Faculty Personnel Committee Annual Report 2000-01
The Faculty Personnel Committee (FPC) has just completed its work for the
2000-01 academic year. Members of this year's committee included:
1.Patricia Gwartney (Sociology) for Fall term
2.David Herrick (Chemistry)
3.Lisa Kloppenberg (Law), Chair
4.Steven Lowenstam (Classics) for Winter and Spring
terms
5.Eugene Luks (Computer and Information Science)
6.Terry O'Keefe (Business)
7.Marjorie Taylor (Psychology)
8.Janet Wasko (Journalism and Communication)
9.Jeff Williams (Music)
10.Wes Wilson (Economics)
11.Jenny Young (Architecture and Allied Arts).
Unfortunately, none of the students selected by student organizations
attended any meetings this year.
The current FPC charge and structure serves the University well. The
FPC's workload is significant. This year we advised the Provost on 45 cases
involving tenure and/or promotion. This included:
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Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure 20
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Tenure Only 6
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Promotion to Professor 13
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Hire at Professor Level with Tenure 5
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Senior Instructor to Associate Professor 1
We held 17 meetings during the current academic year, each lasting approximately
two hours. In addition, we estimate that we spent an average of three to
six hours each week during Winter and Spring quarters reading files. Moreover,
one member of the committee is assigned to report each case and prepare
a written report to the committee and then subsequently t the Provost.
The member reporting a case, and each of us has reported at least 4 cases
during the year, typically spends a full work day in preparation for the
FPC meeting at which the case is discussed. Thus, we think units should
grant relief from other committee work to FPC members and consider granting
course or other relief for those who serve on the FPC.
Our FPC work has been very inspiring, reminding us of the breadth and
strength of our faculty. In most of the cases we considered, candidates
clearly met university standards -- often they exceeded those expectations.
While most candidates were well served by their committees and units, we
do offer several suggestions for more complete and useful preparation of
files. Most of these concerns are addressed directly in the Faculty Guide
to Promotion and Tenure prepared by the Office of Academic Affairs. (Helpful
information is available at http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~acadaff/.)
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1. External Letters
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(a) Tenure and promotion files should include 5-6 external letters (usually
a maximum of 7). A clear majority of these external referees should be
selected by the department ratherthan the candidate and have no significant
ties with the candidate.
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(b) All departments should use the standard sample letter included in the
Promotion Guide for requesting external reviews. Some letters requesting
reviews do not always ask fora comparison of the candidate to others in
his/her field or inquire whether the candidate would likely receive tenure
at the reviewer's institution.
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(c) The reviewers should be identified thoroughly; if they are from less
prestigious universities or represent only regional universities, the strength
of those universities' programsin the relevant field should be profiled.
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2. Jointly Authored Work The Department
should explain the discipline's practices regarding co-authorship and the
file should clearly detail the contributions of the candidate toany jointly
authored work.
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3. Teaching Data Much of the FPC's 1999-2000
report to the Senate dealt with the difficulty of interpreting quantitative
student teaching evaluations, and many of those concernsare still relevant.
We appreciated the new DAC reports showing grading standards and enrollment
data. That format still does not contain global comparisons, however (e.g.,class
to class, department to department). We encourage more frequent employment
of peer evaluations, which provide a useful supplement to student evaluations.
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4. Standards Deans in their letters or departmental
committee reports should clarify discipline standards (e.g., the prestige
of particular journals or presses). A "Duties andResponsibilities" description,
which makes clear the expectations for a candidate, is particularly useful.