Skip to site navigation

Junior Faculty Development and Retention

Introduction

Recommendations from the Faculty Senate Academic Affairs Sub-Committee on Junior Faculty Development and Retention, Spring 1998. NB: Some of these recommendations are already implemented in various parts of the University.

Marva Barnett, Chair, Teaching Resource Center; Department of French

George Cohen, Law School

Mark Haskins, Darden

George Mentore, Department of Anthropology

Charge to the Committee: "To recommend measures that will enhance junior faculty development and retention."

To respond to this charge, we studied current practices by polling deans and chairs and investigated junior faculty concerns with all tenure-track and general faculty members hired at the University of Virginia since Fall, 1992, into the College of Arts & Sciences, and Schools of Architecture, Commerce, Darden, Education, Engineering , Law, and Nursing.

Given the specialized and different nature of work in the School of Medicine, we will meet separately with colleagues there and treat their issues separately. We have also taken into account comments from various deans, from members of the Senate Executive Council and Committee on Academic Affairs, and from Senators at the February 11, 1998, Faculty Senate meeting.

Our various conversations with junior faculty highlighted as primary issues of concern the following areas: the tenure process, third-year review structures, availability of pertinent information, the development of interdisciplinary intellectual community, effective advising from colleagues, parking, non-salary resources such as travel funds and summer research support, teaching assignments and student evaluations. The concerns specific to incoming academic general faculty have been separated from this report because they involve structural considerations relating to academic general faculty members at all ranks. We wish to refer these concerns to the Faculty Senate Academic Affairs Committee for action next year.

Definition of various terms used to refer to faculty groups: "new faculty": faculty hired at the University within the past six years. "incoming faculty": faculty in their first year at the University. "academic general faculty": faculty who conduct research and/or teach within an academic unit.

"general faculty": both academic and administrative general faculty members who work under renewal appointments. "junior faculty": faculty at the rank of assistant professor or lecturer.

Recommendations

IA. Information Dissemination: Retention of faculty:

  1. Chairs should make available in their departments the non-confidential elements of recently successful tenure dossiers, including, for instance, CVs and statements on research, teaching, and service.
  2. Deans or Chairs, as appropriate, should encourage and facilitate creation of a tenure file from the beginning of a tenure-track professor's

    3. appointment by giving newly hired faculty prototype folders for accumulating and organizing one's eventual dossier (e.g., folders labeled for such items as CV, statement about one's professional goals, copies of publications, student evaluation data, list of outside evaluators).

  3. The Provost's Office should require, collect and analyze annual reports from the deans on why tenure-track faculty leave their respective schools before tenure review.

IB. Information Dissemination: Reviews of faculty:

  1. Deans should develop standards for and train those responsible for advising and conducting annual reviews with junior faculty.
  2. Chairs should formalize the third-year review process with an explicit consideration of informing candidates how they are doing, particularly in light of the relative weights of teaching and research as part of their tenure evaluation. This review should be documented in writing for both the school and the candidate.

IC. Information Dissemination: Policies and procedures:

  1. Department chairs and deans should make clear in their offer letters the expectations of the position for which an individual is hired.
  2. Deans should distribute to incoming tenure-track faculty the current school policies and procedures for renewal, promotion, and tenure and to incoming academic general faculty members the policies and procedures for promotion in rank.
  3. Deans and Chairs should encourage recently tenured faculty members to discuss with tenure-track faculty issues related to professional development and career management.
  4. Appropriate University offices (e.g., that of the Provost, the Vice Provost for Research, the Teaching Resource Center) should provide all new faculty members with necessary information and sources for more information (such as the Provost's web page). Available resources should be outlined in offer letters and faculty handbook.
  5. Chairs should clarify expectations for service from junior faculty, and should advise them of the benefits and burdens of such service.

II. Mentoring/Advising

  1. While continuing all currently effective departmental efforts to advise junior faculty to become excellent teachers, researchers, and members of our community, departments and/or schools should initiate active and formal systems of junior faculty advising where none so far exist. Extant models include regular, focused meetings between advisors and junior faculty members.
  2. Each department should make available from its ranks of tenured faculty at least one person to act as faculty advisor for each junior tenure-track or academic general faculty member. Careful consideration should be taken over the compatibility of the pairing between advisor and junior faculty,

    3. and appropriate training offered to the advisor. If junior faculty members prefer not to have mentors, their wish should be respected. Multiple advisors for multiple aspects of one's career may be best in some cases, as would advisors drawn from other departments and from various University organizations.

