Faculty/Staff Development Policy Directive

Adopted by the Board of Regents, March 8, 1995

The University System of Georgia will be characterized by:

A world-class, diverse faculty and staff who have superior communication and teaching skills; who use new technologies, roles, and curricular innovations creatively to enhance student learning; and who exhibit the highest standards of intellectual achievement and continuing growth, social responsibility, and concern for students.

"Access to Academic Excellence"

The University System of Georgia:

Shall recruit aggressively and nationally for talented, diverse faculty to serve the various missions of its institutions. It shall also develop and retain faculty in an attractive, collaborative, productive environment for teaching and learning that includes, for both non-tenured and tenured faculty: clear personnel standards and policies; expectations and programs for continued professional growth; resources to support excellence in teaching, scholarship, research, and community service; competitive compensation and other recognition for meritorious performance.

Shall use educational technology, innovation, and teaching strategies that produce the most learning by engaging students actively, collaboratively with other students, and in frequent contact with faculty. It shall promote and reward excellence in teaching, and shall maximize the benefit to students and to the state from the research, scholarship, and service activities that complement teaching.

Shall recruit and retain nationally respected administrative leaders and well qualified staff, who are diverse in background and committed to students and to the missions of their respective institutions. It shall support them with the resources they need to do their jobs, clear personnel standards and policies, professional development opportunities, and competitive compensation to reward achievement, encourage excellence and teamwork, and insure accountability at all levels.

Shall have strong written policies and procedures for selecting personnel, for establishing expectations, for making personnel decisions and handling appeals at the lowest responsible level; shall maximize authority and accountability for its institutions to resolve grievances; and shall specify the grounds for personnel appeals to be referred to its Board of Regents.

-- Principles 14, 10, 15, 16

GOALS:

Establish post-tenure review policies and practices, involving both administrative and peer input, on long-range evaluations of faculty, with the purpose of enhancing the performance of all faculty, redirecting the activities of some, and aiding those whose performance is unsatisfactory, with implementation by fall 1996.
Make needed changes in current personnel policies at both System and institutional levels to insure effective annual performance evaluations, and written promotional criteria and procedures (including for tenure) for all employees, including administrative leaders and emphasizing excellence in teaching for all teaching faculty and instructors at all levels, by winter 1996.
In addition to annual personnel evaluations, establish longer-term developmental peer evaluations for all third-year pre-tenured faculty, by winter 1996.
Establish policies and criteria, including demonstrated excellence in teaching, for awarding tenure in highly selective circumstances as a condition of employment to distinguished, qualified senior faculty appointments, by winter 1996.
Examine the pro's and con's of awarding tenure to presidents and other selective senior administrative leaders upon appointment ,when justified by their academic qualifications, by winter 1996.
Establish procedures for reimbursing tuition, reassigning personnel, and granting leaves for administrators, faculty and staff to undertake developmental, job-related training or other projects designed to improve their performance, by fall 1996.
Insure that all teaching assistants are provided appropriate training and continuing instructional mentorship, by spring 1996.
Promote a developmental personnel culture throughout the University System, by establishing career ladders related to developmental training and specified achievements by spring 1996.
Establish a leadership training program in the System, using mechanisms such as administrative internships, by spring 1996.
Develop a systematic program to recognize and reward teaching and service to students (e.g., advising students about academic and career preparation) throughout the University System, by spring 1996.
Insure a minimum allocation for faculty/staff development throughout the System with a cost equivalent of approximately 1% of all full-time employee salaries, by FY 1997.

BACKGROUND:

Although most institutions of the University System have instituted various awards, programs and centers for encouraging and developing professional excellence, the University System has not developed a coordinated approach to these matters that systematically builds on and supports institutional initiatives. Such a coordinated approach is particularly timely in light of the Board's strategic planning commitments to place the entire University System at the forefront on new educational technologies, to educate students for a global, intercultural world, and to working in effective partnerships with the DTAE and K-12 institutions. Pursuing all these commitment requires new professional training and development for faculty and staff Systemwide. Ironically, higher education spends less on the continuing education of its personnel than most corporations, even though personnel costs represent over four-fifths of the System budget.

Not only academic conditions that have inhibited faculty and staff mobility for over two decades, but also current best practice in management mandates policies to encourage the retention and continuing development of professional personnel. Tenure should be seen, in part, as a special case of faculty retention. The maintenance of a system of tenure is crucial to being competitive in the attraction and retention of top faculty, as the Wall Street Journal also concluded this fall In the United States, fully 97% of all baccalaureate colleges and universities offer tenure; and all eight other public university systems with similar institutional scope to the University System of Georgia's award tenure to new appointments at the rank of full professor. Compared to those peer university systems, moreover, the University System of Georgia has the lowest "tenure density" throughout its faculty. Tenure is held by only 50.7% of this system's teaching faculty (53.0% at the senior colleges and universities); tenure percentages at peer systems range from 58.2% in the University of North Carolina system to 83.3% in the California State University system.

