Policy AC14: Academic Administrative Evaluation

 

Annual Faculty Reviews of Administrators: Process and Considerations

 

According to Policy AC14, “…each academic administrative officer and their office shall receive feedback from faculty within their unit on an annual basis.” Academic Year 2020-2021 was the pilot year for implementation of this policy.

 

FAQs

 

 

Q: Who will be reviewed?

A: Those being reviewed as part of this process include deans and chancellors; associate deans; assistant deans (only if they are classified as an academic administrator); department and divisions heads; and school directors.

Lists of academic administrative officers are reviewed by unit executives and Human Resources Strategic Partners prior to implementation. Individual academic administrators may be excluded from review for a variety of reasons including recent hire to the role or imminent retirement. In addition, those undergoing a five-year AC14 review are not subject to the annual review in the same year.

Q: Who will review academic administrators?

A: All faculty, staff, and administrators in a unit (college/campus) will have the opportunity to review the academic administrators in that unit. Those with a courtesy appointment in a unit will not be included in the review stream for that unit. Those with a joint appointment should review administrators in the unit in which their tenure is held. Staff who work at a college/campus but who report to a central unit – such as human resources, development, and finance – will be given the opportunity to review academic administrators in the college(s)/campus(es) in which they reside.

Q: When will the reviews take place?

A: Reviews will take place in the spring semester and should coincide with the regular annual review process.

Q: What tool will be used to evaluate academic administrators?

A: The instrument used in the pilot year was adapted from a survey instrument used by the College of Medicine. It included a 3-item survey with two open-ended questions and one, 7-point Likert rating. In response to feedback gathered after the pilot implementation, the instrument was revised to change some language in the open-ended questions, and to expand the number of Likert scaled items.

View a sample of this year’s survey here.

This instrument will be used university-wide for all administrators undergoing a review. Units are not able to add or subtract items from the survey instrument.

Q: I’m from a small unit. How can I be sure my responses are kept anonymous?

There are multiple aspects of the process designed to balance the aim of the policy (providing meaningful, timely feedback) with the desire to promote open and honest feedback by ensuring respondents’ anonymity.

First, concerning faculty respondents, the process employs a suppression threshold designed to keep individual respondents’ identities from being revealed due to small numbers of individuals in their unit. In short, if an academic administrator belongs to a department or unit with 5 or fewer faculty, faculty responses/feedback will only be reported if all 5 faculty respondents provide feedback. If the department/unit has more than 5 faculty, however, any feedback received for that academic administrator will be passed along.

The process uses a different suppression threshold approach for the feedback provided by staff and academic administrators as their numbers are generally smaller than those of faculty in most units. Feedback provided by staff and academic administrators respondents will be passed on only if the reviewed individual receives feedback from more than 5 staff or more than 5 academic administrators. In other words, if an academic administrator receives 5 or fewer feedback responses from the staff in their unit, no staff feedback will be reported. Likewise, if an academic administrator receives 5 or fewer responses from other academic administrators in their unit, then no academic administrator feedback will be reported.

In addition, all feedback that is sent to the unit will not include any identifiable respondent information such as that person’s name, email, or IP address.

Finally, respondents can also (and are encouraged to) refrain from including identifiable information in their feedback, as responses are not reviewed for content before being provided to the academic units. For example, one might provide feedback about an academic administrator’s communication style without referencing a specific, identifiable exchange or incident.

Reporting Acute Concerns

Acute concerns may be brought forward at any time throughout the year:

    • Faculty can bring concerns to their unit ombudsperson.
    • Faculty or staff may share feedback with the dean/chancellor; the unit’s Human Resources Strategic Partner (HRSP); Manager, Labor & Employee Relations; or the Affirmative Action Office.
    • Anonymous, 2/47 reports of misconduct can be made online through the Penn State Hotline or by calling 800-560-1637. More information about reporting specific types of misconduct is available here, or by contacting the Office of Ethics and Compliance at 814-867-5008 or psoec@psu.edu.

 

Survey Administration

The Office of Planning, Assessment and Institutional Research (OPAIR) will generate and administer the feedback surveys for all units. Each reviewer will receive a unique survey link. OPAIR will remove the identities of respondents before forwarding the responses to the units; therefore, the responses sent to the units will be anonymous.

Faculty, staff, and academic administrators at each location (college, campus, or other administrative unit) will receive one email asking them to evaluate the academic administrators in their unit. Once in the survey, the reviewer can select the administrators they wish to review.

 

Compilation and Distribution of Feedback

OPAIR will receive the responses for all administrators in each location and will clean and transform the responses into data sets that reflect all responses for each academic administrator being reviewed. For each reviewee, separate data sets will be provided for faculty, staff, and academic administrator respondents. The full data sets will then be sent to the unit executive of each unit.

Distribution of feedback will take place in the following manner:

 

 

    1. The unit executive may choose to filter, with the assistance of the HRSP if desired, the feedback prior to supplying the feedback to each academic administrator.
    2. The unit executive may request that the academic administrator complete a survey in response to the feedback received. This “goal-setting response to feedback” provides academic administrators with the opportunity to react to the feedback received and to list goals for the following academic year.
    3. The academic administrator will meet with the unit executive to review both the feedback and the administrator’s response to it. This review meeting should take place as part of the administrator’s regular annual review. The feedback received as part of this process is just one piece of the holistic review of academic administrators that takes place annually as well as at other periodic times.