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Faculty Expectations

Expectations For Regular Faculty Members of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Boston University

Introduction

Regular faculty members of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (CAS and GRS) are those appointed full-time in both schools on a nine-month contract at the rank of Professor, Associate Professor, or Assistant Professor. They are appointed in an academic department of CAS/GRS, and when appointed in, or otherwise formally affiliated with more than one academic unit, one department is designated to be the home (primary) department. They have rights, privileges, and academic authority by provision of the Boston University Faculty Handbook and the CAS/GRS Bylaws.

This document supplements, but does not override any provisions of, the Handbook and the Bylaws by describing expectations particular to regular faculty members in CAS/GRS. The expectations of other faculty members in CAS and/or GRS are specified in their letters of appointment as appropriate. Hereafter “faculty member(s)” is used to mean “regular faculty member(s).”

Mission

CAS and GRS together form the University’s largest and most central teaching and research enterprise. They advance knowledge and confer degrees across a broad range of academic disciplines, often in collaboration with other schools and colleges in the University, and they provide the core instruction in the liberal arts for all of the University’s degree-granting undergraduate Schools and Colleges.

The mission of CAS is to provide an excellent liberal arts education, both general and discipline-specific, for each of our own undergraduate students, and to provide high-quality instruction in the liberal arts for other undergraduates who take our courses while enrolled in the University's professional Schools and Colleges, in the University Professors Program, and in the College of General Studies.

The mission of GRS is to advance knowledge through research, scholarship, and instruction, and to prepare graduates for success in their respective disciplines and related professions.

All faculty members are expected to contribute to fulfilling the missions of both schools in teaching, research, and service. To that end, departments are expected to arrange for the formal mentoring of junior faculty members.

Teaching

Teaching, advising, and curriculum development at both the undergraduate and graduate levels is the responsibility of all faculty members regardless of rank, discipline, or specialty.

Each department chair and program director determines teaching assignments in consultation with faculty members and presents the unit’s regular course-schedule for approval by the Dean. The number of regularly scheduled courses defined by the College as full-time effort will normally be at least one course in each semester of the academic year. Full-time teaching effort is defined for each academic unit but varies among units and may be modified on a unit-wide or individual basis by recommendation of the chair to the Dean. Faculty members who are not sufficiently productive in research may be assigned teaching responsibilities above the unit norm until they resume sufficient research productivity. Directed studies, work for distinction, summer teaching, and other irregularly scheduled courses are encouraged and taken into account in performance reviews but are not counted toward full-time teaching effort. Faculty members who choose to teach in the Boston University Summer Term receive overbase compensation from, and in an amount determined by, Summer Term. Summer teaching is not credited toward academic-year teaching responsibilities.

Regularly scheduled courses are expected to meet minimum enrollment requirements as determined by the College. When an assigned course fails to attract sufficient enrollments, the course may be cancelled and the faculty member assigned to another course during that semester or to a course in a subsequent semester in addition to the normal assignment.

All regularly scheduled courses must meet within the standard CAS time blocks, and Wednesday after 4 pm should be left free for department and College meetings. Final examinations must be administered at the place and time assigned in the course-schedule published by the Registrar; any changes must be approved by the Senior Associate Dean of CAS. Faculty members must be available for office hours at least three hours per week between 8:00 am and 5:00 pm. Faculty members, as the instructors of record in their courses, are responsible for the performance of teaching fellows, graders, and other assistants in grading, conducting sections, labs, field trips, and examinations, advising students, and dealing with academic misconduct and other problems. Faculty members are expected to know, and to follow the policies and procedures of, the CAS Academic Conduct Code.

All courses must have a syllabus, presented to the students on the first day of class (and preferably made available online beforehand), that includes a statement of the goals and expectations of the course; contact information for all instructors; the schedule of meetings, work due, and examinations (including the final examination scheduled by the Registrar); grading policy; policy on absences and missed work; and a statement about academic conduct with reference to the CAS Code of Academic Conduct with its URL. Faculty members should order books and other instructional materials for their courses as early as practicable and preferably before registration begins.

Faculty members should give their department a current CV at the beginning of each academic year and a copy of each course-syllabus at the beginning of each semester. The CV and syllabi are copied to the College for reference.

All faculty members are expected to advise undergraduates in their program(s), and all research-active faculty members are expected to teach and supervise graduate students, although it is understood that in some disciplines untenured faculty members are not expected to direct doctoral dissertations.

Faculty members are expected to participate in maintaining and developing the curricula of their program(s), including the creation of new or revised courses and programs of study.

Teaching effectiveness is monitored and evaluated by departments and programs and by the College. The basis for evaluation (and a source of useful feedback to the faculty member) is peer review informed by student evaluations. Departments are expected to arrange for periodic (and rank-sensitive) peer observation, and faculty members are expected to obtain student evaluations for each of their regularly scheduled courses; the department collects the student evaluations and gives copies to the faculty member. Student and peer evaluations are held in the faculty member’s file in the department, are included in tenure and promotion dossiers, and may be requested by the Dean at any time.

Leaves, Buyouts, and Course Releases

Faculty members are expected to teach their normal assignments unless they (1) are on sabbatical or other approved leave; (2) are granted administrative course release by the Dean; or (3) buy out of courses in order to increase the amount of effort devoted to sponsored research.

Faculty members may combine sabbatical leave and leave without pay for up to four continuous semesters. Faculty members are expected to return to the College for at least one academic year following sabbatical leave.

Sabbatical leave is not a reward for past effort but rather an investment by the University in the continuing scholarly productivity of faculty members. Faculty members eligible for sabbatical leave must apply by November 1 of the prior academic year. Applications must include a specific plan for research and/or professional development and evidence of application for external funding where appropriate. Applicants are expected to inform the Dean of any external funding subsequently received. External funding to support salary should be paid through Boston University where practicable, and should in no case exceed the recipient’s regular salary during the sabbatical period. When faculty members receive prestigious fellowships, the College, at the discretion of the Dean, may fund the difference between the amount of the fellowship and the recipient’s salary and fringe benefits during the sabbatical period.

Sabbatical leave may be deferred on the recommendation of the chair or director to the Dean when the faculty member’s unit cannot accommodate his or her absence. Involuntary deferral may not exceed four semesters, and these semesters will not be counted against the faculty member’s next sabbatical eligibility. This provision does not apply to voluntary deferral.

For purposes of buy-out, full-time teaching effort is calculated as 80% of a faculty member’s base salary, with the remaining 20% effort allowed for service contributions. Course buyouts are calculated by the following formula: a faculty member with an average teaching assignment of N courses per academic year may buy out of courses (while continuing to advise students and perform service) by providing from external funds a fraction f = 80%/N of his/her academic year salary for each course reduction. Course buyouts require the approval of the department and the Dean and will not be granted if the teaching mission would be hampered.

Research

Faculty members are expected to contribute significant new knowledge and expertise to their disciplines and to play leading roles in the professional life of their disciplines. National distinction in the faculty member’s academic field is expected for promotion to the rank of Associate Professor and (except in unusual circumstances) international distinction is expected for promotion to the rank of Professor. In all cases the criteria for measuring scholarly achievement are determined by discipline-specific standards; departments are expected to inform higher levels of review about the applicable criteria.

Peer review is critical for measuring the significance and impact of scholarly or creative work. The record of publication in prestigious, peer-reviewed venues is the most important indicator of the quality of a faculty member’s research, although this record must be judged in the context of other evidence of impact such as citations and expert evaluations of the long-term significance of the research. In the absence of peer review (e.g. for research notes, submissions to databases, or invited contributions to collections and conference proceedings), quality remains the criterion, again as determined by expert evaluators, citations, and published reviews. Quantity of publications is not by itself a measure of scholarly significance in a given discipline, but is important to the degree that significance and impact are often built by sustained productivity.

Other significant indicators of research quality based on the principle of peer review include substantial reviews of books and articles in scholarly journals, numbers of citations as measured by reliable citation indexes, readers’ reviews solicited by journals and presses, and peer evaluations of proposals to grant or fellowship competitions. Each of these measures has its limitations, and the importance of particular indicators may vary by discipline and specialty, but severally and together they represent an important perspective for determining scholarly impact.

Activities that do not substitute for publication but are significant indicators of scholarly impact include professional recognition through editorial, advisory, and leadership positions; invitations to speak at other institutions; speaking at, chairing, and organizing local or (inter)national conferences and symposia; receipt of honors and awards; and (where appropriate) external funding for research, including the acquisition of equipment and the support of graduate students, postdocs, staff, or other kinds of research infrastructure.

It is easier to evaluate a faculty member’s contribution to individual as distinct from collaborative research, but collaborative research can bring wider benefits and is encouraged in some disciplines and specializations. Where research is collaborative, scholarly credit should be assessed in proportion to the contribution made by the individual collaborators. Junior faculty members are expected to achieve scholarly independence from their (post)doctoral mentors and from the senior members of their research teams; and in tenure review, publications based on the dissertation or other (post)doctoral work should be significant advanced beyond the earlier work.

Critical editions, scholarly commentaries, and technology transfer are valid categories of research but should be balanced by a record of scholarship that develops new knowledge. Textbooks, grammars, repertories, bibliographies, and those translations that do not make a demonstrable scholarly or creative contribution are normally considered to be contributions to teaching or service rather than scholarship, as are software, databases, and other technological or online resources except in certain quantitative and computational fields.

Service

In CAS/GRS academic affairs are governed by the faculty, and the administration of academic units is a faculty responsibility, so that service contributions are an element of all faculty performance reviews. Faculty members are expected to attend regular faculty meetings in the departments and programs with which they are affiliated as well as CAS/GRS faculty meetings; to participate in undergraduate recruitment and graduate admissions activities and in the recruitment of faculty; to attend their unit’s commencement ceremonies; and otherwise to lend a hand in the operation and collegial life of their units. Additional service is also expected in light of faculty members’ particular interests and expertise, through service on unit, CAS/GRS, and University committees and boards. Appointments to formal administrative positions such as (associate) chair or director, director of undergraduate studies, and director of graduate studies are made by the Dean and may include overbase compensation and/or teaching release as appropriate. Chairs, directors, and mentors are expected to assure that the service undertakings of untenured faculty members are properly balanced with their need to satisfy expectations in research and teaching. Service of an academic nature to the community, K-12 schools, and the general public is encouraged. Service promoting research or teaching in professional organizations of a discipline is properly addressed under research or teaching.

Faculty members may undertake external professional activity, whether or not compensated, up to a limit of (average) one day per week during the academic year. Such activity should contribute to the faculty member's continuing professional development and as such is considered to be research or service as appropriate.

Performance

The performance of each faculty member in fulfilling the missions of CAS/GRS is formally evaluated at the department level and beyond, principally through reviews for raises in salary, mid-tenure progress, and promotion. Detailed instructions and advice about mid-tenure and promotion reviews are available in the CAS Faculty Actions Office and are communicated to departments and candidates annually. Procedures for salary review are determined by the Provost, and CAS-specific processes are developed by the Dean in consultation with the chairs and directors.

All reviews begin at the department level, where CAS norms are informed by standards and processes appropriate to the individual department and discipline. Reviews are governed by the department’s faculty members, who in turn report to the chair. When a review continues beyond the department, the chair represents the department to the College, and opportunity is afforded to individual faculty members to communicate their views to the Dean. The Dean represents the department and the College to the University (Provost and President). To assist reviews at the College or University level, departments are expected to define and explain their unit- and discipline-specific standards in scholarship, teaching, and service.

For faculty members appointed in more than one academic unit, the home department conducts performance reviews and is responsible for consulting with the other unit(s) and for incorporating written evaluations from those units in the final review and recommendations.

Unit-specific procedures for performance reviews must be approved by the Dean and be made available to all faculty members in the unit. The chair or director will notify the faculty members about the process followed in every review as soon as the review is completed. Chair and directors will promptly inform each faculty member of the results of the review and will afford them an opportunity to discuss these results. Unit decisions can be appealed by faculty members to the Dean and then to the Provost, or President, as appropriate, but only after discussion with the chair or director. The results of such appeals are normally shared with the department chair.

June 2007