The information provided here is excerpted from larger university documents.
The review of faculty performance involves two separate but related processes:
- Annual Review:
Evaluates faculty members' activities for the current year and determine merit increases for the next year - Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure Review (hereafter referred to as RPT):
Evaluates faculty members for continuous appointment, guides tenure decisions.
Full-time faculty members are evaluated for annual review only. Tenure-track faculty members are evaluated for both annual review and reappointment review.
Criteria
The standard, procedures, criteria, and guidelines for evaluating faculty performance established by the University of Nebraska system represent the minimum considerations used for reviewing and evaluating faculty performance.
Schools, colleges, and departments are encouraged to provide more exacting guidelines, within the boundaries established by the Board of Regents, that reflect the characteristics of excellence established within particular disciplines.
Learn more about the Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure Guidelines.
Areas for Evaluation
Although individual departments/schools establish specific guidelines, areas evaluated generally include teaching, service, research, and creative activity. Specific activities are determined by individual departments/schools.
Evaluation of Performance Portfolios
Faculty members are responsible for compiling a portfolio to be reviewed by various department, college, and university committees for each of the evaluation processes. Although faculty members should check with their department and college/school for specific instructors about format and contents, generally, Annual Review portfolios contain only current year documentation and descriptions about teaching and scholarly activities.
RPT portfolios, however, are more cumulative, requiring more extensive documentation. Both review processes require the completion of the appropriate forms and supporting documentation.
Supporting Documentation
The amount of documents included with annual review forms depends, in part, on individual department/school policies and expectations. Generally, faculty members should include descriptions of activities or accomplishments, indicate their significance, and, in the case of publications, provide proper bibliographic information.
Faculty members are encouraged to indicate how objectives listed for the following year relate to long-term individual or department/school objectives.
Example activities:
- completion of a manuscript
- preparation of a new course syllabus
- teaching an honors colloquium
- establishment of a new line of research
- writing a grant proposal
- implementation of a new public service project
Evaluation Forms
Before completing any forms, please review the appropriate RPT guidelines.
Forms are provided in rtf formats to ease online completion with multiple word processing programs. Although unlikely, some formatting features may be lost if used with programs other than Microsoft Word.
Once the form appears in the browser window, from the File Menu, select Save As and save the document on your hard drive or floppy disk.
Download the Reappointment, Promotion, and Tenure Form.