Faculty Evaluation, Performance, and Merit Policy

Department of Marketing

MPPS
Faculty Evaluation, Performance, and Merit Policy

Purpose 
This policy describes the policies and procedures used to evaluate faculty performance and make merit pay raise recommendations in the Department of Marketing.

College and University Policies

CBAPPS 3.07 Allocation of Summer School Teaching 

CBAPPS 5.01 Faculty Evaluation

CBAPPS 5.04 Merit/Performance Policy

CBAPPS 5.05 Tenure and Promotion Policy

CBAPPS 5.06 Workload Policy

CBAPPS 5.07 Criteria for Academic and Professional Qualifications

AAPPS 02.30.20, formerly 4.05 Maintenance and Improvement of Quality in Teaching

AAPPS 04.10.50, formerly 7.10 Procedures for Awarding Merit and Performance Raises

AAPPS 04.02.01, formerly 8.01 Development/Evaluation of Tenure-Track Faculty

AAPPS 04.02.10, formerly 8.09 Performance Evaluation of Continuing Faculty and Post-Tenure Review

AAPPS 04.02.32, formerly 8.08 Faculty Grievance Policy

AAPPS 04.02.20, formerly 8.10 Tenure and Promotion Review Faculty Handbook

Faculty Expecations

As per College policy (CBAPPS 5.01), “Faculty must sustain currency and relevance, and will be categorized as a(n) “Scholarly Academic,” “Practice Academic,” “Scholarly Practitioner,” or “Instructional Practitioner” as described in CBAPPS 5.07, “Criteria for Faculty Qualifications.” All tenured faculty must maintain “Scholarly Academic” or “Practice Academic” status. Failure to maintain currency and relevance affects the faculty workload plan as described in CBAPPS 5.06, “Workload Policy” and will be categorized as “other.” Faculty members must maintain qualifications to be categorized as “Scholarly Academic,” “Practice Academic,” “Scholarly Practitioner,” or “Instructional Practitioner” to be eligible for merit raises.

In addition, faculty members in the Department of Marketing are expected to be contributing members of an academic team that seeks to fulfill and support the goals of the department, College, and University involving teaching, scholarship, and service/professional activity. They are expected to carry out their responsibilities with integrity, professionalism, and a spirit of collegiality. Therefore, in addition to the maintenance of qualifications stipulated above, faculty members must meet or exceed the Department of Marketing’s expectations involving teaching, scholarship, and service/professional activity to be eligible for merit raises.

Although this policy provides information that may be used in tenure and promotion recommendations and in decisions regarding the retention of faculty or of tenure itself (AAPPS 04.02.10, formerly 8.09), in order to be eligible for tenure and/or promotion, the faculty member must meet the minimum requirements as set forth in relevant tenure and promotion policies.