  3. Advising should begin as soon as the process of work gets underway for the junior faculty member, and occur as regularly as the junior faculty member and advisor deem appropriate, on both a formal and an informal basis.
  4. The faculty advisor role should be noted on annual reports as an important contribution. We envision the role of faculty advisor as being a substantive contribution to the University, and Deans should recognize it accordingly.
  5. Chairs should delineate the responsibilities of the advisor in regard to the junior faculty's annual review process, and dissemination of information to the junior faculty member. This delineation should be crafted in consultation with the junior faculty member. It should be understood that the advisor's role is one of assistance and not evaluation or advocacy.
  6. Departments should organize regular faculty seminars at which all faculty present their work and receive feedback from their peers.

III. Teaching Concerns

  1. Departments need to develop consistent protocols for assigning teaching. Assigned course subjects and enrollments should reflect the interests, expertise, and experience of junior faculty members.
  2. Departments should offer incoming junior faculty a reduced teaching load at some point early in their careers.
  3. The University should expand the training of incoming faculty as teachers. NB: In response to this request, the TRC will, beginning in 1998, offer different sessions for faculty and TAs at the Fall Teaching Workshop, and clearly identify the expected audiences.
  4. Departments should revamp teacher evaluation forms so as to be congruent with departmental needs and objectives and should allow faculty to read and copy evaluations as soon as final grades are submitted.
  5. Chairs and advisors should treat student evaluations of courses taught for the first time as informational rather than evaluative.

IV. Resource Scarcity/Allocation: Non-salary resources

  1. Departments and the Office of the Provost should consider the desirability of giving preference to meritorious junior faculty for relevant resources.
  2. Deans should develop and make known to incoming faculty uniform policies with respect to start-up items such as moving expenses, travel funds, computers, book purchase subvention, fourth-year leaves and should investigate the feasibility of obtaining bulk discounts on such items and services.

V. Academic and Social Networking

  1. Deans should support cross-departmental interaction at an early stage, including introductions to student life and faculty across the Grounds as a critical element of acculturation. Possible programs include junior faculty lunches by different departments in a rotating fashion; yearly retreats on or off Grounds; interest groups (e.g., Women's Faculty and Professional Association, U.va. Women's Club, parenting, sports, singles, outdoors, reading, crafts, tours); and creation of a faculty center.
  2. The Faculty Senate should create a faculty directory searchable on such

    3. topics as primary pedagogy used, areas of research interest, teaching and research awards received. NB: This sub-committee has created and disseminated to junior faculty members "Junior Faculty Profiles," a pilot version of such a document.

  3. The University should set up a system through which junior faculty members could talk informally with a colleague about their courses. NB: The Teaching Resource Center plans to implement "Talking about Teaching," which would include a list of experienced faculty willing to talk with junior faculty colleagues about teaching issues informally, as well as social events to bring these people together.

VI. Parking

  1. The Department of Parking and Transportation should publicize well the 25% parking discount available with the Cavalier Advantage Card and the fact that academic units can subsidize parking at the Newcomb Hall Garage and elsewhere.
  2. The Department of Parking and Transportation should make known to deans and chairs the possibility of making exceptional, temporary accommodations for faculty with exceptional needs.
  3. The Committee on Parking and Transportation should consider giving junior faculty priority over students for access to closer spaces in certain lots or parts of lots and during the evening.
  4. The Committee on Parking and Transportation should study the feasibility of a faculty shuttle to improve access to remote lots.

Academic Affairs Committee, 1997-98

Benjamin C. Ray, Religious Studies, Chair

J. Milton Adams, Engineering

Marva A. Barnett, Teaching Resource Center

Robert F. McNergney,Curry

George M. Cohen, Law

Richard F. DeMong, Commerce

Doris F. Glick, Nursing

Reuben M. Rainey, Architecture

Mark Haskins, Darden

William R. Johnson, Economics

George B. Craddock, Medicine

George P. Mentore, Anthropology