Draft Adomistrative Policy Statement: The Professional Plan

DRAFT ADMINISTRATIVE POLICY STATEMENT: THE PROFESSIONAL PLAN (7/14/97)

Introduction

Discussions during academic year 1996-97, regarding tenure and post-tenure review, by a committee of faculty and administrators from the four campuses of the University of Colorado led to a recommendation, among others, that the University institute a practice of having faculty prepare and keep updated a professional plan. This administrative policy statement establishes the requirement for the professional plan.

The Professional Plan is designed to provide a clear statement of a faculty member's goals and the nature of effort to be made in the areas of teaching, research, and service. Professional Plans make clear to primary units and other evaluative bodies what the faculty member has set as his/her goals. The Plan should be developed in consultation with the primary unit so that the faculty member's planned activities, when combined with those of other faculty in the unit, result in the primary unit meeting its responsibilities to students and the university.

Faculty are assigned workloads made up of specified percentages of effort for teaching, research/creative work, and service. They are evaluated proportionally on their performance in these areas . The Laws of the Regents state that, in evaluating faculty performance in order to determine salaries, "equal consideration shall be given to teaching and research or other creative work; in addition, service to the state and nation shall be considered" (Article 11.A.2 (B)), unless there is a differentiated workload agreement. Primary units and colleges/schools interpret and define work roles in teaching, research, and service that are appropriate to the needs of the unit. For example, some colleges or schools might have heavy service requirements, others might have mandates for clinical activities.

Within the framework of assigned duties of the primary unit, there is considerable flexibility in determining how the teaching, research, and service needs of the unit are to be met. Individual faculty have differing measures of choice in determining their assignments for these three areas of responsibility:

In the area of research, faculty have complete freedom of choice of topics and methods of research; the principle of academic freedom guarantees this choice.
In teaching, faculty must contribute to meeting the department's needs for appropriate numbers of courses at various levels and in various subjects; however, faculty usually control course organization and content, and teaching methods.
In service, the faculty member usually has a wide choice of departmental, college, university, professional and community service activities.

Statement of Policies

1. The primary purposes of the Professional Plan are to encourage faculty development and to assure accountability. The Professional Plan should provide an individually prepared blueprint that aids in evaluating performance, during both annual review and post-tenure review. The Professional Plan is designed to communicate the faculty member's teaching, research/creative work, and service goals and to explain how these goals support the needs of the primary unit and the college/school. Projections made in the Plan, when compared to the faculty member's progress and achievements, provide one basis for evaluating the faculty member's professional performance.

2. At the time of annual merit evaluation and also during post-tenure review (and Extensive Review), the primary unit evaluation committee will review the Professional Plan (and any revisions or updates to the Plan) and compare its goals to the actual achievements of the faculty member to date. The Professional Plan is the personally tailored workplan of the faculty member. When examined alongside the established expectations of the primary unit and college/school, the Professional Plan gives a more complete picture of that faculty member's goals and achievements.

3. Primary units and/or colleges/schools shall develop guidelines for and models of Professional Plans to give faculty members an indication of what might be included in a Professional Plan. Deans must review and approve unit guidelines.

4. The Professional Plan should contain clear statements of the proportion of effort to be given to teaching, research/creative work, and service and should be accompanied by a differentiated workload agreement if the Plan calls for a distribution of effort different from the primary unit's standard assignment. Depending upon the discipline, Plans may describe particular goals or may provide more generalized goals.

5. Primary unit heads must read their faculty's Professional Plans annually. In the area of teaching, the primary unit head must approve the particular teaching and advising assignment in order that the teaching needs of the department are met. In the area of research and creative work, the head shall comment upon the adequacy, feasibility, or wisdom of the Plan, but not formally approve or disapprove it. In the area of service, each college/school shall determine whether primary unit heads will comment on or formally approval the service assignment.

6. Professional Plans must be kept current. Significant changes, such as being awarded a large grant to work in a new area of scholarly inquiry, or winning a fellowship to teach or research abroad for a semester, should be incorporated into a revision of the Plan as soon as possible. The updated Plan must be provided to the primary unit head and commented upon/signed as needed. Deans are responsible for insuring that the Professional Plans of the faculty in their college/school are updated at least once per year.

7. Tenure-track faculty, beginning in their second year at the University, will also prepare a Professional Plan. This Plan should be designed to set goals in teaching, research/creative work, and service that help the faculty member progress toward tenure. The primary unit has a special obligation to assist junior faculty in the development of Professional Plans that produce the scholarly and pedagogical growth and achievement need to achieve tenure. Faculty members who have attained tenure, but have not been promoted to full professor, should keep in mind the requirements for promotion when writing their Professional Plans.

8. All campuses must develop campus policies and procedures to implement the Professional Plan by December 30, 1997. The campus Chancellors will report on the progress of implementation at the January, 1998, meeting of the Board of Regents.

9. In order to assess the success of this policy in terms of enhancing faculty development and accountability, the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Research will gather information from the faculty and administration and report to the Board in September of 1998 and again in September of 1999. If the 1998 or 1999 reports identify the need for change, the policy can be modified at those time. Thereafter, evaluations of the effectiveness of this policy will be undertaken at the discretion of the Regents.