Students are often interested in how the college reviews faculty members when making decisions involving tenure and promotion. In particular, students often want to know how important student input is during this process. I hope the following comments will answer questions students might have on this topic.

Q: How often are faculty members reviewed?

A: Faculty members at Macalester undergo major personnel reviews at three points during their faculty life cycle. Faculty members who are hired to fill a tenure-track position are typically hired at the assistant professor level on a three-year renewable contract. Assistant professors are normally reviewed during their third year at Macalester. This is referred to as the pre-tenure review. The primary purpose of this review is to provide feedback to the faculty member on his/her teaching, scholarship and service to the college so that the individual can make changes if needed to ensure the strongest file possible during the tenure review three years hence. Assuming the individual is making good progress as a faculty member, the individual’s contract will be renewed for three more years.

The tenure review is usually the most important review in the life of a faculty member; it normally takes place during the faculty member’s sixth year. If the person is awarded tenure, the individual is, under most circumstances, assured lifelong employment at the college. However, if the person is not awarded tenure, the individual’s contract is terminated no later than the end of the seventh year. An award of tenure normally involves a promotion to the rank of associate professor. A faculty member who has served the college as an associate professor for at least five years may request to be considered for promotion to professor. The promotion review is an optional review and may take place anytime once the faculty member has served five years as an associate professor. If a person’s request for promotion to professor is denied, the individual maintains his/her employment with the college and may request a subsequent evaluation for promotion one or more times in the future.

Q: What criteria are used to evaluate faculty?

A: In all three personnel reviews, faculty members are evaluated on the basis of their teaching, their scholarship and their service to the college. The evaluation is based on information contained in the candidate’s review file. The file consists of letters from students, faculty and staff at Macalester, as well as colleagues outside of Macalester, formal assessments of the faculty member’s scholarship conducted by two or three scholars from other academic institutions, scholarly materials (e.g., books, articles, photographs of paintings, recordings of music) and course materials. A faculty member who has been a poor teacher will not be awarded tenure at Macalester no matter how productive the faculty member may be in scholarly activities or how much the faculty member has contributed to the college in other ways. A faculty member who is an outstanding teacher will almost always be awarded tenure, providing the individual is also actively and productively engaged as a scholar in his/her discipline. The college believes that over the long-term, only those faculty members who have remained active scholars will be able to continue to provide the high quality teaching Macalester students deserve.

Q: How is student input solicited?

A: Student input into the evaluation process is solicited in the same way that input is solicited from faculty members and other scholars. The candidate normally gives to his/her department chair a list of names of students (as well as faculty and staff members and other scholars) who the candidate wishes to write letters of support. The chair then contacts the students (and others) informing them that the candidate is undergoing a personnel review and requesting that they write a letter of evaluation. In addition to these letters requested by the candidate, letters are sent out to approximately 40 current students randomly selected by the associate provost from students who have taken one or more classes from the faculty member. An additional 20 letters are sent to Macalester alums, also randomly selected from classes the faculty member taught earlier in his/her career.

Beginning next year (2004-05), letters will also be sent to a randomly selected group of a candidate’s current and past advisees. These students will be asked to evaluate how well the faculty member has served as an adviser. This means that the total number of students solicited to provide input on faculty personnel reviews will approach 100 students per file.

Q: What if I am not asked to write a letter? Can I still submit one?

A: Even if you are not formally invited to write a letter, any student may contribute to a candidate’s file by writing a letter and sending it to the provost. The provost will review the letter, and, if it is deemed positive in its comments, add the letter to the file. If the letter is deemed to be a negative evaluation of the candidate, the author will be contacted and notified that the candidate will have the opportunity to read the letter and respond to it. At this point, if the student wishes, s/he may withdraw the letter. The exact same procedure is applied to any faculty or staff member who, without having been invited to do so, chooses to submit a letter to a candidate’s file.

Q: How confidential is student input?

A: Solicited student letters are read only by the six faculty members serving on the Faculty Personnel Committee, the members of the Candidate Review Committee (a small faculty committee, normally made up of faculty members from the candidate’s department or program), the provost and the president.

Q: Are course evaluations used in the evaluation process?

A: Candidates are not required to submit class evaluations to their review file. If a candidate wishes to include them, s/he is requested to have the Candidate Review Committee (CRC) review them and provide a narrative summary of the nature of the reviews. Since the college recognizes that it is impossible to capture a person’s teaching performance in a few numbers, the review process relies primarily on the student responses to the more open-ended questions asked of those solicited to write letters. Although class evaluations are not used extensively in the assessment of a faculty member’s long-term performance as a teacher, they are widely used by departments and individuals to assess shorter-term teaching performance in individual courses.

Q: Why is there no student representation on the Personnel Committee?

A: Students often ask why the Faculty Personnel Committee does not have any student representatives on it, as is the case with most other campus committees. Some students have been upset over this policy and have taken it as evidence that the college is not really interested in student input. Faculty personnel decisions can have substantial legal consequences and, in all cases, they have significant personal consequences for the faculty members involved as candidates. The review files contain a substantial amount of sensitive information, most of it collected with the promise of confidentiality to the authors. Deliberations by the Personnel Committee, provost and president necessarily involve frank discussions of candidates’ performances as teachers, scholars and citizens of the college. Macalester, like virtually every other college in the country, has determined that these personnel deliberations and decisions must be made solely by faculty colleagues, and in the most confidential manner possible. However, as I hope I have made clear, the importance of student input in these personnel decisions cannot be overestimated. It is the single most important component in these reviews.

Q: Who makes the final decision?

A: The CRC reviews the entire file and writes a consensus letter stating the committee’s assessment of the candidate. This letter can be thought of as the departmental or program judgment of the candidate. This letter is submitted to the candidate’s file and a copy is also sent to the candidate, who has the opportunity to respond in writing. If the candidate chooses to respond, this letter is also submitted to the file. Then the six members of the Faculty Personnel Committee, the provost and the president individually review the file before meeting as a group to discuss the evidence in the file and eventually to come to a consensus on the final decision.

Q: How important is student input in the review process?

A: Without question, student input is among the most critical, if not the most critical, information in the evaluation file of a faculty member undergoing a personnel review. Unfortunately, although the college has typically requested letters from approximately 60 students, only about 10-20 students and alums (combined) normally respond. It is clear that one way students can increase their input into personnel decisions is to take the time to respond with an evaluation if you are invited to do so. Thus, if you are ever contacted and asked to submit a letter of evaluation to a faculty member’s review file, take the time to thoughtfully respond. You can be sure that your comments will be very carefully read and, together with the other student letters, will have a major impact on the deliberations by the Personnel Committee, provost and president.