Performance Review Regulations and Procedures

Introduction

The performance review has four basic purposes:

  1. to permit the faculty member and his/her administrative colleagues to review previous goals and activities and to plan for the future
  2. to provide for general communication and understanding between the faculty member and his/her administrative colleagues
  3. to provide a basis for salary evaluation and for judgments on promotion and tenure
  4. to encourage the faculty member and the university to achieve the highest possible standards in teaching, scholarship and service.

The overall intent of this system is to arrive at a fair, comprehensive and effective review of the performance of faculty members. This will be done in terms of the three areas that comprise faculty members’ work: 1) teaching, 2) scholarship, and 3) service.

This document provides guidelines on the types of information to be included in the performance review. It is consistent with Memorandum of Agreement and Policy 77.

Basic Principles

Faculty performance reviews in the Faculty of Environment will have regard for the following general principles.

  • Judgments regarding a faculty member’s teaching, scholarship and service will respect the diverse ways in which these activities may be undertaken in the Faculty of Environment.
  • The rank of the faculty member being evaluated will be taken into account during decision making. For example, expectations regarding scholarly output will be adjusted to distinguish between Full Professors and probationary faculty.
  • Judgments regarding a faculty member’s teaching, scholarship, and service will be based on tangible evidence contained in the performance evaluation documents. The onus is on the faculty member to provide that evidence.
  • Individual units are in the best position to understand the norms and expectations pertinent to their faculty members.
  • The evaluation system will be open and transparent. Sufficient feedback will be provided to faculty members after each performance evaluation, and during critical points such as the years leading to the application for tenure and promotion, to permit them to understand the judgments that have been made about their performance.

Specific principles relating to the performance evaluation process, and to the evaluation of teaching, scholarship and service, are noted below.

Process Considerations

Evaluation Period

Until such time as the Faculty Relations Committee determines whether or not to switch to biennial performance evaluation for tenured faculty, performance evaluations will take place annually each year for all faculty.

In this document, the term evaluation period refers to the calendar year preceding the annual merit exercise, which takes place in the spring.

  • Teaching and Service are evaluated based on evidence of performance in the single calendar year of the evaluation period.
  • Scholarship is evaluated based on evidence of performance from the two-year window comprising the evaluation period and the year immediately prior. In this document, this is referred to as the scholarship evaluation window.

Policies and Guidelines

Performance evaluations are conducted according to the following documents:

  • University Policy #77
  • The Memorandum of Agreement between the University and the Faculty Association
  • Faculty of Environment Performance Review Regulations and Procedures (this document)
  • Department or school (unit) policies approved by a majority of the faculty in those units
  • A performance evaluation template supplied by the Faculty of Environment that will be used by faculty members to report on their teaching, scholarship, and service

Prior to the commencement of the period to be evaluated, faculty members should review each of these documents. Units must ensure that any supplementary policies they have created are consistent with Faculty and University policies, and have been made available to faculty members. At the same time, the Dean will ensure consistency among unit supplementary policies where that is appropriate. For instance, faculty members in different units who are operating within the same basic disciplinary conventions should be treated similarly even though they are in different units.

Performance Evaluation Committee

A Performance Evaluation Committee (PEC) that advises the Chair or Director will be struck in units with 15 or more faculty members who hold appointments of at least 51 percent in that unit. However, smaller units (14 or fewer members) may elect by majority vote to have the performance evaluation conducted only by the Chair or Director. Alternatively, two or more smaller units may elect by majority vote in each unit to form a multi-unit PEC to advise the respective Chairs/Directors. Units are responsible for defining the composition of the PEC in their supplementary material.
In the remainder of this document, “PEC” is used to describe situations where a multi-member committee exists, in contrast to cases where the Chair/Director acts alone. Additionally, statements regarding performance expectations and matters that should be considered by PECs apply equally to the Faculty Performance Review Committee and the Dean.

Performance Evaluation Template

A common performance evaluation template will be used by all faculty in the Faculty of Environment. General guidance regarding the information that should be included in the template is provided in this document and in the document, Instructions for Completing the Faculty Performance Evaluation Form. Units will offer supplementary guidance for completing the Faculty of Environment’s performance evaluation template in their own approved documents.

Rating Scale

Faculty members will be evaluated in the three areas of teaching, scholarship and service using a rating scale that ranges from 0.0 (unsatisfactory) to 2.0 (outstanding) in increments of 0.25. This scale is based on Article 13 of the Memorandum of Agreement.

To ensure consistency in expectations and ratings across the Faculty, it may be necessary to make adjustments at the Faculty level to evaluations conducted by PECs at the unit level. The Faculty Performance Review Committee is responsible for adjusting evaluation scores across the Faculty once unit-level evaluations have been completed.

