The Administrator Appraisal Program is directed by Boulder Faculty Assembly (BFA) with technical support and implementation by Planning, Budget and Analysis. It is designed to foster high quality academic administration on the Boulder campus and to encourage administrators to be responsive to faculty concerns. The pilot year was 1992.

The AAP invites BFA members to rate and comment on the performance of campus, system, and college administrators, then distributes results to BFA members, administrators, their supervisors, and the public. This program is loosely modeled after the Faculty Course Questionnaire program wherein students rate and comment on courses and instructors.

All responses are anonymous. The forms are handled only by staff of Student Affairs Research Services and ITS Scanning.

The AAP form asks for ratings of the administrator's performance and invites narrative comments on the administrators listed. Average ratings for each administrator are publicly released. The narrative comments are transcribed and sent only to the individual administrator. They are not otherwise released.

Positions evaluated

• Schools, colleges, and libraries: deans, associate and assistant deans; associate directors of libraries. Evaluated by faculty in the unit only.
• Campus-wide: chancellor; vice chancellor for academic affairs; associate and assistant vice chancellors; dean and associate dean of the graduate school; dean of libraries.
• System-wide: president and vice-president for academic affairs.

History

• 1991-92: Pilot year. Concerns about anonymity of ratings. Many raters commented on the questionnaire and on the positions to be evaluated. Lawsuit delayed release of results until November 1992. Response rate 29%. Committee chair: Kumiko Takahara.
• 1992-93: First "official" year. Changes in questions and position list acknowledged '91-92 comments and experience. Wide coverage of ratings, released July 1, focussed on president's D+ rating. Response rate 33%. Committee chair: Kumiko Takahara.
• 1993-94: First "production" year. Reduced questions from 17 to 15. Gave administrators option of posing a custom open question. Wide coverage of ratings continues as president's rating drops to D-. Results published April 7. Response rate 50%. Committee chair: Kumiko Takahara.
• 1994-95: No change in form or processing. Results published March 9. Wide coverage of president's rating continues. Response rate 46%. Committee chair: Kumiko Takahara and Gordon Sandford.
• 1995-96: No change in form or processing. Results published April 25 (delayed one-week by BFA committee). Response rate falls from 46 to 29%, probably because controversial President Judith Albino was no longer among administrators to be rated. Committee chairs: Uriel Nauenberg and Daryl Winn.
• 1996-97: The 1997 forms had four items rather than 15-17 used in prior years. In addition, 1997 raters made all ratings on only three forms (campus-wide, system, college) rather than completing a separate form for each administrator. The AAP Committee conducted an experiment in 1997 to determine if and how AAP ratings would differ if a higher proportion of faculty responded. 10% of eligible raters were prompted with preview and follow-up letters and reminder phone calls. Response rate 39%. Committee chairs: Uriel Nauenberg, Daryl Winn, and Karl Gustafson.
• 1997-98: Form and basic processing unchanged from 96-97. No response rate experiment. BFA votes to include Architecture & Planning dean. Response rate 36%. Put all results and policies on web. Committee chairs: Greg Carey and Tom Geers.
• 1998-99: Form and processing unchanged. Added report of results from rater stating high familiarity with the administrator's performance. 41% of eligible raters returned forms; 31% rated at least one administrator. The Committee conducted a pilot phone interview project; results were similar to those of the 1997 response rate experiment. Committee chair Tom Geers

[AAP Home Page] [PBA Home Page] [BFA Home Page] [CU-Boulder Home Page]

jm-- l:\www\aap\bkgrnd.htm was last updated 6/25/99