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Articles
Integrating Accountability Systems and Reward Structures
Workload Policy, Post-Tenure Evaluations and Salary Compensation
Metropolitan Universities: An International Forum, Spring 1997
Authors: Ahmed Abdelal, David C. Blumenthal, Timothy J. Crimmins and Paula L. Dresser
The nineties have been a period of uncertainty for the academy. In a recent survey, Harvey and Immerwahr ironically concluded that while the general public retains favorable perceptions of faculty, it has little support for specific academic goals (1995 pp. 51-55). In contrast, while community leaders express significant dissatisfaction with faculty, they provide broad support for academic goals. Much criticism focuses on faculty workload and the nature of the tenure system in higher education. Over and above these external concerns, in 1993 the administration of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University reviewed faculty workloads and concluded that it needed a policy to establish workload comparability across varied disciplines and to provide optimal utilization of faculty talents. The first section of this article describes how faculty and administrators in the college developed this policy.
A number of institutions have developed another mechanism to address concerns about faculty productivity: periodic evaluation of tenured faculty, or post-tenure review. In 1993 faculty and administration of Georgia State working together through the University Senate, also constructed a policy governing these evaluations. The primary objective of the policy is to improve the performance of tenured faculty by providing opportunities for continuous intellectual and professional growth. Thus, the plan the University Senate adopted is in accord with the pioneering article by Bennett and Chater that promoted post-tenure evaluation "as an assessment of job performance, not a review of continuing tenure" and argued that the primary goal should be "to foster and maintain excellent performance," (1984, pp. 38-39). As we developed procedures for post-tenure review, however, it became clear that the evaluations should affect faculty workload and that, when properly used, could be a powerful instrument in matching current faculty talents and interests to present departmental and college needs. The second section of this article describes the development of our post-tenure review procedures and our experiences in the first cycle of evaluations.
It also became clear that if we expect faculty to invest the needed effort in our new policies and not dismiss them as unnecessary bureaucratic exercises, we had to connect these policies to the college reward structure. Without such a connection, faculty often view new initiatives that add to their already overburdened schedules with cynicism. Making the connection required integrating workload and post-tenure review with a merit salary-equity initiative that we only recently begun. The third section of the article discusses salary equity initiative and its connections to workload analysis and post-tenure review.
Although some faculty and department chairs, objected to these initiatives at first, we eventually reached consensus as people came to view them as an integrated approach to a variety of important institutional goals. Achieving this understanding, however, and crafting the policies in the most effective way required broad faculty input and collegial interaction among department chairs and between faculty and administrators. The fourth section of the article discusses the importance that a collegial approach to these issues has had both for the policies themselves and for the trust that arose from shared governance.
Developing Workload Policy
In addition to the need for articulating a clear workload policy to external constituencies, an important internal goal is to optimize the use of faculty talents. While faculty members must demonstrate excellence in teaching and research, and be effective in service to receive tenure and promotion, tenured faculty contribute differentially in these areas. The goal of our workload policy is that the total effort of individual faculty members be comparable, even though effort in any of the three areas may vary from individual to individual. Although everyone recognizes that faculty differ greatly in their effectiveness in teaching and research, many believe that they contribute similarly in service. Our own rough estimate was that perhaps twenty percent of the faculty were highly effective in service. While we wanted this effective group to serve, it is not in the interest of either the institution or these faculty members to participate at the expense of their professional development. Accordingly, we developed incentives not only for teaching and research, but also for significant service.
