University Times

How often are Pitt department chairs evaluated?

When the issue surfaced at the Jan. 25 Faculty Assembly meeting, there was some disagreement between faculty members and Andrew Blair, vice provost for Faculty Affairs.

Blair, who is the Provost’s liaison to Faculty Assembly, said, “All chairs across the University, including at the regional campuses, are evaluated three years after their last evaluation or three years following their year of appointment; deans are evaluated five years after their appointment or five years after their last evaluation.”

He said the single exception is the School of Medicine, where chairs are not evaluated because their roles vary; some have dual roles as academic leaders and clinical leaders, while others have only one role or the other.

Some Faculty Assembly members took exception to Blair’s description of the schedule for department chair evaluations.

Beverly Gaddy of Pitt-Greensburg said, “At Greensburg, we used to do evaluations of chairs but we have not had them since the arrival of President [Sharon] Smith. As faculty president I asked that we re-initiate those but we have not. So we’ve not done evaluations for four years.”

Dental medicine’s John Baker said there have been evaluations of his school’s dean but he was unaware of any evaluations of department chairs.

Blair said a reorganization of departments in the School of Dental Medicine might have skewed the timeframe for chair evaluations, but he insisted the dental medicine school was not excluded from the evaluation process. “We have been tracking that very carefully,” he said.

He added that “the results of the chair evaluations go to the deans to share with the chairs as they think appropriate. The results of the evaluations of the deans go to either the provost or the senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences, also to share with the deans as they think appropriate.”

University Senate President Michael Pinsky asked if the evaluation process is kept private. “Is it likely chair evaluations occur and [faculty] wouldn’t know about it?” Pinsky asked.

Blair said there is nothing clandestine about the evaluation process. “Faculty members in the schools or department would certainly know about it because they’re contacted for the evaluation. It’s not a sample. Every eligible faculty member is asked to fill out the survey. We get very good response rates, incidentally.”

The departments determine which faculty are considered core or “voting faculty,” Blair explained, but typically the group includes tenure and tenure-stream faculty. Sometimes length of service is considered, he added.

Assembly member Francesca Savoia of the Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures said, “ I’ve been at Pitt for 25 years, I’m a tenured professor and I’ve never been asked to evaluate any of the chairs.”

At Pinsky’s request, Blair agreed to investigate the situation in the French and Italian department and report back to Pinsky.

Nicholas Bircher of the medical school lobbied for including his school in the chair evaluation process.

“Given that we have a well-validated system for every school except the School of Medicine, on behalf of the faculty of the School of Medicine I would advocate that in the near term to extend that evaluation to the school,” Bircher said. “It’s a reasonable tool to use even in the medical school.”

The discussion about department evaluations sprang from a report on a new gender discrimination initiative subcommittee, part of the Senate’s antidiscriminatory policies committee.

The subcommittee, chaired by Kacey Marra of the School of Medicine, is continuing some of the work of the former ad hoc committee for the promotion of gender equity-II.

Marra said the group also wants to help establish specific guidelines for appointment and evaluation of deans and chairs, and it was this item that prompted the Faculty Assembly debate. She said her group hopes to work with the Provost’s office to develop a template with specific procedures for appointing, compensating and evaluating deans and department chairs. “The template will incorporate features that make the opportunity for administrative appointment equally available to both women and men,” Marra said.

Blair noted that there already is an evaluation instrument, “an online survey that was developed by the Council of Deans in consultation with various parties. There are scaled responses as well as augmented responses. Primarily, it’s meant to be a formative as opposed to a summative evaluation, meaning that it’s supposed to be constructive and helpful.

“I was concerned that you’re looking at a new evaluation template for chairs, and I just would like you to keep in mind that there is an evaluation process in place,” Blair said.

Marra said the subcommittee was not interested in evaluating the performances of department chairs. “That’s not really the type of evaluation we would focus on. We are more interested in evaluating how the chairs are hiring and determining compensation across their faculty.”

As head of the new subcommittee, Marra plans to convene a group of faculty, staff, postdocs and students from across Pitt’s five campuses to discuss gender equity issues, address salary differentials, develop workshops on leadership skills and work to expand child care and dependent care options.

“The objective of this subcommittee is to ensure that faculty are treated equitably by gender in several areas of University activities, including recruitment, hiring, allocation of leadership responsibilities, compensation and promotion,” she said. “We also plan to extend these policies to the regional campuses.”

