OCAIR

Overseas Chinese Association for Institutional Research
An AIR Affiliate That Supports IR Professionals Since 1996

What Roles Does the Faculty Play in Program Review?

1/31/2003
Xiangping Kong: My institution is planning to involve faculty members in the process of outcomes assessment or academic major program review. We would like to know if and how faculty would get compensated for their involvement (maybe for those on the assessment committee).

My question is, if your institution is, or has been, engaged in the similar process, do the faculty get compensated, or would the faculty get their teaching load reduced? Some institutions may have a faculty member working full time as assessment coordinator, but this is not the case for many institutions.

I am not sure if this question was posted before, but thanks in advance for your response.
Steve Wong Hmm involve faculty? Faculty..from my understanding are supposed to be "in charge" of the assessment process..per the NCA or Higher Learning Commission. Faculty at our school dont get compensated for their time and their teaching load is not reduced.

The only compensation is a job well done at NMMI.
Timothy Chow: Our institution has done both things that you have mentioned: pay them for specific tasks and give them release time for the additional responsibility for program review. We paid faculty members to rate or evaluate student electronic portfolio submissions during the summer for about 2 days (we have done that for 2-3 years in a row). For bigger academic departments, they have a few faculty dedicated part of their load in program review/evaluation. These faculty members have reduced teaching load to compensate for their time with additional demand. We also have an assessment committee which meets a few times during each quarter, and the committee members (including faculty members) do not get compensate for that, it is just a part of their commitment to our institution.
Shu-ling Chen: At Bridgewater, the Associate Vice President for Planning and Assessment leads an Assessment Project of academic majors. Here are some of the logistics/strategies:
  1. project started small, with 5-6 departments involved in the pilot year
  2. a faculty member from each of the departments serves as the assessment coordinator (important to start with faculty members who have an interest in the project). These are full-time faculty members who get release time for the work (some are department chairs, but not always so).
  3. the Assoc VP and the small team of 5-6 faculty members meet and discuss what type of outcomes and assessment methods make sense for each of the departments. The faculty members know best what specific outcomes are important, what will and will not work with their departments. The Assoc VP provides information about best practices, knowledge from the field of assessment, etc.
  4. the faculty member brings information back to the department and coordinates the assessment work within the department. Within the department is where the discussions and decisions about specific outcomes for the major, methods of assessment, are discussed.
  5. at the end of the academic year, at a session in our faculty development conference, each of the faculty coordinators provide a report about the progress each of their departments is making. The Assoc VP facilitates the session. The session can serve to highlight the work of the Assessment project, answering any questions people may have, and also encourage other departments/faculty to be involved.
  6. at the end of the year, each of the faculty coordinators also provide a more formal written report to the Assoc VP.
  7. a department/faculty coordinator stays in the Assessment Project for two years (officially). In the second year, new departments are added and the new cohort of faculty coordinators have a chance to work with those from the pilot year. This process gets repeated - always with some new and some "veterans" involved in the project. After two years, the hope is that the department will continue the assessment work on their own.
Hope this is helpful. Launching a successful, effective assessment culture on campuses is certainly not an easy task. A lot of it also depends on understanding how thinks work on individual campuses. Good luck!
Meihua Zhai: Agree with Steve that faculty SHOULD be in charge and also be the driving force for outcome assessment in order for outcome assessment to be successful and meaningful. In my previous school, faculty assessment coordinator got workload/course reduction for working on assessment coordination. For GMU, we don't have this kind of luxiary. Here, outcome assessment are tied with Program review, part of faculty public services, I guess. For those faculty members who had to come back to work on criteria in Jan., they would be token type recognition, not even enough to pay for the gas. Here, outcome assessment are done by those faculty members who buy it and believe in it.
Henry Zheng: Shu-ling, thanks for sharing. Do you know if all these exercises are linked to departmental budgets? Or, do they offer incentives for participating or for making improvments as a result of the assessment process? Do they talk about this kind of questions at all.
Ava Lee: I agreed each of your saying regarding the compensations to faculty for involvements. Each institution has different point of view to whether to compensate the faculty or not.
  1. review the faculty's contract for languages involving duties, workloads, assessments, etc.
  2. if there are no such languages, the VP/President should have the discretion of deciding whether to compensate the faculty for such work.
As the years I have been at Peralta, I have seen so many things.
  1. Assessments (hrly faculty compensated on an hrly basis, contract faculty compensated on an hrly basis or on reduced workload if underloaded for the year by a sign letter from management.)
  2. Program Review committee members do not get compensation for the work (contract faculty). Occassionally, I see hrly faculty received compensation by a sign letter from management.
Jeffrey Chen: In our case, we use two retired faculties to do the job (according to their union contract). The university has to hire them back and pay them 33% of their salary to teach one course. For those who don't want to teach, may opt to do assessment (the process is selective as well). So, we have faculty involvement and they are paid well too. With their lead, the depts. are likely to be involved as well. This year, we offer a few $500 check to those in the depts who is doing a good job in assessment (as of now, I am not sure if the check goes to a dept or to a person).
Shu-ling Chen: I don't think that money is directed toward the participating departments. Rather, there is an assessment budget which provides money for assessment-related projects, conference travels, etc. - similar to the situation at Xiangping's institution.