Three main premises undergird the workload policy we adopted. First, institutions should have well-articulated criteria for comparing workloads across disciplines. The heterogeneity of disciplines makes this a challenge, but it need not be a barrier. Department chairs and faculty frequently claim that because their disciplines are unique, administrators should treat their department differently from others. It is not uncommon for this to border on a request for preferential treatment. The challenge in a college that houses the full range of arts and sciences is to find equitable ways of administering a wide variety of different academic experiences. With respect to teaching, the college workload policy recognizes that there are different kinds of classroom efforts, from the large lecture section, to the smaller laboratory section, to the even smaller, and quite distinct, studio experience. In consultation with the department chairs and school directors, our Dean's Office developed a framework, subsequently adopted by the faculty, for giving workload credit for a range of teaching assignments. In music, art, and psychology, for example, which involve unique practices such as ensembles, individual lessons, and clinical supervision, our framework took into account accreditation standards for assigning workload credit. Similarly, science laboratories used contact hours rather than credit hours to determine workload. We also sought to compare the workloads in large and small classes, and decided that, for purposes of the policy, teaching one large section (90 students or more) without a graduate assistant would count as equal to teaching two smaller sections. We have so far adhered to this policy, but we allow department chairs, with the approval of the Dean's Office, to make adjustments in exceptional cases. Thus, for example, we might well count a writing intensive course with 50 or 60 students and no graduate assistant as equivalent to two courses. In general, our quantitative standards are guidelines rather than ironclad rules and we expect to modify the rules as reasonable exceptions arise.
In addition to making equitable workloads possible, the process of comparing teaching experiences in diverse disciplines and educating faculty about the efforts of their colleagues fostered an appreciation for a wide range of teaching activities.
Another premise of the workload policy is that faculty at different stages of their careers have different professional responsibilities. Our policy accommodates these differences in a variety of ways. For example, it provides for a reduced teaching load for new tenure-track faculty in their first two years to allow them time to prepare new courses and to initiate their own scholarly agendas. The workload policy also recognizes that senior faculty have greater leadership roles in the university and that it is important to reward those who make significant contributions to institutional governance. Therefore, faculty who perform well in highly demanding activities, such as serving on one of the college promotion and tenure committees, on major university senate committees, or as officers for regional or national professional organizations, receive credit for their contributions.
The third premise of the workload policy is that the college reward structure should mirror each faculty member's overall effectiveness. As we shall see later, we evaluate faculty performance in relation to total workload and base rewards on measures of overall effectiveness.
The current workload policy-which resulted from discussions in the elected Executive Committee of the college, the Chair's Council, and in individual departments-uses the traditional categories of teaching, research or creative activity and service. For our purposes, teaching is any work with students in classes, laboratories, studios, seminars, and individual direction; research or creative activity is the production of peer-evaluated projects (such as articles, books, musical compositions, and art exhibitions)' and service is other significant work for the department, college, university, profession, or community. Within the department, the college, and the university, service is typically any committee work essential to the advancement of academic life. In the profession and the community, however, only such service falls under the policy as bears a direct relationship to the faculty member's academic expertise. Carl Patton, the President of Georgia State University, discussed the importance of value-added public service in the Summer 1994 issue of this journal (pp. 97-100). We would note, furthermore, that while Georgia State University uses a traditional definition of scholarship, our workload model is adaptable to institutions that use Ernest Boyer's definition. To affect this, one would combine Boyer's other categories of scholarship with the scholarship of discovery in the assessment of faculty research and then proceed as we have.
In addition to being equitable, our workload policy facilitates the recruitment of the most able faculty to participate in university affairs. Faculty who might otherwise seek to minimize university service or resent the constraints it places on their strenuous schedules are less reluctant to participate when these duties are part of a fair and rational workload policy. In fact, our experience suggests that under equitable conditions, faculty participate in university affairs more enthusiastically, and with a greater sense of their value, then they otherwise would.
Developing Post-tenure Evaluation
In order to foster continuous professional growth, Georgia State University requires that tenured faculty members who have not been reviewed for promotion within the last five years undergo post-tenure evaluation. While this policy provides a general framework for the review, it allows each college to develop its own implementation procedures. In arts and sciences, the overarching aim is to employ a process that clarifies and develops faculty member's academic objectives, enhances their professional development, and achieves workload equity.