A faculty member’s overall performance score is calculated by weighting the individual scores for scholarship, teaching and service according to the faculty member’s normal weight for these areas, or according to his or her adjusted weight for that evaluation period. Evaluation forms prepared by faculty members will indicate the faculty member’s weights for teaching, scholarship and service.

The normal weights for teaching, scholarship and service in the Faculty of Environment are 40%, 40% and 20%, respectively. Changes to the normal weights may result from a variety of circumstances, including holding a research chair, course buyouts from research funds, reduced teaching loads due to holding administrative positions, or leaves during the evaluation period (including sabbatical leaves, parental leaves, and sick leaves). Importantly, a change in a faculty member’s weighting has implications only for the quantity of work in that area, not its quality. Adjusted weights reported on the evaluation form must be approved by the unit’s Chair/Director through a written, formal agreement with the faculty member. This agreement normally must be established prior to the evaluation period. However, it is understood that in some cases this may not be possible (e.g., a faculty member becomes ill or is asked to take on an unexpected administrative duty). Provisions in Article 13 of the Memorandum of Agreement may apply in some cases (e.g., in relation to leaves).

Where a pattern of annual performance ratings of less than 1.0 in one or more areas gives the faculty member, Chair/Director, or Dean cause for concern, a review process will be implemented by the Dean, which, in the first instance, will stress the development of a plan for improvement arrived at by the faculty member, Chair/Director and the Dean. Such a review is required if a faculty member’s overall rating is less than 1.0 in any given evaluation period.

New faculty may start their careers mid-way within the evaluation period. Scores for new faculty will be assigned based on actual performance during the entire evaluation period. When too little information is available for a particular area, a score equal to the unit’s average for that rank will be assigned.

Feedback

Following review of scores at the Faculty level by the Faculty Performance Review Committee, faculty members will be provided with histograms showing how their scores rank relative to the Faculty as a whole. The Dean is responsible for preparing these histograms.

Standards and Criteria for Evaluating Teaching, Scholarship and Service

General standards and criteria for the evaluation teaching, service and scholarship of faculty members at the University of Waterloo are contained in Policy 77 and the Memorandum of Agreement. The information presented in this document provides detailed guidance to faculty members designed to help them complete their evaluation forms effectively, and provides guidance to PECs.

Scholarship

The Faculty of Environment adopts a broad view of scholarship. Research typically is an important part of a faculty member’s scholarship. However, in the Faculty of Environment scholarship also includes reflective and critical inquiry where this is communicated in publications and other media, professional outreach and engagement, and innovative design.

Scholarship will be judged primarily on the basis of outputs such as publications, exhibitions, awards, research funds, and other tangible manifestations of scholarly activity and creativity during the two-year scholarship evaluation window.As a result, during each annual review, the Performance Evaluation Committee will consider scholarship produced during the current and previous years. The Committee will place equal weight on scholarship produced during both years of the two-year scholarship evaluation window.

In light of the fact that views on scholarship vary among disciplines and units, no single model of scholarship will be followed in evaluating faculty members’ performance. This section provides a common foundation for the Faculty. Units are expected to provide guidance on issues such as the relative balance between innovative design and peer-reviewed publication, and expectations regarding the quantity and quality of scholarly output relative to rank.

Joint Versus Individual Scholarship

Faculty members may legitimately pursue their scholarship on an individual basis, or in collaboration with others. Joint research is encouraged, especially where it contributes to student education; hence, attempts should be made to encourage publication of good thesis work. However, a faculty member’s preference for solo-scholarship will not be viewed negatively. PECs are expected to account for the fact that volumes of scholarly output tend to be higher among faculty embedded in large teams and networks than among faculty who work alone.

Importance of Funding

The Faculty of Environment benefits significantly from the collective success of its faculty members in competitions for funds, especially in Tri-Council programs. Thus, it is expected that faculty with active research programs will attempt to secure funding or other support for their work.

Different kinds of scholarship demand varying amounts of funding. This implies that the number of grants/contracts received in a year and the dollar value of funds secured by themselves will not by themselves be viewed as indicators of scholarly activity or quality. Factors that PECs should take into consideration in weighing the contribution of funding to a faculty member’s scholarship rating include the following:

  • Extent to which research funds are used to support highly qualified personnel at the University of Waterloo in the first instance (e.g., undergraduate thesis students, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, research technicians), the publication of scholarly work, innovative design, or other scholarly activities;
  • Whether or not funds were secured through a competitive process that included refereeing by external experts;
  • Faculty member’s role on funded projects, e.g., principal investigator versus one of several co-investigators; and,
  • Proportion of total value of a grant held by the faculty member.