As articulated by the University of North Carolina in its September 1993 policy on tenure,

The concept of tenure, simply stated, is that after a specified probationary period a member of a faculty at a university or college may be awarded a life-time appointment that can be abrogated only for cause or for program change or financial exigency at the institution. The purpose of tenure is to assure faculty members academic freedom and protection against improper abridgments of the freedom of inquiry through teaching, scholarship, research, and creative activities; and to protect the right to publish or otherwise present scholarly work publicly without the threat of political or other sources of confining orthodoxies.

And yet, it is equally crucial that the public have confidence that tenure does not inhibit, but rather promotes, the continued growth and high level of performance expected of the faculty. This is especially important in an era of rapid change and in a changing culture in higher education where the collective goals of the institution must take precedence over individual goals.

Practically, moreover, the future of the University System is inextricably tied to the successful hiring and continuing development of faculty. Since tenuring is a critical decision involving a long term institutional commitment, careful evaluation of untenured faculty over the five-to-seven years of their probationary period is particularly important. A three-year evaluation at the approximate mid point of that period can identify general patterns needing either reinforcement or improvement and help gauge potential for effective tenuring. A tenure commitment thereafter should be understood to include support for and an expectation of the continuing professional review and development of faculty during their post-tenured careers.

TQM/CQI management principles advise dealing with institution-wide issues--such as the underlying personnel development issues raised by tenure--in ways that mix different institutional perspectives. Combining improvement of the University System's pre- and post-tenure evaluations for faculty with a thorough-going developmental approach to personnel practices for administrators, professional staff, and support staff, too, will maximize synergy in policy development. A developmental approach to clear expectations, training opportunities, promotional structures, and rewards will provide the best safeguards for insuring continuing professional growth and full performance on the part of all University System employees, including those with tenure.

IMPLEMENTATION:

The Board of Regents therefore directs that:

The Chancellor's Office establish a Systemwide task force on faculty/staff development, to include administrators, both tenured and non-tenured faculty, professional and support staff, persons with relevant expertise (such as personnel officers), and representation or other appropriate input from students and the business sector, configured into appropriate sub committees and charged to complete the following tasks:
- Survey current personnel practices to determine the extent to which University System institutions have established staff career ladders related to pay plans and developmental opportunities, written criteria and procedures for faculty/staff promotion and for tenure (with teaching given priority for instructional faculty/staff), merit salary increments based on formal evaluations, awards to recognize professional excellence, especially in teaching and service to students), provisions for professional travel, tuition remission, developmental reassignments and leaves, training and mentoring programs for teaching assistants, and programs or centers for faculty and/or staff development;
- Recommend System policy and institutional guidelines for multi-year post-tenure reviews for tenured faculty, to include at a minimum the following elements:
  - the faculty to be scheduled for such reviews (i.e., not just those tenured after this policy),
  - the time period to be considered (e.g., at least every 5 years),
  - a requirement for written criteria,
  - a requirement to maintain adequate accountability and documentation,
  - appropriate involvement of administrative, peer, and student input,
  - the relationship of such reviews to merited raises and professional development,
  - the procedures to be implemented in cases where deficiencies are revealed and not remedied,
  - the possible links to assessment and program review procedures, and
  - the safeguards necessary for academic freedom.
- Recommend System policy and institutional guidelines for other multi-year developmental evaluations: for all pre-tenured faculty at the mid-point of their probationary period, for faculty/staff requesting promotion or applying for developmental reassignments, and for others who request such evaluation.
- Recommend System policy and institutional guidelines for annual performance evaluations, and for written promotional criteria and procedures, for all types of employees, including peer evaluation when appropriate. (Peer evaluation at smaller institutions or for smaller programs could involve peers from sister institutions.)
- Recommend System policy and institutional guidelines, for awarding tenure immediately upon appointment of qualified senior faculty, with appropriate attention given to documented excellence in teaching and with case-specific Board of Regents approval;
- Survey national practices regarding tenure for administrative leadership, examine the pro's and con's of such tenure practices, and recommend any appropriate policy directives for revising University System policies and procedures;
- Recommend System policy and institutional guidelines for developing career ladders, appropriately related to professional/job-related developmental opportunities and pay plans, for non-instructional staff;
- Recommend System policy and institutional guidelines for full tuition reimbursement for specifically job-related study at any University System institution or other approved educational entity, upon successful completion of a pre-agreed course or program of study;
- Recommend the resources required to support professional development and possible sources of such funding; strategic priorities to be targeted (e.g., in instructional technology, educational reform, pedagogy global/ crosscultural education, preventative law); and a comprehensive professional development action plan that includes the above, as well as such possibilities as reassignments and study leaves for professional development purposes, grants to support teaching-improvement projects, awards for professional excellence, mentoring programs, centers for teaching and other professional training, and other initiatives as appropriate and feasible.
That the Chancellor bring back to the Board of Regents for its final approval his recommendations regarding the results of the Task Force's work in the above areas, including assurance that the language of all personnel policies will be subject to legal review.

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Faculty/Staff Development Policy Directive