We asked some important preliminary questions to identify how the faculty should be reviewed in a given year, what materials to use, and who should conduct the review. An important message to convey (especially in the initial cycle when faculty are likely to be most wary of the process) is that the evaluation is for the development of all tenured faculty and it is not designed to identify and deal punitively with those who are deficient. This college's position is that even the most successful faculty can profit from periodic discussions of their academic endeavors, and that few if any faculty, whatever their performance problems, are beyond the hope of real improvement. Thus, unlike some institutions that have chose to focus on faculty with suspected or previously identified deficiencies, we agreed not to take this approach. To initiate the review, we divided eligible faculty into three groups, using a randomizing function in a spreadsheet application, for a three-year phase-in.
The second question was which materials to use, and more specifically, how to avoid burdening either the reviewers or the faculty under review with the need to compile extensive documentation. Fortunately, it proved feasible to rely on information from the last five years to which the Dean's Office and department chairs have relatively ready access. These materials include annual reports, curriculum vitae, publications or creative achievements, and evidence of teaching effectiveness. Also, faculty submit a two-page statement of their goals and accomplishments, but we do not ask them to provide anything more.
We answered the third question, i.e., who should conduct the review, by using two mechanisms: peer and administrative review. The process begins with the chair's assessment of the faculty member's effectiveness in teaching, research or creative activity, and service. The chair sends this assessment, together with the review materials, for peer review by the promotion and tenure committee of the area of the college to which the faculty member belongs. (The college is divided into four areas- Communications and Fine Arts, Humanities, Natural Science and Computer Science, and Social Sciences-each of which has its own elected promotion and tenure committee and its own associate dean). After making its own analysis, the promotion and tenure committee submits all of the materials to the dean's office, which provides further assessment and forwards the complete portfolio to the provost for comment. Finally, the faculty member receives copies of all the reports and discusses them at a joint conference with the chair, the dean, and the area associate dean.
The purpose of the conference is to identify the most constructive ways of developing and advancing the faculty member's academic objectives and, ideally, arriving at a 5-yuear plan for achieving these objectives. This requires listening carefully to the faculty member's ideas and entering into a creative discussion of the options for achieving optimal productivity. While the various reports provide the framework for the discussion, the faculty member's input is essential. Relying on it maximizes the chances of developing useful ideas, reduces the sense of distance so often experienced between faculty and administrators, and fosters instead a spirit of cooperation.
Initial Observations
Although the college has completed only one review cycle, we can offer the following observations. In general, post-tenure review provides senior faculty with the opportunity for a systematic assessment of their career trajectories and for the construction of goals appropriate to the specific stages of their careers. For highly productive faculty who are contributing significantly in all areas, the review is an occasion for administrators to offer congratulations for a job well done and, if possible, to provide support for continued excellence. For those whose review indicates the need for greater effectiveness in one or more areas, the evaluation conference is an opportunity to formulate a plan in conjunction with the chair and the deans for achieving enhanced performance. With very few exceptions faculty have entered into the conferences in a positive spirit. Those who were already doing well were gratified to have their accomplishments acknowledged and for that reason were all the more eager to identify ways to maintain or improve their performance. Faculty with difficulties were usually already aware of the problem and welcomed suggested remedies. Even those with serious deficiencies responded well to constructive ideas. Deans and department chairs were often able to show their good faith by providing incentives for improvement, and it was usually possible to reconfigure a faculty member's workload to take advantage of the things he or she does best.
The following examples illustrate these points. If a faculty member's research had markedly diminished in recent years, we typically initiated a plan for the completion of manuscripts or grant proposals according to a well-defined schedule. In the most promising cases, we provided resources (such as a graduate research assistant, a summer stipend, or a quarter without teaching duties) to facilitate professional development. In all instances, the chair monitors the faculty member's progress and continued support is contingent on work proceeding according to schedule. Where faculty had not published in many years or simply had no enthusiasm for doing so, it was often possible to establish a mutually agreeable arrangement whereby the person would teach more and perhaps make a more substantial service contribution.
