Editor’s Note: @Metro has invited Assistant Professor of English Tat Sang So, a member of the newly renamed Faculty Evaluation Steering Committee (P4P), to submit regular columns about the initiative to keep the College community informed of its progress. He can be reached at so@mscd.edu.

The Faculty Evaluation Steering Committee (P4P) is wrapping up for the academic year. We presented the draft pay for performance evaluation guidelines to the Faculty Senate on April 9, and the Board of Trustees will receive an update of our progress on May 7.

It has been a long year of meetings, but that does not mean our work is finished. The steering committee will meet a couple of times in June or July to finalize some details of the P4P evaluation guidelines, and the College-Wide Evaluation Subcommittee will be meeting throughout the summer to develop the core or common guidelines for the College.

The process of developing P4P guidelines through the work of faculty subcommittees with wide representation throughout the College was very successful. The drafts from the subcommittees were approved through the steering committee and circulated through the Faculty Senate. We received some good feedback and are in the process of revising the guidelines based on the wise and creative input we got. The guidelines for the evaluation of teaching received some especially thoughtful comments, and it is the area where our discussions are most involved. That is not surprising, because it is evident that teaching is the common passion of the faculty.

The work by the subcommittee to develop core or common College-wide evaluation guidelines is off to a deliberate start, with broad philosophical discussions about the many roles of a Metro State faculty member. The P4P proposal passed by the Board of Trustees in December provides for the creation of common evaluation guidelines defining standard performance for every faculty member, that also allow each academic department to determine aspects of evaluation that are particular to its faculty. The goal is to foster consistency of evaluation across schools and departments while accounting for differences in disciplines. The philosophy is to make common what is common, and to acknowledge differences where they exist.

The subcommittee has committed to working through the summer in order to circulate drafts in the fall. Their guiding principles are to keep the core guidelines brief, around 10 pages, and to make sure the descriptions are not overly minute. The final guidelines must be broad, so they can cover the roles of every Metro State faculty member and effectively establish a common standard for performance.