The Evaluation of Teaching, Research, and Service

Salary Appendix #2:

University of Missouri
Columbia, Missouri

Revised: April 2001

1. The Evaluation of Teaching.

   The department chair and the Salary Advisory Committee will assess the teaching performance of each member of the department, taking into account the categories and subcategories listed below.

   Classroom Teaching.

   Student Evaluations: All members of the department will solicit student evaluations for each class. It is essential that these evaluations be conducted in a uniform way. The evaluation forms should be handed out and completed in class during the last week of the semester. A member of the class should be delegated to collect the evaluations and deliver them to the department secretary. They should then be held by the department through the Salary Advisory Committee's deliberations in the winter semester, after which they should be returned to the faculty. Evaluations will be considered in various contexts: Is the course required or elected? upper or lower division? writing-intensive or light-writing? demanding or permissive grading? Even subtler criteria need consideration. It is clear that a small class of devoted majors or graduate students will usually produce better evaluations than thirty sophomores in a service course. Yet good teaching in small classes should be recognized.

   Peer Evaluations: Faculty members should submit a teaching portfolio so as to allow the SAC to evaluate their teaching. This teaching portfolio may include syllabi, handouts, paper assignments, examinations, graded papers, written reports from peers based on classroom observation, and, if appropriate, the faculty member's own textbooks and pedagogical anthologies. Teaching awards are obviously of considerable importance in this category.

   Individual Instruction.

   In addition to the normal activity of advising students at various levels, the work to be considered here includes some formal teaching duties. Doctoral and master's committees, for example, may involve being a director, a second reader, or an outside reader. Again a person may be a member of an Advisory or Comprehensive Committee or the chair of such a committee. Similarly, a faculty member may serve as the director of an undergraduate Honor's Thesis or as a mentor in the Arts and Science Undergraduate Research Mentor Program.

   Contributions to the Curriculum and Other Functions.

   This category involves responsiveness to special departmental needs and goals, especially those defined in recent enhancement documents which call for an infusion of writing into all levels of the curriculum and which place special importance upon the faculty's mentoring of graduate teachers.

   Other (and related) contributions include preparing new courses, teaching a variety of courses, teaching writing-intensive courses, helping to teach service and/or departmentally required courses, instructing large numbers of students beyond the call of normal duty, covering classes for colleagues, developing departmental teaching aids, presenting academic talks for local students, and the like.

   Finally, in evaluating teaching performance, the Chair and Salary Advisory Committee should recognize that there are many different teaching styles, that no one criterion is likely to produce uniformly reliable evidence of good teaching, and that informed professional judgment should thus be based on a significant variety of data.

2. The Evaluation of Research.

   The department Chair and the Salary Advisory Committee will assess the research performance of each member of the department. The area of evaluation described here as research encompasses a wide variety of activities, including, for example, publications, lectures, and editorships of journals.

   Faculty members are responsible for providing the SAC with detailed information about their research activities. Such information includes an updated cv, the narrative self-assessment, and relevant documentation. Such documentation should include, for example, copies of all written publications, with full bibliographic citations (including page numbers) listed. Similarly, faculty members who have received a grant should provide information about the amount of award and the granting agency.

   In assessing the merits of research activities, the SAC will consider both the quality of the work and its scholarly impact. Faculty members are encouraged to provide evidence of scholarly impact and reputation (reviews, awards, grants, reprints, citations, etc.).

3. The Evaluation of Service.

   The department chair and the Salary Advisory Committee will assess the service performance of each member of the department, taking into account service to the English department, the campus/university system, and the profession at large. As with all three areas of evaluation, the SAC should recognize the various ways that department members serve the different constituents. It is especially important that the SAC consider the amount of effort required and the effects of committee work when evaluating the service component.

   A minimum expectation for service is that faculty will attend department meetings and participate in the work of departmental committees upon which they serve. Without this basic commitment to departmental service, service outside the department will be less persuasive to the SAC.