While it is of course always possible to impose such arrangements by administrative fiat, we regard this as undesirable and have not yet had recourse to it. In fact, we were surprised at how willingly faculty enter into cooperative arrangements that we realign their talents and interests with departmental expectations. Some faculty, for example, have been very amenable to the idea of their teaching more in exchange for relief from the heavy publication expectations of their colleagues. While a teaching emphasis requires that faculty members keep fully abreast of developments in their respective fields, and perhaps publish occasionally, it allows them to emphasize instruction and to be rewarded primarily on that basis. Naturally, this arrangement works best for outstanding teachers and is to be undertaken cautiously, if at all, with weaker ones. To the extent that is feasible, however, a teaching emphasis also has the virtue of increasing the amount of released time from instruction that is available for the most research productive faculty: where some teach more, others may teach less without loss of course offerings for the students or credit hours for the institution. In several instances, we referred faculty with teaching problems to Georgia State University's Teaching and Learning Center; with improvement they would become eligible for a teaching emphasis.
In some cases, faculty were relatively weak at certain kinds of teaching (such as large undergraduate lecture classes) but considerably stronger in others (small undergraduate courses, graduate lecture classes, or seminars). Here the remedy was appropriate teaching assignments coupled with mentoring on the type of teaching in which the faculty member was deficient. Similar considerations apply to service. In one case, we reconfigured the workload of a faculty member with high administrative and teaching skills, but only modest research productivity, to be coordinator of undergraduate advisement. In another case, a faculty member agreed to undertake a more active role in organizing the recruitment of departmental majors. Of course, the extent to which all such reconfigurations are possible depends upon departmental goals and the mix of faculty talents and other resources. Nevertheless, we have so far failed to encounter a case in which we were unable to devise a reasonable plan for improving faculty performance. We believe that this is not a coincidence: the standards for tenure at Georgia State, which place a premium on both teaching and research, are sufficiently rigorous that the likelihood of an "unsalvageable" faculty member surviving the process is very low.
Upon notification of their selection for post-tenure review or at the end of the review, about ten percent of faculty in the first cycle indicated their intention to retire. Informal discussions revealed that several of them had been considering retirement and that the need to develop a plan for the next five years of their academic career helped them to reach the decision. The understanding that we had randomly identified individuals for review ensured that faculty made these retirement decisions in a positive environment.
Developing the Merit-Equity Salary Initiative
In 1992, the college initiated a multi-year effort to achieve salary equity for faculty with comparable rank and overall productivity in similar disciplinary areas. This merit-equity initiative seeks to correct salary discrepancies that resulted from several practices, which, we suspect, are not peculiar to Georgia State University. First, starting salaries arose historically from individual negotiations that often resulted more from the negotiating skills of the chair or faculty member than from a systematic application of merit-based criteria. Second, faculty frequently received merit raises on the basis of accomplishments in the previous year alone, although the availability of funds for merit raises varied greatly from year to year depending on prevailing economic conditions. Third, departmental budgets typically rose by whatever percentage increase the state allotted to the university in a given year. Because chairs awarded raises relative to the merit of faculty within their own departments, this led to inequities across departments in the same disciplinary area. (Thus, the best faculty in a given rank in a poor department might receive raises as high as the best faculty in that rank in an outstanding department, even though the latter were more productive). The goal of the initiative was to transform the salary structure into one in which faculty with equal rank and merit in one of the four disciplinary areas of the college receive equal compensation.
The initiative engaged department chairs in a systematic evaluation of all faculty in their area of the college. Their first step was to develop a rating system. Our own system evolved, but at present each faculty member receives 1-5 points in research, 1-5 points in teaching, and 1-4 points in service. Using such a numerical system, the chairs and associate deans collectively arrived at an assessment of each faculty member's level of merit in teaching, research, and service for the previous five years. This required chairs and associate deans in the four disciplinary areas of the college to read the vitae and annual reports of every faculty member in their area and to assess information about teaching performance. A few chairs who at first regarded as too mechanical the notion of attaching a number to a faculty member's performance eventually saw the utility of quantification for a systematic approach and, in the end, agreed that the numbers- which they assigned only after careful comparisons- genuinely reflected the relative levels of merit.
