II.
CHARACTERISTICS OF AN EFFECTIVE FACULTY MEMBER
A. Scholarly Activities: Teaching
B. Scholarly Activities: Research
C. Service and Professional Activities
III.
CRITERIA FOR REAPPOINTMENT, TENURE AND PROMOTION
A. Reappointment of Non-tenured, Tenure Track
Faculty
B. Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor
1. Scholarly Activities: Research
2. Scholarly Activities: Teaching
3. Service and Professional
Activities
1. Scholarly Activities: Research
2. Scholarly Activities: Teaching
3. Service and Professional
Activities
IV.
PROCEDURES CONCERNING THIS DOCUMENT
V.
PROCEDURES FOR PROMOTION AND/OR TENURE.
A. Candidate's Responsibilities
Scholarly
Activities: Research
Scholarly
Activities: Teaching
B. Department's Responsibilities
1.
Letters from External Evaluators
D. Report of the Department Head
A. Department Head's Responsibilities
B. Candidate's Responsibilities
D. Report of the Department Head
VII.
FACULTY QUALIFIED TO VOTE ON THE MATTERS OF PROMOTION/TENURE AND
MID-PROBATIONARY REVIEW
A. Faculty Member's Responsibility
1.
Scholarly Activities: Research
2.
Scholarly Activities: Teaching
3.
Service and Professional Activities
B. Availability of Faculty Portfolios
C. Department Head's Responsibility
IX.
MINIMUM PERFORMANCE STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES FOR ADDRESSING PERFORMANCE
DEFICIENCIES
A. Minimum Performance Standards
1.
Scholarly Activities: Research
2.
Scholarly Activities: Teaching
B. Procedures
for addressing performance deficiencies
Forms
for Presenting Summaries of Activities for Annual Evaluation
D. Reappointment of non-tenured faculty
The Department of Physics faculty
must evaluate its members regularly in order to:
This document is a statement
of the Department's policies, procedures, and criteria for reaching
decisions on these important and complex issues. The time tables
for action relevant to this document is presented in Appendix
C. The policies, procedures, and criteria included in this
document are based on the Department's long standing practices
as stated in a short document originally passed by the faculty
in 1983, the Department's procedures to evaluate the quality of
teaching passed by the faculty in 1989, the KSU University
Handbook, the University's Handbook for Annual Evaluation
of Unclassified Personnel (July, 1990), and the University's
document Effective Faculty Evaluation: Annual Salary Adjustments,
Tenure, and Promotion (September, 1992), a memo from the Provost
on the subject of promotion, tenure, leaves and emeritus consideration
(August, 1992), a statement on tenure and promotion passed by
the Physics Department in the 1970s, and the AAUP Guidelines on
Tenure and Promotion. The KSU Faculty Handbook contains
the University's policies and procedures.
Each member of the Department
of Physics faculty is a unique individual who can contribute to
the Department's overall mission in many diverse ways. Because
of this diversity it is difficult to list a set of goals or criteria
which all faculty must reach or demonstrate
in order to be considered an effective and positive contributor
to our efforts. However, we can state some general concepts which
guide our department as it strives to create an environment in
which high quality teaching, learning, research and service can
occur. All faculty are expected to contribute to scholarly
activities and service to the professional and university community.
Within scholarly activities we generally distinguish between teaching
and research. However, we note that this distinction is not always
easy to make. For example, when a faculty member is developing
a new course or a different approach to teaching, he/she is involved
in research on the pedagogy of physics as well as teaching. Likewise,
when she/he is collaborating with a graduate student or post-doctoral
associate on research, she/he is involved in instructional activities.
These types of scholarly activities will always involve a combination
of both research and teaching. Taking this difficulty of clearly
distinguishing different types of activities into account, we
establish approximate guidelines for the allocation of a faculty
members' time as 50% teaching and related scholarly activities,
40% research and related scholarly activities, 10% service and
professional activities.
The Department's teaching activities
can be divided into three groups of courses -- the introductory
courses (PHYS 100 - PHYS 299), the advanced undergraduate courses
(PHYS 300 - PHYS 699), and the graduate courses (PHYS 700 - PHYS
999). This division is not strictly accurate because senior undergraduates
will sometimes enroll in graduate course, and graduate students
frequently enroll in upper-level undergraduate courses. However,
the division will suffice to allow us to define our expectations
in teaching.
While all courses offered by
the Department are important to fulfilling the Department's teaching
mission within the University, some courses are particularly vital
to that mission. These courses include the introductory service
courses, the courses required for graduation with an undergraduate
degree in physics, and the graduate core courses.
The introductory service courses
are taken by a large fraction of the KSU undergraduate population.
Because of the large enrollments in these courses and the importance
of communicating the content, methods, and excitement of physics
to these students, they require a large fraction of our teaching
resources. In return we gain a general population which can better
understand and appreciate physics and, when appropriate, better
apply it to other endeavors.
The courses which we have selected
as required for each of the undergraduate degrees form a set of
knowledge which all well-educated physicists must know. To prepare
our students for graduate studies or for employment we must provide
the best instruction possible.
The graduate core courses form
the basis upon which the students will complete their research
for a graduate degree and upon which they will rely for the remainder
of their professional careers. These courses, therefore, require
our careful attention.
Other specialty courses are also important to our students' educations. They cannot be overlooked, but they are not as critical to our teaching effort as the course described above. Therefore, we expect all