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Faculty Assembly

TO: Chairperson Mark Malone and Members of the Faculty Assembly
FROM: Cell Malek, Chair Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Committee
DATE: December 14, 2001
RE: NTTF Issues-- Merit Raise Evaluations

Problem: NTTF have only received merit raises for two years, so most primary units and colleges have not developed official, written policies for how NTTF will be evaluated, and the ad hoc procedures currently used by departments and colleges (though done with good intentions) are often not clearly communicated to NTTF in advance, nor do all departments and colleges currently inform NTTF about the results of evaluations and what raises were awarded.

Most NTTF who attended meetings in November 2001 (the majority of whom are in LAS) didn’t even know they had been evaluated, let alone how they had been evaluated for merit raises. They didn’t know the source of raises they received (individual merit, unit merit, or compression), and they didn’t know how their raises compared to other NTTF in their own departments or outside their departments. They also didn’t know how their raises compared with TTF. Being kept in the dark about evaluation processes and raises was a matter of considerable frustration for NTTF.

This is not just a campus problem: there are no system-wide policies establishing procedures for evaluating NTTF though procedures for evaluating TTF are spelled out in great detail in the University of Colorado Faculty Handbook. However, the Boulder Faculty Assembly recommended policies regarding NTTF evaluations in their Instructors’ Bill of Rights passed in April 1998.

Proposed Solutions: The most important elements of the NTTF request are that policies be established by primary units and colleges for the evaluation of NTTF (with input from NTTF) and that those policies be consistently and clearly communicated to all NTTF. A written statement of policy should be provided to instructors and lecturers from the beginning of employment. When the evaluations are complete and raises have been awarded, individual NTTF members should be notified of the results of their evaluations in a timely fashion, and the raises of all faculty should be made readily accessible to any NTFF members who are interested.

Because different departments and colleges have different kinds of expectations of their NTTF, evaluations should reflect the emphasis on teaching, service, and/or research that is appropriate for a particular instructor’s contract. NTTF recommend that the distribution be flexible, to be established on the basis of unit needs and instructor qualifications. Instructors with a 4/4 teaching load should not be asked to do research or service since, it is understood that they are full-time teachers. However, some primary units and/or colleges may wish to recommend norms of 75 percent teaching and 25 percent service and research when the instructor teaches less than a 4/4 load. Beth-El College of Nursing and Health Science currently has established norms of 80 percent teaching and 20 percent service.

The Boulder Faculty Assembly approved the following recommendations regarding instructor evaluations in the Instructors’ Bill of Rights (April 1, 1998): “Evaluation should follow the original workload evaluation percentages assigned in regard to emphasis on teaching, service and/or research. The BFA Task Force recommends that the distribution be flexible, to be established on both the basis of unit needs and instructor qualifications. Recommended norms are 75% teaching and 25% service [instructors at Boulder teach a 3/3 load, and their salaries start at $35,000]. Some units and instructors may favor other proportions, however, ranging from 100% teaching to distributions favoring research or more service. If a unit makes research a percentage of evaluation, it should be prepared to offer support for basic research needs.

“Instructors should be giving a sheet describing the terms of evaluation and expectations of the position by the department or program. (Existing Regents’ policy.)”