The difficulty of Establishing Criteria
Establishing criteria on which to base such judgments was not easy and we are still struggling, as are many other institutions across the country, to refine the process. The evaluation of teaching, in particular, is an area in which we hope to improve our methods. When making ratings, the chairs and associate deans have at their disposal a range of data relating to teaching, including student evaluations of teaching performance, syllabi, examinations, and grade distributions. These data require thoughtful examination. Student evaluations provide information on students' perceptions about matters such as course organization, the professor's overall effectiveness as compared to other instructors students have had at the university. Syllabi, which serve as blueprints of well-crafted courses, can reveal such things as the organization of lectures and other activities, the currency of the readings, and the rigor and creativity of assignments. Examinations indicate the level of difficulty of the course, while grade distributions are indicators of the faculty member's grading standards. Theses, dissertations, laboratory experiments, and creative activities can also provide information about the quality of work of the faculty who supervise them. Some departments are experimenting with teaching portfolios, and the college is currently exploring ways in which to encourage additional faculty to create portfolios.
After examining all available material, the chair recommends to the other area chairs and associate dean a numerical rating of teaching effectiveness of each member of his or her department. A discussion of the faculty member's teaching ensues to determine if the ranking is appropriate relative to other members of the department and to other faculty within the particular area of the college.
Research is somewhat easier to evaluate than teaching performance. In the case of research, we use as the basis for the evaluation annual reports of faculty activity, resumes, published reviews of faculty work and the like. In most instances, the chair or a departmental committee also reads and assesses the faculty member's work. The annual reports and other data include information on projects in process, publications, performances, awards, conference papers, membership on editorial boards, and other indicators of scholarly and creative activity. To establish an initial rating in research for faculty who had taught at Georgia State for at least five years, the area committee examined the relevant data for the previous five years. In each subsequent year the committee adjusts its ratings on the basis of new information.
The area committees also rate service, since good service is essential to the operation of the department, the university, and the college. As we have indicated, we hope to increase the number of faculty who are effective in service to the institution by integrating this into the college reward structure. We also give credit for such community service as falls within the faculty member's area of academic expertise. Service to the community (whether to the state, nation, or beyond) contributes to the professional reputation of the university and can be of great value to the welfare of citizens everywhere. Here again, annual reports, resumes, and other data are sources for ranking service contributions to the institution and to the wider community. Area committees also discuss with the dean and with other relevant parties the nature and quality of the faculty member's service.
The area committees have had four years of experience in faculty ratings. Committee discussions, which must be collegial to be successful, have been frank and honest. Chairs make recommendations and defend them to the other chairs and to the associate dean. But chairs are also ready to modify their assessments on the basis of questions from the committee and in response to comparisons with the performance and the ratings of faculty in other departments in their area. The goal, of course, is to see that faculty with like performance profiles receive like ratings, and after four years of work, we are comfortable with the results.
Moving Toward Salary Equity
With the initial five-year ratings in hand, we proceeded to the next step, namely, identifying faculty whose pay was not equal to their level of accomplishment. To do this, the chairs and associate dean compared salaries and merit ratings for faculty within each rank in their area. On this basis, they set a target salary for each faculty member and made recommendations to the dean for adjustments. Each year the dean has set aside a special pool of funds for making these adjustments; and chairs, of course, utilize the merit rankings in their recommendations for annual raises. Although it has taken three years to accomplish, we are confident that the salary structure in the college now closely mirrors faculty productivity.
