Toolkit Home

Executive Summary

Monitoring Dept. Health and Welfare

Transparency in Operations

Creating a Welcoming Climate

Mentoring

Valuing Diversity in the Dept.

Supporting Pre-Tenure Faculty Career Development

Encouraging Mid-Career Professional Development

Faculty Development Programs, Benefits, & Resources

Flexible and Accommodating Policies & Practices

Acknowledgements

References

MONITORING THE HEALTH AND
WELFARE OF DEPARTMENT

REGULAR STATE-OF-THE-DEPARTMENT REVIEWS:

Avoiding blatant disparities in resources and salary can play a key role in faculty retention.  Regularly reviewing salary-levels, start-up packages, merit raises, allocation of office and lab space, committee assignments, and awards, recognition, and leadership opportunities at a department level will help remove disparities and ensure all faculty, and in particular women and underutilized minorities, are appropriately afforded the same benefits and resources as others.  In contrast to systematic, carefully reviewed decision-making processes, ad hoc decision-making processes rely too heavily on intuition or consider only one opinion and can lead to unintentional (and potentially systematic) bias.  The groundbreaking MIT report A Study on the Status of Women Faculty in Science at MIT offered concrete evidence that such unintentional, systematic bias can and does occur, even at the most prestigious universities, when ad hoc processes are used.  If disparities are discovered, the administration should address them and work to correct them as soon as possible.

MONITORING WORKLOAD:

One tool for monitoring workload is a database for tracking committee assignments and committee chair appointments (both departmental and institutional levels). It could also maintain information about course assignments, space allocation, promotion decisions, merit raise decisions, and nominations for University and national awards. By consolidating all this information in one database, administrators can conveniently monitor equity. Moreover, the database can track faculty who are interested in leadership positions, thus facilitating the leadership appointment process.

ANNUAL INDIVIDUAL FACULTY REVIEW MEETINGS:

Annual reviews are another opportunity to apply a more consistent process and assess the health and welfare of a department.  While guidelines exist regarding the annual review (see the Faculty Code Section 24-57), additional topics that can be addressed at the annual review include:

• course and committee assignment requests
• a faculty member's general progress and merit review status
• the faculty professional development opportunities document which can initiate a professional development discussion
• feedback and the faculty member's personal assessment of the year, as well as plans for the upcoming year 
• ideas from the faculty member to improve his/her experience and the department   
• any events over the course of the past year that might necessitate a tenure clock extension

Faculty should be told about these questions before their annual review meetings so they have a chance to thoughtfully consider their responses. 

Last Updated: July 07, 2005

advance@engr.washington.edu

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