Annual Review 2013 – Faculty and Administrative Professional Personnel

• DATE: January 10, 2014
• TO: Vice Presidents, Deans, Chairs and Directors
• FROM: The Interim Provost
• SUBJECT: Annual Review 2013 – Faculty and Administrative Professional Personnel

The evaluation of faculty and administrative professional personnel is a vital part of the administration of each area. Please share these instructions with all of those people for whom annual review is required. Distribution is important to prevent misunderstandings and to ensure that salary increases and promotions are made objectively, equitably, impartially, and as recognition of merit.

Annual review forms should be prepared for all permanent faculty and administrative professional employees who have not submitted a resignation(or a plan for retirement) effective for 2014. In addition, reviews should be completed for all temporary faculty and administrative professional employees, including those paid by grant funds(e.g., postdocs), who would be eligible for salary increases if salary money were available and they were reappointed.

The period of this annual review is January 1, 2013,toDecember 31,2013.The review is intended to address performance during a single calendar year. For information on development officer annual review procedures and forms, contact the WSU Foundation at {509) 335-2073 or {509) 335-7954.

Faculty members must use the new WORQS system (available under Win the A-Z index on the WSU homepage or at worqs.wsu.edu) to prepare their annual reviews. WORQS provides a standardized format for them to submit their materials to their supervisors.

Annual reviews should be done in a careful, systematic manner with special attention to the strengths and weaknesses of those under review. There is no substitute for a thoughtful annual review as a guide to critical personnel decisions. The annual review should provide the basis for rewards. It also provides an opportunity to look forward, agree on goals and objectives, and to reaffirm or redirect work assignments and activities.

The annual review is intended to provide feedback about the employee’s performance relative to the department’s expectations. The review should include an outline of principal duties and responsibilities and an evaluation of performance. Administrators are to consult and consider the goals and objectives that were agreed upon at the time of the previous annual review when gauging the performance of the individual for the year in question. Faculty are to be evaluated in terms of their performance in relevant areas such as:

• instruction and advising, including graduate student mentorship;
• research and creative accomplishments;
• service activities;
• outreach and engagement;
• issues relating to promotion of an effective workplace; and
• such other criteria as are appropriate to the person’s responsibilities and the functions of the unit.

Reference should be made to publications, student evaluations of teaching and any other indicators of quality of performance. Care should be taken to rate actual performance, rather than anticipated potential performance. The written review should not make predictions about the outcome of future promotion or tenure decisions.

The review of administrators, deans, directors, and chairs must include evaluation of their performance in assuring equal employment opportunity, contributing to affirmative action and contributing to climate issues. The Faculty Manual now requires that any established instance of discrimination or sexual harassment must also be addressed in the annual review.

Annual reviews are intended to reflect the direct supervisor and/or director/chair’s assessments of the employee’s performance and do not require input from other employees. However, the director/chair should solicit feedback from supervisors of employees at distant locations.

Merit ratings are defined as follows: A merit rating of 5 is to be used only when performance is truly outstanding. A merit rating of 4 indicates that the employee’s performance exceeds expectations. A merit rating of 3 indicates expectations have been met.A rating of 2 suggests improvement is necessary. A rating of 1 is unsatisfactory. Ratings need not be in whole numbers, but distinctions should not be finer than 0.1. Supervisors should use most, or all, of the scale when assigning ratings.

The numerical rating and the written review should be consistent. This means that the comments should be evaluative and indicate relative quality, rather than simply catalogue activities. Reviews should provide an assessment of productivity, quality of work, and the employee’s accomplishments relative to goals of his or her position and of the institution.Evaluators are asked to Include a section at the conclusion of the review which the faculty member and evaluator agree reflects reasonable goals for the faculty member in the coming year. It is expected that these goals will serve as the basis for the annual review of performance in 2014, particularly with respect to scholarly and/or creative expectations.

The Faculty Manual requires that comparative feedback be provided to faculty in the form of the mean and standard deviation of the merit ratings for all faculty in the department or unit. However, no comparative information should be reported in departments having fewer than four faculty members on permanent appointment. This will preserve the confidentiality of ratings of individual faculty members.

Upon completion by the director/chair(s), the annual review shall be forwarded for approval to both the dean of the academic college or appropriate vice president and the campus Chancellor (if applicable) .Each faculty member should also be given a copy of his or her completed annual review. The faculty member shall have a minimum of 2 working days to sign the review indicating that he or she has read and has had the opportunity to discuss the report with his or her supervisor. Signing the review does not certify agreement with the substance of the review .A faculty member may append dissenting comments regarding the report’s contents to the report. Within 15 working days of its receipt, each written statement so appended by a faculty member must receive a written acknowledgment that the statements have been reviewed by the immediate superior (normally the Dean[s]) of the evaluation writer (normally the Chair). All dissent ing reviews are then forwarded through the Dean to the Office of the Provost. The writer of the dissent must also receive acknowledgment that the statement has been reviewed by the Provost and Executive Vice President within an additional 15 working days.

If the merit rating assigned by the faculty member’s Dean is identical to that assigned by the Chair, no additional faculty signature is required.When the dean’s rating differs from that of the chair, a second signature from the faculty member is required on the form.

Reviews should be sent to Human Resource Services by May 5, 2014. All dissenting reviews are to be forwarded through the Dean to the Office of the Provost. Note that an updated curriculum vitae or resume does not have to be attached to each review but an electronic version of it as submitted for that review needs to be maintained and readily available. These guidelines do not change the tenure review timeline or requirements.

Annual Review Forms for Administrative Professional employees can be found in the Business Policy Procedures Manual 60.55. Administrative personnel may submit their materials to their supervisors over the WORQS system, but this is not required. Administrative Professional employees will be given a copy of the completed written evaluation and shall have a minimum of 5 working days to sign a statement that he or she has read the evaluation and has had the opportunity to discuss it with his or her supervisor. The employee may add comments that disagree with the contents of the annual review.Within 10 working days of receipt of either comments or dissent, the employee must receive written acknowledgement that the second line supervisor has reviewed the statements.