Annual Evaluation Process

  1. Faculty members are to upload their Annual Activity Report, Activity Plan, and Texas State Vita to Digital Measures along with supporting documentation, when appropriate, by the date determined by the university, typically February 1st. Documentation and description should address the minimum areas as noted in CBAPPS 5.01 and must note any desired changes to weights assigned to teaching, scholarship, and service/professional activity categories for the coming evaluation cycle.
  2. The annual evaluation of faculty is a duty shared by the Chair and the personnel committee (See AAPPS 04.02.10, formerly 8.09; CBAPPS 5.01).
  3. The Chair will complete annual evaluations during the spring semester. A copy of Chair’s evaluation and comments will be provided to each faculty member.
  4. Prior to the deadline for inputting materials into Digital Measures, typically February 1st, the Personnel Committee will meet, if need be, to decide if it wants to be involved collectively in the evaluation of faculty. If the Personnel Committee decides that it does not want to be involved collectively in reviewing faculty, faculty member(s) that would like to be involved must make their decision known via email to the Personnel Committee and Department Chair. Only faculty members who have expressed their decision to evaluate are permitted to review faculty materials; their reviews will be made available to all departmental faculty members.
  5. Using the details, rubric, and templates provided in the merit policy, faculty members that choose to partake in the evaluation process (i.e., the Personnel Committee as a whole, Personnel Committee sub-committee(s), or individual faculty members) must evaluate each departmental colleague (excluding themselves) on teaching, research, and service dimensions, where appropriate. This evaluation should result in scores of (4 – Outstanding, 3 – Very Good, 2 – Good, and 1 – Unacceptable), although 0.5 or 0.25 increments may be used to differentiate faculty members.
  6. Following this evaluation, faculty members must submit their scores in Excel form via email to the Personnel Committee for review (by March 1st). Shortly after (within a few weeks), the Personnel Committee will compare these scores with the Department Chair's scores and make recommendations to the Department Chair for any necessary reconsideration of a faculty member's evaluation.
  7. Based on the Personnel Committee's recommendations, the Department Chair may make adjustments to a faculty member's evaluation as the Department Chair deems appropriate.
  8. The Chair will review the documents and information uploaded to Digital Measures by the faculty member, to evaluate and rate the faculty member from 1 (lowest rating) to 4 (highest rating) in increments of .5 (or .25 when appropriate), on the teaching, scholarly activity, and service criteria specified in this policy. An overall score for each faculty member will be computed.
  9. The overall score for tenured, tenure-track, and lecturer faculty is calculated using the Chair’s ratings along with the assigned weights for teaching, scholarship, and service/ professional activity.
  10. The evaluation of performance across teaching, scholarship, and service/professional activity will be based on pre-assigned weights to each category. The weights assigned to each of the three categories are 40%, 40%, and 20% for tenured faculty, 40%, 50%, and 10% for tenure-track faculty, and 60% (teaching) and 40% (service) for lecturers. Tenured and continuing percentage-contract faculty may request different weights for the subsequent year during the evaluation process (CBAPPS 5.01). The acceptable ranges for the weights, the sum of which must be 100, are 30-50% (teaching), 30-50% (research) and 10-30% (service) for tenured faculty and 60-80% (teaching), 0-20% (research), and 20-40% (service) for continuing percentage-contract faculty. 11. The Chair will review the Annual Activity Plan for purposes of future faculty development and not to make performance or merit decisions. 
  11. Faculty members may make written comments on the annual evaluation before it is placed officially in departmental personnel files (See AAPPS 04.02.10, formerly 8.09). 

Performance and Merit Process

  1. Unless otherwise mandated by the Texas Legislature or the Texas State Board of Regents, faculty salary raises at Texas State will be based on performance and merit and will not be based on an “across-the-board” or “cost-of-living” basis.
  2. Faculty members are eligible for a merit raise if their performance in teaching, scholarly activity, and/or service results in an overall computed score of at least 2.0 on a 4.0 scale earned over the relevant time-period. Merit raises may be determined for qualified faculty (see “Faculty Expectations” in CBAPPS 5.01) using natural breaks/cutoffs in the computed scores earned during the relevant time-period and thus the natural break could be slightly less than 2.0. Merit raises will be determined as and when the University makes such raises available. See Tables 1 and 2 to see how scores are computed for tenured/tenure-track and instructor faculty, respectively. Two pools of merit money will be used for merit allocation: one for tenured/tenure track faculty and one for lecturer faculty. Percentage raises will be based on the merit pool money available.
  3. According to AAPPS 04.01.50, formerly 7.10, in determining merit raises, the personnel committee, Chair, and the Dean will consider faculty performance over the cycle period as determined by the University. Faculty who wish to be excluded from merit considerations should notify their Chair in writing before the process starts.
  4. After the university determines the availability of merit raises, the Chair will share with the personnel committee a matrix showing the overall scores of each faculty member for the relevant time-period (e.g., see Table 3).
  5. The Chair will share preliminary merit recommendations (i.e., whether merit is awarded or denied and level of merit, e.g., First, Second, or Third), with faculty before making final merit raise recommendations to the Dean. Faculty members may appeal their performance evaluation and/or merit raise recommendation through the merit raise appeal (see AAPPS 04.01.50, formerly 7.10) and grievance (see AAPPS 04.02.32, formerly 8.08) procedures outlined in the Faculty Handbook. To initiate this process, faculty members who believe their accomplishments have been overlooked or undervalued may, within five working days of receiving the preliminary recommendation, request a meeting with the Chair to ask for reconsideration.
  6. If the faculty member is dissatisfied with the Chair’s final merit recommendation, he/she can appeal to the Dean. The decision of the Dean regarding merit raises is final and not subject to grievance (See AAPPS 04.01.50, formerly 7.10).

Performance and Merit Evaluation Criteria

When rating an individual in each category, the Chair will rely upon documentation gathered by the department or College and information uploaded to Digital Measures by the faculty member, such as the Faculty Activity Report. The documentation will be compared to the guidelines below to rate faculty members. Refer to the Appendix for tables on examples of rating/weight system and overall score and the faculty matrix.

Teaching

For purposes of faculty evaluation both numerical scores and open-ended comments in student evaluations will be considered. Numerical scores alone will not determine category placement. Evaluations with a low response rate may be weighted less.

