Minutes of the Instructional Academic Staff Career Progression Committee

(IAS CPC)

Thursday, March 27, 2008

7:00 pm, 116 Cowley Hall

Present:  George Arimond, Ashley Burrowes, Elise Denlinger, David Howard (Chair), Tom Reinert, Melissa Wallace (Secretary).

1. Approval of minutes. Minutes for 02/06/08 and 03/12/08 were unanimously approved.   

2. Discussion of candidates for career progression. The Chair called a roll call vote to go into closed session for the purposes of discussing the 14 candidates for IAS career progression. The vote was unanimous.

3. Future recommendations to IAS committee about career progression portfolio contents. Committee members agreed that this committee is in a good position to make helpful suggestions to the IAS Committee and Faculty Senate about refining and/or clarifying the list of materials required when applying for career progression in the future. Although this discussion was informal and the following list was not discussed at length, some ideas that came out included:  
   • Specific requests for peer reviews for all candidates;
   • Clarity regarding exactly what has to be in the files;
   • Departments should provide their criteria / expectations for IAS. This needs to be clear and it needs to be included as the expectations regarding teaching, scholarship and service for IAS vary by department;
   • Possibly reporting only the six new SEI questions for progression purposes;
   • For teaching, multiple assessment tools are needed (syllabi, peer reviews, and others) beyond SEI numbers;
   • Deans may be encouraged to include in their letters information similar to what they include for tenured and tenure-track faculty;
   • Some departments have committees and take retention votes for IAS, some don’t. Possibly encourage all departments to take votes and report results;
   • Candidates may be encouraged to be clear about what the terminal degree is in their department, as it varies by discipline;
   • Job descriptions should be included in IDPs;
   • Not all departments provide merit information for IAS. Should they?

It was decided that a future meeting would be called in order to build a detailed list of suggestions / recommendations for future career progression processes.

4. Complete survey. David Howard advised committee members that we would have 48 hours in order to vote electronically on D2L (with a “yes” or “no” vote) for all candidates being considered for career progression. If a “no” vote is made, written justification for the vote must be included.

5. Meeting was adjourned at 9:07 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Melissa Wallace