A memo from the Provost

As part of the annual performance evaluation process, individual meetings with faculty in your Program, Department, School or College must be held to review the evaluation of their accomplishments over the past year and to complete a workload plan for the next academic year. The Faculty Appraisal and Planning Form developed in 1996, available on http://www.udel.edu/EmployeeTraining/appraisal/facapwrd.bin, will be used for this purpose.

The Office of Information Technologies has converted this form to an online format. The online form is available for use by interested faculty and unit heads (see Faculty Appraisal Forms). If you are interested in using the online form, please let John Courtright (johnc@udel.edu) know. I encourage faculty to use the online version as we expect that this new online form will be made available for all faculty members in the future. If the 1996 form is used, faculty and administrators are encouraged to include attachments to the 1996 form to incorporate evaluative and workload planning materials.

This is also a reminder that the workload plans for the coming year must be completed for all areas, teaching, research and service. It is important that planned activities for the coming year are documented so that the following year's evaluation is aligned with this year's workload plans. Simply stipulating percentages of effort is not sufficient documentation for workload planning. Beyond the stipulation of scheduled instruction, faculty should provide additional documentation in support of their workload plans for fulfilling all administered load assignments.

For example, for those with significant portion of workload assigned to research and scholarship, faculty should attach a brief (one-page) narrative description of the nature of the work to be pursued during the coming year and expected outcomes during that period (e.g., publications, presentations, exhibitions, external funding, etc.). Similar documentation should be provided for other administered load assignments in non-scheduled instruction and in public, professional or University service. If "plans" change in significant ways over the course of the year, faculty should submit a revised statement of activities; revisions should be submitted as soon as important changes take place, rather than after the fact at the end of the year

Please note that faculty may include self-evaluations of their accomplishments as part of the appraisal process. Final faculty appraisals must be completed by the academic unit head. All areas of assigned faculty workload must be evaluated and the basis for evaluations must be provided.

The appraisal period covered is the full year starting the end of the last appraisal period through the end of Winter Session 2008.

By April 3, 2008, the completed Faculty Appraisal and Planning Forms must be submitted to the college dean.

By April 10, 2008, deans must confirm to the Office of the Provost the completion of faculty evaluation and workload planning in their units; deans must identify units that have not completed the process and provide an explanation for non-compliance.