Expected Criteria. All instructors are expected to:

  • Strive for continuous improvement of courses taught,
  • Prepare thorough and challenging course syllabi, course material and graded work,
  • Integrate current examples and materials into classroom instruction,
  • Be available to students during required office hours or by appointment,
  • Interact effectively with students, and
  • Meet required contact hours.

If appropriate, additional considerations may include:

  • Size of classes,
  • Required versus elective courses,
  • Time course is taught,
  • Level of course (graduate versus undergraduate),
  • Nature of course (writing intensive, quantitative, online, competition, etc.),
  • Where taught (on-campus, study abroad, remote access, hybrid, online, etc.),
  • Efforts toward professional improvement and development,
  • Grade distribution,
  • Student comments to the Chair,
  • New course development, new course preparation, and/or significant revision of existing courses,
  • Honors or recognition for teaching effectiveness, and
  • Rating on item 17 on the student evaluations (SE) of instructor.

The following four categories will be used to evaluate teaching activities. Please note that the stated ranges for student evaluation scores might be slightly adjusted downward to allow for natural breaks in scores. Also, frequency of distribution of scores may be examined to identify the influence of outliers. Open-ended comments may be used to adjust category scores upward or downward by .5 points.

Category 4. A faculty member whose teaching performance is outstanding.

A faculty member in this category does the following:

  • Meets all “expected criteria”
  • Is rated at or above 4.50 on the average of items 1-16 on the student evaluations of instructor.
  • Majority of the open-ended comments on the student evaluations of instructor are positive.

Category 3. A faculty member whose teaching performance is very good.

A faculty member in this category does the following:

  • Does not meet one or more of “expected criteria”.
  • Is rated at 4.25–4.49 on the average of items 1-16 on the student evaluations of instructor.
  • Has significantly more positive comments than negative comments on the student evaluations of instructor.

Category 2. A faculty member whose teaching performance is good.

A faculty member in this category does the following:

  • Does not meet one or more of “expected criteria”.
  • Is rated at 3.50–4.24 on the average of items 1-16 on the student evaluations of instructor.
  • Has more positive comments than negative comments on the student evaluations of instructor.

Category 1. A faculty member whose teaching performance is unacceptable. A faculty member in this category does the following:

  • Does not meet one or more of “expected criteria”.
  • Is rated below 3.50 on the average of items 1-16 on the student evaluations of instructor.
  • Has more negative comments than positive comments on the student evaluations of instructor.

Scholarly Activity

With an emphasis on peer-reviewed journal publications, a faculty member’s scholarly activities are based on the quantity and quality of intellectual contributions (per the Department of Marketing’s journal ranking list and/or other journal ranking lists). In addition to these lists, other indicators of journal quality may include, but are not limited to acceptance rates, editorial review boards, journal reputation in discipline, publisher reputation, and journal impact factor.

With a three-year limit, per the evaluation period, journal articles are counted in either the year in which they are published or accepted for publication (i.e., in press/forthcoming). If for some reason, a peer-reviewed journal is not counted or recognized as a publication, a written explanation from the Chair or assistant Chair must be provided.

The Department of Marketing’s journal ranking list will be reviewed annually by the journal ranking committee and will be shared with faculty when updated.

In addition to peer-reviewed journal publications, examples of other intellectual contributions, which may be used by the Chair to adjust a faculty’s score up 0.5 points, in no particular order, include:

  • books, study guides,
  • peer-reviewed book chapters, published book reviews,
  • funded research grants (internal and external to the university),
  • unfunded research grants,
  • peer-reviewed proceedings,
  • peer-reviewed case publications with instructional materials (not in peer-reviewed journals),
  • peer-reviewed paper/poster presentations,
  • invited scholarly presentations, and
  • research works in progress.

Faculty members are encouraged to publish in high quality journals as categorized by the Department of Marketing’s journal ranking list and/or other journal ranking lists. As noted below, publications in higher quality journals earn more publication points than publications in lower quality journals

Journal Category Peer-Reviewed Journal Publication Points

A+

 2.5
A 2.5
B+ 2.0
B 1.0
C 1.0

The following four categories are used to evaluate scholarly activity for merit consideration only. Tenure track faculty members are encouraged to review the McCoy College of Business requirements for promotion and/or tenure. A Category 4 rating, as noted below, does not guarantee promotion and/or tenure. Research expectations are higher for faculty who receive a course release for research.

Category 4. A faculty member whose scholarship activity is outstanding.