This process has produced a credible, administratively open means of addressing one of the most important areas of resource allocation in the college. In addition to raising faculty morale by increasing confidence in they systematic basis for raises, it has also greatly augmented the chairs knowledge about the level of faculty performance in other departments. Since the deans office has coupled the merit-equity initiative with a policy of openly sharing information about levels of departmental funding, chairs and other faculty are in a position to judge for themselves whether funding has a rational basis and to object when they think it does not. This has produced a sense of interdepartmental equity and reduced tension between chairs, who now know the nature and grounds for funding differences and are also in a better position to affect them. Our experience suggests that the more rational and equitable an administration's basis for allocations, the more it has to gain from sharing information and the likelier it will be to secure the faculty's respect by doing so.
How does the merit-equity initiative relate to workload policy and to post tenure review? Faculty employed at Georgia State for twenty years or more typically entered the system under a set of expectations that did not emphasize research and publication. As expectations changed and their departments evolved, many of these faculty began to feel insignificant because they did not fit the new research profile. As the reward structure shifted to match the research expectations, these faculty also fell behind financially, thus increasing their discontent. Through the option of a teaching emphasis, however, the workload policy now enables a good teacher to devote energies primarily to instruction and to receive appropriate compensation on that basis. Of course, such faculty carry a higher course load and their merit raises depend on the quality of their teaching performance. But the policy embodies a rational reward structure that reduces alienation and better utilizes faculty talents. The option of a teaching emphasis also turns what faculty might have regarded as a punitive increase to higher course loads into an incentive for salary increases.
However, because Georgia State is a research institution, a teaching emphasis is not an option for new faculty. They are evaluated by current models of excellence that highlight research as well as teaching and service. Also, we do not reward faculty who emphasize teaching over research to quite the same degree as we reward those who are excellent in all three areas, teaching, research, and service. Nevertheless, as faculty realize, the financial rewards of well-executed teaching emphasis can be substantial.
Post-tenure evaluations, on the other hand, stimulate senior faculty to rethink and sharpen their academic objectives with input from their most experienced colleagues. The evaluations are also an occasion for discussions with administrators about workload, about the most effective use of the faculty member's time, and about appropriate means of compensation. Tying raises and other rewards to such evaluations, moreover, is both intrinsically just and increases faculty productivity.
Collegial Approach to Policy Development
Substantial faculty participation was critical to the success of our policies. In each case, the Dean's Office drafted an initial proposal, which is presented to the Chairs' Council and to the elected faculty who constitute the college Executive Committee. Discussion in these bodies produced modifications that resulted in proposals with broad-based support in the college. The final proposals balanced faculty prerogatives and administrative concerns and created a system that could be administered equitably and with relative ease. After achieving consensus in the Executive Committee and the Chairs' Council, the dean presented the workload policy to the full faculty as an initiative that had the support of the college's principal faculty and administrative committees. After we adopted the workload policy, members of the elected departmental executive committees assisted in its implementation and helped guide their chairs to administer it in ways designed to further its basic objectives. It is essential to subject important policies to through discussion by faculty and administrative leaders and to craft these policies to provide benefits and incentives, rather than disincentives, for the faculty. Only by taking the collegial approach described here is there likely to be this level of faculty confidence and commitment required for the policies' success.
This article has described three policy initiatives cooperatively developed by faculty and administrators in the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University: the faculty workload policy, the post-tenure review policy, and the merit-equity salary initiative. When constructed in an appropriately interrelated fashion, such policies benefit both individual faculty members and the university by assuring faculty of equity in workload and salary decision, by fostering the professional development of tenured faculty, and by producing an optimal use of faculty resources. A collegial approach to these issues improves the policies themselves and ensures the level of faculty support necessary for their success. Successful implementation required the judgment of accomplished faculty members and administrators and the availability of resources to make necessary adjustments in salary and workload. Finally careful implementation of the policies provides evidence of institutional accountability to external constituencies concerned about higher education.
NOTE: Copies of the Arts and Sciences workload policy are available on request. E-mail to dblumenfeld@gsu.edu, or write to David Blumenfeld, Office of the Dean, P.O. Box 4038 College of Arts and Sciences, Georgia State University, Atlanta GA30302-4048. We wish to thank Carl Patton for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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