Appendix 10: THE PROFESSIONAL EVALUATION AND GROWTH PLAN AND SUPPORTING MATERIALS

The Faculty of Whittier College believes that we are all obligated to examine our professional lives on a regular basis. This is an obligation to our students, to the institution, and most importantly to ourselves. We believe that it is important for us to consider how we change and develop as we proceed through our careers. The primary purpose, then, of all PEGP's is professional self-assessment, an exercise in which we consider what is important, what we do well, and what we can do better. In this respect, then, the presentation is not for the institution, but for the individual making the presentation. Getting a response from a set of colleagues may reveal any number of important things that we may not clearly see ourselves. We can get our ideas validated, and we can have our attention drawn to things that could use some more attention, or things we simply could not see ourselves.

However, the PEGP also serves another very important purpose which is evaluation by the institution. The presentation does result in a judgement made by colleagues, both in the faculty member╧s department and on the Faculty Personnel Committee.The evaluative dimension of the PEGP is especially significant for faculty who are pre-tenure and for those who seek a change in status. We acknowledge the importance of this dimension.

We acknowledge that we will all need to make our presentations in different ways, as we are different. But we recognize that the primary purpose of the document is the same for all of us in its personal dimensions. We agree that the key elements in it are that we make our best presentation concerning our accomplishments to our colleagues, that it is the fundamental document for important institutional decisions about us, and that we use it to seek collegial advice, but that it be directed at real professional self-assessment above all.

(Faculty Handbook, III, B.4.a)

The PEGP

The advice in this appendix is designed as only that, advice. There is no one way to best make this presentation. However, the experience of a number of different Faculty Personnel Committees over time has found the things described to be valuable to have heard about in creating feedback and making decisions. There are other ways it can and has been done which achieve the purposes described above. One other result of that collective experience is that it is possible to address the issues of a PEGP in full enough dimensions in a 10 to 20 page document, with appropriate additional supporting materials.

The PEGP should begin with an introduction describing your background and current faculty status, followed by sections on teaching, advising, service, and scholarship. A copy of your vita and your last feedback notes should be attached at the end of the PEGP. Regularly scheduled PEGP presentations do not need to be as thorough as those supporting a request for tenure or promotion. Note that the Faculty Handbook says that "[s]ubmissions in [the] third year for both those eligible and not eligible for tenure will take the form of a brief progress report, including a response to the feedback given by FPC in the previous year."

(FH III.B.4.a) FPC suggests that a length of six to ten pages would constitute an appropriate length for this progress report.

Teaching: It is very useful to begin the teaching section with a fairly lengthy discussion of teaching philosophy. Among the questions you might consider addressing are: What you should discuss here is what you are trying to accomplish as a teacher of your discipline. What are your goals for students to achieve? Why are these goals important? Is there a general methodology or strategy you use to achieve these goals? Where does this strategy come from? The idea here is to inform FPC about your purpose as a teacher in a liberal arts college. Next, it is useful to have a section which describes the courses you teach. This can be seen as expanded catalogue copy; provide some discussion of the content and main distinguishing characteristics of each course (special assignments made, special purposes of the course, etc.). Most significant, though, is a discussion of the outcome of your past year╧s courses; or, for regular submissions from tenured faculty, a representative number of courses taught since your last submission. It is useful to include in this discussion an analysis of the course evaluations. (FPC finds that a combination of quantitative and qualitative material is helpful.) What you are trying to do here is provide a thoughtful discussion of what went right and what went wrong, and why, in your courses. Such a thoughtful discussion helps FPC understand what you are doing in the classroom. You may want to add a discussion about previously offered courses, if there is something special you want to say about them (for example, Intd 100 or WSP courses, or courses you have significantly revised over time). Finally, as this is a forward-looking presentation, consider speaking about your future plans in the teaching area. Discuss new courses or area competencies you wish to develop, ideas for changes in courses, teaching conferences you plan to attend, and thoughts you have about what you might do to improve your future teaching.

Advising: A simple statement of the facts about your advising and mentoring (numbers, how often you mentor, etc.) is most useful to begin with. Discuss what you are trying to accomplish as an advisor/mentor (particularly if you are in a discipline which has few majors) and how you go about trying to achieve these goals. Include any plans you have for improving or developing your advising abilities.

Service: As with advising, begin with a simple statement of the facts about your service (faculty committees, department service, community activities, etc.). But then discuss what you are doing in the service area. Are there some particular goals you are trying to achieve? Do you have some plans in this area? Do not just make a list of what you have done, but reflect upon and evaluate what you have achieved and hope to achieve.

Scholarship: It is probably necessary for FPC to hear some background about the history of your professional interests. Then describe your current projects in detail. Then conclude with your future plans. Your purpose here is to explain to FPC what it means to be a successful and productive professor in your discipline. The four kinds of scholarship described below outline the forms of professional growth FPC considers appropriate. The types of activities that matter here vary widely across the disciplines (from juried shows, to public performances, to published papers). Because teaching is the most important responsibility of Whittier College faculty, the scholarly investigation of pedagogy is considered a valuable form of scholarship at Whittier College. Thus the dissemination of pedogogical research is viewed as appropriate scholarship by FPC. You need to inform FPC as to what types of activities matter in your discipline and then discuss what you have accomplished and what you are doing in these terms. Explain in what ways these activities involve contact between you and your peers in your discipline. Emphasize completed projects and work well under-way. Statements about projects that may be undertaken two or three years away are not convincing evidence of scholarly success, but a thoughtful plan for future scholarly work is an important part of your presentation. For tenure, it is expected that more than the dissertation has been accomplished; there needs to be some evidence of progress beyond the Ph.D. and some clear indication of direction and purpose. For promotion to the rank of Associate Professor, it is expected that this clear direction and purpose will have been manifested in concrete and demonstrated achievement appropriate to your field.