The minimum requirement includes three peer-reviewed journal publication points within the previous three-year period plus continuous intellectual contributions. Although some of the journal publications may be learning and pedagogical, at least two should be contributions to practice or discipline-based scholarship.

Category 3. A faculty member whose scholarly activity is very good.

The minimum requirement includes two peer-reviewed journal publication points within the previous three-year period plus continuous intellectual contributions. Although some of the journal publications may be learning and pedagogical, at least one should be a contribution to practice or discipline-based scholarship.

Category 2. A faculty member whose scholarly activity is good.

The minimum requirement includes one peer-reviewed journal publication point within the previous three-year period plus continuous intellectual contributions. It is acceptable if the journal publication is learning and pedagogical or discipline-based scholarship.

Category 1. A faculty member whose scholarly activity is unacceptable.

This faculty member has zero peer-reviewed journal publication points within the previous three-year period and shows no evidence of continuous intellectual contributions.

Service

Both internal and external service are important and expected. Internal and external service expectations increase with rank.

Examples of internal service include but are not limited to the following, and are in no particular order:

  • department, college, and/or university committee work,
  • serves on task forces,
  • teaches in professional development programs/workshops (within the university),
  • student advising and/or sponsorship of student organizations,
  • meets with recruiters of our students,
  • writes recommendation letters for students,
  • student and/or faculty mentoring,
  • non-credit teaching without pay,
  • serves on thesis committees,
  • represents the department at college and university events (e.g., Bobcat Days),and
  • attends departmental, college, and university events (e.g., Graduation)

Examples of external service include but are not limited to the following, and are in no particular order:

  • journal editor, editorial review board appointments, ad hoc reviewer for conferences and journals,
  • conference Chair, track Chair, program Chair, discussant, session Chair, and organizer of workshops, panels, or special sessions for professional conferences,
  • leadership and committee activities in academic or professional organizations,
  • teaching in professional development programs (outside of university),
  • invited lecturer related to the faculty member’s area of teaching/research,
  • promotion and tenure external reviewer responsibilities,
  • nonpaid consulting projects related to the faculty member’s area of teaching/research, and
  • volunteer community activities related to the faculty member’s area of teaching/research.

The following four categories will be used to evaluate service. Quantity, quality and time commitment, collegiality, promptness/attendance, and preparedness associated with service activities will be considered in adjusting service evaluation by 0.5 points. Additionally, service contribution in one area (i.e., internal or external) that surpasses or lags expectations defined for the categories below may be utilized to adjust service evaluation by 0.5 points as applicable.

Category 4. A faculty member whose service is outstanding.

A faculty member in this category contributes significantly in terms of quantity, quality, and time for both internal and external service as described above.

Category 3. A faculty member whose service is very good.

A faculty member in this category contributes moderately in terms of quantity, quality, and time for both internal and external service as described above.

Category 2. A faculty member whose service is good.

A faculty member in this category contributes modestly in terms of quantity, quality, and time of internal and external service as described above. 

Category 1. A faculty member whose service is unacceptable.

A faculty member in this category provides no or very limited evidence of service.

Appendix

Table 1: Example of Rating System and Overall Score for Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty

  Teach Rating Weight Scholarly Rating Weight Service Rating Weight Overall Score
Faculty Member 1 4 .4 4 .4 3 2 3.8
Faculty Member 2 3.5 .4 3 .4 2.5 .2 3.1
Faculty Member 3 3 .4 1.5 .4 3 .2 2.4

 

Table 2: Example of Rating System and Overall Score for Lecturer Faculty

  Teaching Rating Weight Service Rating Weight Overall Score
Faculty Member 1 4 .6 3 .4 3.6
Faculty Member 2 3.5 .6 2.5 .4 3.1
Faculty Member 3 2.5 .6 3 .4

2.7

 

Table 3: Example of Faculty Matrix

  Overall Score Year 1 Overall Score Year 2 Overall Score Year 3 3 Year Average
Faculty Member 1 3.8 3.6 3.6 3.67
Faculty Member 2 4.0 3.0 3.6 3.53
Faculty Member 3 3.6 3.6 3.4 3.53
Faculty Member 4 3.3 3.1 3.3 3.23
Faculty Member 5 3.0 3.0 2.6 2.87
Faculty Member 6 2.3 2.8 2.8 2.63
Faculty Member 7 1.8 1.8 2.1 1.90

 

Certification Statement
This MPPS has been approved by the marketing faculty and represents the Department of Marketing policy and procedure from the date of the document until superseded.

Review Cycle: Every three years
Review Date: Summer 2018
Last Update: Summer 2018