FAUW's follow-up with FRC
Explanation
The Deans should have received and should have broadly communicated in their faculties the recommendations of FRC’s Faculty Performance Review Working Group that were agreed to last November 2025 and passed those along to individual units for implementation by October 15, 2026, in time for the new evaluation cycle that will begin on January 1, 2027.
Recommendation 1
Each Department is required to have an Addendum to their Faculty Performance Evaluation Guidelines setting out the performance expectations in the Department for scholarship, teaching and service (MoA Article 13.5.1b). It is hereby recommended that Faculty Performance Evaluation Guidelines explicitly require Departmental Addenda to clearly specify what constitutes less-than-satisfactory (a rating less than 1.0) and outstanding (2.0) performances in each of scholarship, teaching and service. We recommend to the Deans to communicate to their Chairs/Directors to develop these requirements for the 2027-2028 assessment cycle.
Recommendation 2
Based on the data presented (Appendix 1) we strongly encourage all Chairs/Directors and Deans to use the full spectrum of the FPR scores available to them as per the MOA 13.5.3. The data shows that the concentration of scores in all Faculties and across all three categories of T/R/S lies between 1.5 and 2.0; yet it is unlikely that all faculty members perform at the Very Good, Excellent, and Outstanding levels. We have note a 'score inflation' over the last 6 years (data to be provided) and recommend that assessments follow the MOA 13.5.3 where "each member shall receive one of the [following] nine numerical performance ratings in each of teaching, scholarship and service." The final score average per each unit, rank, and professorship stream (Research sv. Teaching) should not exceed 1.5. For context, the current average score in the Faculties ranges from 1.6 to 1.67.
Recommendation 3
Nine of the 26 departments/schools that responded to the survey conducted by the FRC Working Group on Faculty Performance indicated they differentiated between “research active” and “non-research active” tenure-stream faculty. Definitions of ‘research active’ typically included holding research grants and supervising at least a specified number of graduate students, although variability in definitions existed. In some departments, research-active faculty have reduced teaching loads.
We recommend discontinuing the use of “research active” and “non-research active” for tenure-stream faculty. The normal contractual weighting for research for tenure-stream faculty is 40%, which means that, by definition, faculty members are contractually obligated to be research active. We recommend evaluating faculty members research activity through the MOA article 13.5.3 instead.
APPENDIX 1: Data from FRC Working Group Report
