, sculpture and landscape architecture have the background to evaluate all other areas. In every instance, they must rely on the best judgment of the people who actually know the disciplines from the inside.
The post-tenure review process is not expected to include outside letters, even in six-year reviews, so the only materials put forward for review will be ones collected by the departments. It makes no sense at all to add an extra procedural layer, a school or college committee, which can only add misunderstanding and imprecision to the department's informed opinion. The argument might be made that departments are sometimes weak, and that the threat of a larger review might hold their feet to the fire. In my view, deans are paid to know which departments are weak and which are strong, and they already have all the authority they need to override or modify departmental recommendations. I strongly oppose giving PTR committees any authority anyway--they should be advisory only--so the ultimate judgment will come from the department head, dean and provost.
That's my case for leaving the PTR process at the departmental level, with administrative review and ultimate authority. I recognize that different departments will have different needs, and that a variety of structures will make the most sense. What works beautifully for a large department such as mathematics or English would be inappropriate for a small department such as religious studies or a program such as international studies. The appropriate associate dean, in consultation with the dean and the department or program head, should work out a sensible arrangement.
Now let's look at the money issue. It seems that the only firm requirement is that the review process must be definitely linked to the reward system, and that the linkage must be spelled out to the satisfaction of those who demand accountability (and to satisfy the rather open wording of the regs). The $2000 figure is not cast in stone. Nor have I seen any guarantee that money will be available to fund such raises. If the money is actually being offered, then it seems foolish to turn it down, and in that case I'd suggest that the faculty position ought to be to start with the initial assumption that everybody being reviewed will get $2000 unless reasons are provided for less. People seem to be imagining that it would work that way anyway, so why not get it in writing? I'm pessimistic, though. My guess is that at some point, sooner or later, the administration's position will be that the norm is $0, and that anything above that will have to be justified by special merit, with $2000 being considered exceptional. Then reviews would show that almost everybody had quite a bit of merit. In any case, I'd prefer that specific dollar figures be left out entirely in the legislation, particularly if it's intended to last for any length of time before being replaced.
I strongly believe, though, that whatever money is tied to the results of the review must be decided upon by an administrator, rather than by a faculty group. Both the dean and the department head should be involved, with oversight by the provost. There are a host of reasons why the faculty's role should be advisory only. To start with, the end result is a single number, the result of a single decision. I think, on the basis of experience on various committees, that arriving at such a number by consensus would not be easy in many cases, and I very much dislike the idea of averaging together the recommendations of several people without taking into account and weighing the reasons for their divergent views.
What should happen, in my view, is that the committee prepares a comprehensive report which it then discusses with the department head. As part of that discussion, the committee makes its merit recommendation or recommendations clear. As a result, the head proposes a dollar figure, which is then discussed with the dean before becoming final. The letter awarding the salary increase then makes explicit mention of the part that the review has played in determining its amount. In this way there is a paper trail showing the linkage between the review and the reward system, the faculty have played an appropriate part in determining the standards to be applied, and the appointed administrators have carried out their responsibilities.
I've raised the problem of getting a single number out of a committee, but I don't want to overstate the case. Let me mention a process that our department uses for determining merit increases and that might work effectively for PTR's as well in some departments. Our department head collects information from all faculty members and makes a first cut at determining individual raises. At this point he consults with the members of a special advisory committee consisting of the still-active former department heads, a fairly small group (now about to shrink even further). They sit down together to go over the salary recommendations (not their own, of course), the head goes over the list, explaining some of his reasons, and the committee members query his calls or add information that seems not to have been considered. By the end of the meeting, there is generally agreement on a revised set of figures, though with the clear understanding that the final numbers are up to the head. My experience at such meetings suggests that in fact it often _is_ possible to get consensus.
Even this process is uncomfortable, though, for the committee members. Most of us don't like the idea of setting somebody else's salary (as distinct from making judgmental statements with no dollar value). The fact that the committee is just advisory helps reduce the possible tension. Others have suggested that there might be problems with mutual backscratching or backstabbing associated with giving the faculty authority to set salaries, but my own experience is quite the opposite. In any case, there seems no compelling reason to give the faculty final say on the compensation associated with PTR. Indeed, I believe that we would be likely to get more objective reports if the specific issue of salary were explicitly not addressed in them.
I've probably gone on far too long in justifying my two points mentioned at the outset. Let me add a few other comments at the end.
Although I think it a mistake to build too many specifics into the final legislation, I would also hate to see some of the good ideas generated during the discussion simply disappear. Is there a way that the final motion could be accompanied by an attachment outlining various specific proposals as instances of how the PTR process might work in a variety of departmental conditions? Not as recipes, but just as examples.
In spite of my words in the Senate about our inability to educate some of our external critics on the value of tenure, I think we absolutely have to provide our friends on the State Board and elsewhere with a one-paragraph statement they can internalize that states that we have taken measures to be even more accountable in our personnel practices, that we fully understand the responsibilities that go along with tenure, and that our practices now mandate effective reviews at least every three years, with both compensation and professional support tied to the outcomes. We can't expect people to defend us blindly if we don't at least give them some words to use.
That's more than enough. Good luck with your deliberations. I hope that you are able to put together in one room enough of the key players from the past year to hammer out a clear, concise statement from the materials in front of you.
Charley