University Times

A survey for faculty evaluations of de partment chairpersons was unveiled by a University Senate task force at the Jan. 30 Faculty Assembly meeting.

Assembly members praised the survey, but concerns about how it will be administered prevented the group from recommending that the evaluations be done University-wide.

The two-page survey forms — tested last fall in a pilot project in the schools of education, information sciences and public health — ask faculty to rate their bosses' leadership and communications skills, abilities as administrators and mentors, and contributions to accomplishing departmental goals.

Among the 227 faculty members in the three schools, 43 percent completed and returned surveys, which solicited comments on the survey process itself in addition to opinions of chairpersons' job performances. Among respondents, 68 percent recommended that the evaluations be conducted annually.

"Our emphasis is on developing constructive comments from the faculty in each of the departments, which would then be provided back to the department chair and to the deans for use in the chair's annual evaluation," said Senate Vice President Carol K. Redmond, who chaired the task force that developed the survey.

She said the surveys would be analogous to student evaluations of faculty teaching: They would be a contributing factor, but hardly the sole or decisive one, in a chairperson's performance evaluation.

And, evaluators would remain anonymous. Only a summary of the survey results would be released to the dean and department chair, not the forms themselves.

Redmond wouldn't reveal what faculty in education, information sciences and public health had to say about their department chairs, but she said the Senate is forwarding summaries to the schools' chairpersons and deans.

At Faculty Assembly, professors praised the survey, Redmond and her task force. But some questioned how the surveys would work in schools such as law, which lack traditional academic departments. Other faculty members disagreed with the task force's recommendation that the Senate should conduct the surveys (with resources from Pitt's administration) in order to assure faculty that their anonymity would be protected.

"I see us as facilitating this," said economics professor Herbert Chesler. "I don't see us instigating it and managing it from day one through the process completion."

Assembly members voted to table further discussion of resolutions endorsing the survey until these questions are resolved. Redmond said her task force will consider Faculty Assembly's feedback and report again at the next Assembly meeting, scheduled for Feb. 27.

"I'm confident that we can come forward with some recommendations that would make this a process that could be expanded in an appropriate manner," she told Senate Council on Feb. 5.

Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg called the Senate survey "a good first step" in establishing a system of faculty evaluations of chairpersons.

In other Assembly and Council business:

* Ballots for election of faculty to Faculty Assembly, Senate Council and the Senate's executive committee are in the works. Elections committee chairperson Herbert Chesler urged faculty and students to send nominations to the Senate office at 1234 Cathedral of Learning or by e-mail to: fczak@pitt.edu

* A new coding process will ensure that emeritus faculty retain Pitt computing accounts after they retire, reported Andrew Blair, vice provost for Faculty Affairs. While eliminating thousands of dormant accounts, Pitt computing personnel had inadvertently eliminated some accounts belonging to emeritus faculty, he said. The new process — developed by the Provost's office, payroll, faculty records, and computing services and systems development — will see that faculty, upon gaining emeritus status, automatically retain access to Pitt's computing system, Blair said.

* Forty-four faculty members have volunteered to host Pitt trustees in their classes, as part of the Senate's "Take a Board Member to Class" program, Senate President Nathan Hershey reported. But three weeks after the Senate office mailed invitations to Pitt trustees, no trustee has replied, he said. During 1999-2000, the program's inaugural year, more than 30 trustees participated.

* Provost Maher announced Pitt's long-awaited external Internet service provider, and said he is appointing a committee to consider Pitt responses to threats against scholarly communications.

— Bruce Steele