Supporting Materials

Supporting documents should be organized carefully and should be provided for each of the four areas of evaluation. The purpose and meaning of all supporting documents should be explained in the PEGP. The following are suggested inclusions; you may have others which you think are important to add.

Teaching: Untenured faculty should include all course syllabi from the past year. Include a selection of course materials which illustrates the major assignments of the courses. A selection of student work may also be relevant, if it is organized in such a way to show what you are trying to accomplish with the assignment and its success. Untenured faculty should provide course evaluations from all students for all classes taught during the previous year. Include complete sets of evaluations from earlier years, if there is something you wish to say specifically about them in the the PEGP (such as a WSP course, or a freshman writing course, or any other course which you particularly wish to discuss). It is very helpful to FPC if the portion of the form evaluating the instructor is very consistent from course to course. Include a summary of each set of evaluations if it is possible to construct one. If you are requesting tenure or promotion, provide the Dean with a list of names of faculty members who have observed your teaching or with whom you have team-taught or paired and a list of names and addresses of former students. The Dean will contact these faculty and students and ask that letters of evaluation be sent directly to the Dean╧s office. Tenured faculty not requesting promotion should comment on and include a representative selection of course evaluations discussed and presented since their last FPC review. Tenured faculty who are applying for promotion are encouraged to present as comprehensive a set of course evaluations and syllabi as possible in order to support their request.

Advising: Provide copies of any supporting materials which show what you are trying to accomplish in this area.

Service: Again, provide materials which show what you have been doing. Examples could include documents related to departmental programs, community service, and so on. If you are requesting tenure or promotion, provide the Dean with a list of names of faculty who have been in charge of programs to which you have contributed in a significant way. The Dean will contact these faculty and ask that letters of evaluation be sent directly to the Dean's office.

Scholarship: Provide copies of presented and published papers and other materials which support the discussion in your PEGP, such as copies of conference programs which list your sessions, programs which describe performances, reviews of shows, etc. In light of past discussions, materials prepared for courses that manifest scholarship may be relevant here. (See the the four kinds of scholarship described below as a guide.) Submit copies of drafts of work that is underway. If you are requesting tenure or promotion, provide the Dean with a list of names and addresses of colleagues who are familiar with your work, both on- and off- campus. The Dean will contact these colleagues and ask that letters of evaluation be sent directly to the Dean's office.

The four kinds of scholarship presented by the 1998 ad hoc FPC Review committee (this list of examples is neither exhaustive nor exclusive):

  1. Scholarship of discovery (the traditional university model of scholarship):
    • Published journal article or monograph reporting the results of original research that contributes to the store of human knowledge.
    • Original artistic or creative compositions that are presented to an audience.
  2. Scholarship of integration:
    • Multidisciplinary research and publication at the boundaries where fields converge.
    • An article or book that asks "What does the scholarship in this field mean?"
    • An undergraduate college textbook
  3. Scholarship of application (the integration of theory and practice):
    • Medical diagnosis, architectural and artistic design, serving clients in psychotherapy, shaping public policy, working with public schools, improving water quality, restoring or protecting ecosystems, directing a community chorale group.
  4. Scholarship of teaching:
    • Incorporating, extending, and/or transforming the latest results of the other forms of scholarship, either one╧s own or others, into courses.
    • Incorporating the scholarship on how students learn into courses and assessing the outcomes of student learning.
    • Creating curricula that reflect the best of what is known about how students learn in general, and about one╧s discipline (or college) in particular.
    • Engaging students in research projects or directing them in off-campus dramatic productions.
    • Developing workbooks, essays, or texts for use in the classroom or lab and assessing their effectiveness in stimulating student learning.
    • Devising new pedagogical means to enhance student learning, and assessing the effectiveness of those new means.

Faculty are advised that the scholarship of teaching category does not mean that what faculty routinely do for course preparation counts as satisfying this category. Faculty members regularly choose new texts, prepare new lectures and plan presentations, assemble readers or anthologies, create new examinations, projects, and paper topics, for example. Such activities are expected and are not to be construed as evidence of the scholarship of teaching but as appropriate teaching activities. The argument for considering a given activity as the scholarship of teaching is made stronger by demonstrating that this activity is currently being done by fellow scholars in your discipline. In addition, each faculty member must make the case that any activity viewed by a given faculty member as fitting in the scholarship of teaching category must be accepted as such by the department and FPC.

Finally, FPC does not expect all faculty to demonstrate performance of all four forms of scholarship in PEGP submissions. FPC's purpose in presenting these four forms is to give faculty the opportunity to pursue and describe a wide and valid range of scholarship.