As part of their work faculty may engage in contract research for governments, industry and non-government organizations. Contract research can occur through a variety of mechanisms, including through the University, or through a private consultancy. In deciding whether or not contract work should be counted in evaluating a faculty member’s scholarship, PECs should not be concerned with the manner in which the funds were administered. Instead, emphasis should be placed on the extent to which the contract work supported conceptual or innovative work that comprises scholarship. For example, contracts used to undertake activities that do not involve significant creativity, and which do not result in graduate training or scholarly publications, should not be considered in evaluating a faculty member’s scholarship. Where appropriate, such activities could be considered under the category of service.

Considerations such as these should permit evaluators to make appropriate judgments about the importance of funding in the evaluation of a faculty member’s scholarship. As is the case in all aspects of the evaluation process, the onus is on faculty member to clarify the extent to which funding should contribute to their evaluation for scholarship.

Supervision

Supervision of students (undergraduate and graduate) and post-doctoral fellows may be part of a faculty member’s research activity. Nonetheless, the quantity and quality of supervision are counted in the context of teaching rather than scholarship. Outputs of supervision, such as publications, are counted as scholarship.

Evaluating the Quality and Quantity of Publications, Outreach and Engagement and Innovative Designs

Judgments about the quantity of scholarship and its quality should reflect the rank of the faculty member. For instance, where two refereed journal articles published in one year may be an outstanding accomplishment for a new faculty member, this level of scholarly output might be considered normal for a senior scholar. Disciplinary norms also should be taken into account. This is illustrated in the case of authorship: the importance of the number of authors on a publication, and their position in the list of authors, varies significantly by discipline.

This document does not propose an algorithm that can be used to make these judgments. Instead, units are expected to have clear expectations that are made known to faculty members, and are applied fairly and transparently during performance evaluations. Units that have specific expectations must document them and make them available not only to faculty members, but also to the members of the Faculty Performance Review Committee.

In the case of publications, only items published or accepted for publication during the scholarship evaluation window will be considered. An item is considered “accepted for publication” during the scholarship evaluation window when the publisher has indicated formally that required changes have been made, that no further substantive changes are required and that publication will occur. Given the two-year window for scholarship assessment, it will be normal for publications should only be listed twice; in two consecutive evaluation years.

General guidance on the relative importance that will be assigned to different kinds of scholarly outputs is provided below. In considering the relative significance of different tangible manifestations of scholarly activity, PECs must exercise their judgment, and faculty members must provide information that permits PECs to make fair and appropriate decisions. Ultimately, the onus is on the faculty member to organize scholarly outputs appropriately (see below), and to explain their significance and impact.

The significance of some kinds of tangible scholarly outputs can be difficult to evaluate and may not be apparent for some years. Hence, much stress is placed in the process upon peer review. In terms of publications, refereed works of all types generally will be given greater emphasis than non-refereed works. A refereed publication is defined as one where (1) third parties with the necessary expertise have evaluated the scholarly merits of the work – openly or anonymously – and have then recommended whether or not it should be published, and (2) publication of the work was contingent on the author(s) responding appropriately to the comments of the referees, with an editor or other third-party acting as judge.

Conferences that require abstracts to be pre-screened but don’t require authors to respond to referee comments, would not normally be considered “refereed”.

In evaluating publications, the most emphasis should be placed on refereed publications such as the following:

  • Articles in journals – where journals with international or national stature will receive more emphasis than those in local or regional journals
  • Books and monographs by recognized publishers – where publishers with international or national stature will receive more emphasis than those with local or regional stature
  • Chapters (including appropriate editorial writing) in edited books or monographs by recognized publishers
  • Papers in conference proceedings; the stature of the conference will be considered (e.g., international versus local)
  • Other refereed publications with special significance, e.g., reports to government agencies or other groups

Less emphasis should be placed on other kinds of publications including refereed extended abstracts and non-refereed publications such as the following:

  • Books and monographs – where those published by publishers with international or national stature will receive more emphasis than those published by local or regional publishers
  • Articles in magazines or journals of criticism having substantial intellectual stature
  • Chapters (including appropriate editorial writing); those by recognized publishers will be given more emphasis
  • Papers in conference proceedings; the significance of the conference will be considered
  • Presentations at academic and professional conferences; the significance of the conference will be taken into account, as will the nature of the presentation (e.g., an invited keynote presentation at a major international conference versus a presentation at a seminar)
  • Applied publications and general agency reports that make scholarly contributions
  • Book reviews
  • Other publications (e.g., maps or atlases)

Articles in the mass media will generally not be accorded the stature of the foregoing kinds of publications. Publications for contract research that do not involve scholarship also will not be counted in the evaluation of a faculty member’s scholarship.
In terms of the evaluation of design, more emphasis should be placed on design in the form of the following: