Guidelines for Conducting the Seventh-Year,
Post-Sabbatical Reviews
1. Nature of the Review. The “post-sabbatical” review is a comprehensive review of a faculty member’s performance, not simply a review of the person’s sabbatical.[1]
2. Post-Sabbatical Report. In addition to a description and evaluation of the sabbatical, the faculty member’s post-sabbatical report will include a comprehensive self-evaluation that speaks to the university tenure and promotion criteria of teaching excellence, scholarship, and university and community service. This report is due to the chair/dean by September 15 of the sabbatical year.
3. Input from Colleagues. The chair or dean who writes the review should invite all department/school colleagues, all team-teaching colleagues, the chairs or directors of any cross-disciplinary programs in which the faculty member teaches, and any other faculty designated by the faculty member to provide input for the review on any aspect of the faculty member’s performance that they wish. Preferably this input should be in writing. [Mandating the invitation of collegial input is justified by the comprehensive nature of the review, the claim of the university to be a community of scholars, and the fact that after promotion to professor or 8 years as associate, the post-sabbatical review is the only review of a faculty member’s performance other than self-evaluation.]
4. Distribution of Material to Colleagues. As part of the process of inviting their input, the faculty member’s post-sabbatical report, which includes the self-evaluation described above, should be distributed to department/school colleagues and made available to the other colleagues noted previously who have been invited to provide input. Division and school policies may require that additional materials be distributed.
5. Incorporation of Other Materials. In addition to the faculty member’s original sabbatical application and post-sabbatical report, student evaluations since the faculty member’s last review (of any sort), and colleagues’ input, the writer of the review should consider all annual self-evaluations and three-year reviews written since the previous sabbatical or five-year review.
6. Relation to Promotion. For faculty who are assistant and associate professors, the review should at least briefly speak to the prospect of promotion.
7. Discussion and receipt of the written review. The dean/chair should discuss a draft of the review with the faculty member. The faculty member will acknowledge receipt of the final review by signing such acknowledgment at its end. Such acknowledgment does not imply agreement with the review’s substantive content. The faculty member may supplement the review by appending his or her own statement to the review as it is forwarded by the chair/dean to the Office of the Provost, or by sending such a statement directly to the Office of the Provost.
8. Disposition of the report and review. The faculty member’s post-sabbatical report is given to the dean and chair. The writer of the review attaches a copy of that report to the review when the review is sent to the Office of the Provost. Colleagues’ letters, as well as the previous reviews and self-evaluations that are taken into consideration in the review process, are not forwarded to the provost; kept initially in department/school files, they are to be destroyed after six months.
9. Supplementary Division and School Procedures. Individual divisions and schools may supplement these university guidelines with further procedural stipulations as they wish. A copy of any such supplementary division/school guidelines will be kept in the Office of the Provost as well as in division/school files.
[PLU/ProvOf/52200]
[1] The language indicating this is particularly clear in the prefatory paragraph of (c) of the policy as well as the direct description of the self-evaluation in (i). This interpretation is bolstered in (iii), which requires that faculty who do not take a sabbatical close to their time of eligibility also undergo a review in the seventh year.