The new subcommittee will urge the Provost’s office to expand its analysis of Provost-area salary differentials by gender to include Health Sciences faculty, she said.

Marra’s subcommittee replaces the ad hoc committee for the promotion of gender equity-II, which expired at the end of 2010. Ad hoc committee chair Irene Frieze reported to Faculty Assembly on her committee’s major efforts:

• Obtaining more infant/toddler openings at the University Child Development Center and working to provide additional child care options for faculty and staff in Oakland and nearby neighborhoods.

• Surveying women faculty about the need for leadership networking and skills development programs.

• Assisting “trailing spouses” (spouses/domestic partners of faculty hired from outside the region) in finding positions in Pittsburgh. “We received reports about the programs that have been developed at Pitt by the Office of Human Resources and the Office of Affirmative Action, Diversity and Inclusion to determine what is now being done and to better publicize these activities,” Frieze said.

• Comparing female faculty salaries, retention, promotion and tenure trends with those of their male counterparts.

• Working with the Office of General Counsel to make legally required changes to sexual harassment policies and advising Human Resources on the online training program now required for all faculty and staff.

The ad hoc committee’s final report is available on the Senate web site, www.pitt.edu/univsenate/.

In other Assembly business:

• Deborah Brake, co-chair of the Senate anti-discriminatory policies committee, reported that her committee is looking into the potential conflict between a medical condition that is excluded from coverage in the University’s health insurance plan and Pitt’s nondiscrimination policy.

She noted that the policy was updated in 2008 to prohibit discrimination or harassment of any individual based on “gender identity or expression.” (See Sept. 25, 2008, University Times.)

The potential conflict lies in the fact that transsexual surgery, even when deemed medically necessary by a physician, is excluded specifically from insurance coverage by UPMC Health Plan, she said. The antidiscriminatory policies committee will work with the Senate benefits and welfare committee to determine what recommendations, if any, should be made regarding negotiations of future health insurance contracts, Brake said.

Pinsky asked that she report on this issue at a future Faculty Assembly meeting.

• Senate Vice President Patricia Weiss asked if Assembly members had received any student feedback on the Port Authority service cuts. (See Jan. 20 University Times.)

Susan Shaiman of the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences said many of her school’s students have clinical assignments in areas of the county affected by the service cuts.

“This is true not just in SHRS but in the schools of education and social work and others. So, this is not just an issue for immediate neighborhoods. This will eventually cause us to lose students,” Shaiman said.

Bircher said Pitt should survey students and employees who ride Port Authority vehicles, determine which are the most needed routes and use that information in negotiating with the Port Authority to make service cuts elsewhere.

Thomas Smitherman suggested that Faculty Assembly “use the bully pulpit of the Pitt faculty” and write an op-ed article pointing out the negative effect that service cuts are having on the University’s educational efforts.

Paul Munro said students have been late for his classes because of the service cuts. Munro, who co-chairs the Senate plant utilization and planning committee, said PUP looked into potential contingency plans, such as extending the shuttle system to areas outside of Oakland to compensate for the service cuts. He said that under Pitt’s contract with the Port Authority, Pitt shuttles cannot replicate Port Authority routes.

Michael Spring noted that was a condition when the Pitt-Port Authority agreement started in the mid-’90s, but he recommended Pitt renegotiate that restriction.

• Faculty Assembly heard a report from Ron LaPorte of the Graduate School of Public Health on his TED (technology, entertainment, design) talks program. The purpose of the program is to bring together faculty from various disciplines to get to know each other and what others do.

Last September, LaPorte organized “Pitt Professor Day,” which was designed to share “ideas worth spreading” from a broad range of disciplines. (See Sept. 16 University Times. The presentations are posted online at http://mediasite.cidde.pitt.edu.)

He said the project could enable people worldwide to see what is being done at Pitt.

Pitt’s TED talks program, which drew an audience of about 70 for four talks, was so successful that LaPorte is seeking volunteers from Faculty Assembly to do a 15-minute talk on their field.

“It would be great if you had suggestions, or if you had a great topic that you wanted to present,” LaPorte said, adding that volunteer presenters can contact him at Ronlaporte@aol.com.

No date is set yet for the next TED talks program, he said.

—Peter Hart