(Consistent with Article 13 of Memorandum of Agreement)
Addendum
Preface:
Faculty members are encouraged to review Waterloo’s Policy #77 (Tenure & Promotion of Faculty Members) and Memorandum of Agreement (Section 13.5: Member Evaluation).
It is the responsibility of the Director to evaluate faculty performance. As of 2014, the Director will be assisted with performance evaluations by a Faculty Performance Evaluation Committee (FPEC), consisting of 4 elected tenured or continuing faculty members, two of whom must hold a clinical appointment. An effort will be made to strive for gender balance.
In the interest of fairness and transparency, these guidelines have been developed and reviewed by faculty and are in line with the Faculty of Science Performance Guidelines and other research-intensive, clinical training institutions in North America.
Optometry and Vision Science has active undergraduate and graduate programs and a strong record of quality research. The faculty of such a program should strive to constantly improve the quality and reputation of the programs whether by training better optometrists or vision scientists, providing high quality patient care (direct or supervisory) or contributing to the reputation of the program within the community or within the profession. While the following list is in no way exhaustive, these guidelines should give faculty a sense of general expectations.
Process:
The FPEC will evaluate the data submitted by each faculty member prior to the meeting to discuss the submissions. Each area of activity (scholarship, teaching and service) is reviewed separately for each member. FPEC members are not present for the review of their own file, nor for any file of a member to whom they are related. Where data are available, scores obtained from third party evaluations for each member (such as teaching evaluations or clinical supervision evaluations) are compared for context to average scores in the same evaluation across all members. Accommodations such as teaching relief or special assignments should be communicated to the committee by the Director. The committee generally evaluates the files in alphabetical order and attempts to review parity of assessments between similar ranks/assignments as they progress through the files. The committee’s comments and ratings are verbally agreed by majority vote. Notes of comments made by the committee are taken during the meeting. The final rating, the average rating for the School, the eligible members for University Performance Awards and any written feedback are not reviewed by the committee. Scores of 1.75 or 2.00 are intended to reflect specific instances of excellent or outstanding performance. Scores of ≤1.0 are intended to reflect instances of minimal performance or performance that needs improvement.
Scholarship:
- Broadly defined, scholarship includes articles in refereed journals, research monographs, textbooks, expository articles, conference presentations, reports, reviews, keynote and invited addresses, professional/learned awards, refereeing, and innovative clinical or professional practice.
- Scholarship areas generally relate to the fields of vision, biomedical, clinical, and/or educational sciences.
-
Innovative
clinical
or
professional
practice
scholarship
includes
but
is
not
limited
to:
- Establishing a new clinical service or increasing its scope,
- Developing new modes of service delivery or assessment, examination or management approaches, particularly those that become models for the profession, and
- Curricular developments related to clinical practice or service delivery.
- At its highest level, scholarship carries an inference of the creation of new knowledge and is
- best demonstrated through the publication of original works in top calibre, peer-reviewed journals.
- As a general rule, first and corresponding author publications are weighted heavier than other author positions. In instances where there are several collaborators (graduate students and other researchers), the position of last author represents the senior researcher leading the project and is appropriately acknowledged. In other cases, the onus is on faculty members to explain their contributions, if desired.
- The calibre of the journal in which publications appear is a factor. Within one’s area of expertise, reaching for the higher citation index journals is encouraged.
- Syntheses of existing knowledge for the purpose of educating the public or the profession also constitute scholarship, although invited chapters in major texts and review articles in refereed journals is more highly valued than articles in the lay press.
- Publishing a textbook is considered to be a unique and valuable contribution. Generally, authoring such a textbook is commonly ranked higher than editing. The impact of this text can be indicated either by sales or by numbers of programs adopting the text for use.
- Posted professional electronic resources are also considered to be a unique and valuable contribution. The impact of these electronic resources, as indicated by downloads, visitors and/or citations can indicate the value of the contribution.
- Regarding grant support, the competitiveness of the program from which the grant has been received is a factor and the position of principal investigator is weighed most heavily followed by co-investigator status, and then the consultant category. The same criteria apply to contracts.
- Funding for innovative clinical practice is another indicator of scholarship activity. The position of principal innovator is weighed most heavily, followed by co-innovator status.
Teaching:
- Broadly defined, teaching can involve: classroom, lab, and clinic instruction; individual student consultations; graduate student, post-doctoral fellow (PDF), clinical research fellow (CRF) and resident supervision; and curricular, course and teaching method development.
-
Assessment
of
teaching
includes
consideration
of:
- Teaching activity (e.g., quantity, comparative information to other instructors, accessibility to students),
- Teaching quality (e.g., student feedback, evidence of communicative or pedagogical techniques, teaching awards), and
- Educational innovations (e.g., curricular development and design, contributions to external educational evaluations).
- Teaching activity (undergraduate and graduate) is evaluated, in part, by means of student completed questionnaires for classroom, lab and clinic teaching. Focus is placed on responses
- to questions about the instructor.
- Mitigating factors that may be considered in weighing student evaluations are whether the instructor is teaching a course: 1) for the first time, and/or 2) in an area not aligned with the instructor’s area of expertise.
- The principal instructor (if there is one) is considered to carry a more significant role than others (e.g., guest lecturers, co-instructors), assuming that they are carrying a major teaching load rather than strictly coordinating the appearance of a series of guest lecturers.
- Course instructors should indicate the number of hours of the total course time that they taught, rather than a percentage, so that the contribution of co-instructors can be interpreted accurately. Courses with unusual amounts of prep time should be indicated.
- Supervision and mentoring of students (graduate and undergraduate) is assessed as teaching activity.
- Invitations from other educational organizations and institutions to teach are valuable contributions to the reputation of the School. A pattern of repeat invitations to lecture from academic or professional organizations will be taken as a qualitative indicator that the person’s teaching is considered to be of high quality. Invitations to lecture on behalf of corporate partners can also be valuable if appropriate conflict of interest guidelines are followed.
- Evidence of successful innovations in clinical, laboratory or didactic teaching is valued highly.
Service:
-
Internal
service
to
the
University
is
an
essential
duty
of
faculty
members.
This
category
can
also
include
‘citizenship’,
which
includes,
but
is
not
limited
to:
- Being a mentor to new faculty members,
- Available within the School,
- Willingness to take on hard-to-cover courses,
- Involvement in covering extra clinic teaching,
- Available to students,
- Willingness to share research space.
- Any service that enhances the reputation of the University or the School will be valued. Normally, service within the School, the University, optometric organizations and organizations involved in public health, healthcare, education and/or research are preferred (e.g., committee work, appointments, consultancies, accreditation participation).
- The workload imposed by service positions and the role of the faculty member on committees are considered (e.g., committee chairs are weighted more than committee members; elected positions are weighted more than appointed positions, because they usually require previous service as a means of developing a base of support within an organization); however, if a faculty member is Chair of a committee with a modest load and few meetings, the impact of the Chair position on the overall rating would be less than non-Chair service on a more demanding committee.
- All other things being equal, international positions are ranked above national, and national above local.