College Media Network - Search the largest news resource for college students by college students Jobs and internships for students -

Principles for Faculty Reward Systems in a High Performance Academic Culture

By Dr. Joseph Alutto

|

Published: Thursday, June 4, 2009

Updated: Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Ohio State University has evolved over time with a continuous focus on

achieving excellence along all dimensions of research, teaching, and service. Perhaps

most noticeable over the years has been a concentration on developing all aspects of a

high performance culture in which outstanding achievements are aligned with carefully

guided decisions about resource allocations. At its core, the assumption is that

achievement of agreed upon performance objectives should provide the primary basis for

allocating institutional resources. In effect, accountability is a guiding principle that

should be reflected in guidance provided to individuals as well as in assessments of their

performance.

Furthermore, it is understood that for a high performance culture to succeed,

assessments of goals and supporting institutional actions to make such achievements

possible should be continuously discussed in an open and clear fashion. For example,

rather than developing static models of "once a year performance appraisal," the most

effective assessment process involves continuous coaching in which guidance is

provided, and linkages between performance and resource availabilities are consistently

clarified. At Ohio State we live in a dynamic institutional environment in which

continuous feedback is essential, not simply desirable.

It is also important to recognize that the university is committed to developing

policies guiding faculty reward systems that are clear and equitably implemented. Each

set of policies, while appropriately tailored to the specific needs of disciplines and

departments, is expected to explicitly address the following issues:

1. Annual performance appraisals reduced to writing and involving a face-to-face

interaction are essential. Without the ability to explore perspectives through

interaction, and without establishing the surety provided through written

commitments, one increases the likelihood of disagreements and

misunderstandings. Most importantly, without such actions the connections

between contributions and reward distributions will be murky and subject to

inaccurate assumptions.

2. Faculty members can and do contribute differently to the multiple missions of

departments and colleges at different points in their careers. At times it is

important to expect achievements in multiple dimensions; at other points in a

career, research achievements should weigh most heavily; at others it may be

more appropriate to acknowledge greater contributions to our teaching and service

missions. There should be explicit agreement with each faculty member about the

expected contribution focus or foci and the levels of achievement expected of

him/her in a given year. The overall mix of contribution patterns should be such

that the portfolio of department/college objectives is achieved.

2

3. We all operate within relatively defined markets. Those markets should largely,

though not entirely, dictate levels of reward differentiation. That includes initial

salary levels, annual increases, and support resource distributions. Markets are

defined externally and not simply by rank. Thus, faculty members in some

disciplines will require higher salaries or different levels of support than those in

others. Furthermore, within markets, submarkets exist based on perceived

excellence. Thus, if faculty member A in market I is seen as more productive

than faculty member B also in market I, the salary and support levels for A will be

higher than for B, even if they are of the same rank. Such differences are a

reflection of scarcity, and that applies to gender, race, or other conditions that

might create scarcity. While difficult to accept for some, failure to recognize this

will deprive the university of its ability to compete effectively. Interestingly, one

also has to deal with the fact that markets are defined in part by like institutions.

Generally, top tier institutions will respond affirmatively to markets created by

other top tier institutions and not markets based on resources second or third tier

institutions are willing to allocate. Indeed, it is not unusual to find second or third

tier institutions over-committing resources to lure a faculty member from a top

tier program. That does not mean that the top tier program can or should

necessarily let that action set the market rate for the targeted faculty member.

4. Promotion standards should be explicit (i.e., written) and reflect the desire for

excellence in the pattern of contributions expected of faculty members. They

should also reflect the reality that (a) not all faculty members will be able to

contribute excellence in all evaluation dimensions and (b) there is a multi-faceted

institutional responsibility that must be achieved by the skills of faculty

collectively.

5. Faculty members actively participating in centers and institutes, or with joint

appointments, should have explicit a priori agreements about how rewards will be

distributed for specific activities. Thus, if a faculty member is publishing in a key

journal for the center or another department, but one not seen as "top tier" by the

home department, the impact of such action on reward distribution should be

clearly established. If we truly believe in the value of interdisciplinary work, then

rewards should flow from excellence in publications from center/institute as well

as home department perspectives. Similarly, agreements about teaching

effectiveness or service contributions should be clarified prior to any evaluation

period. Certainly, the impact of such interdisciplinary work on promotion and

tenure decisions should be clarified ahead of time and structured to encourage

such activity.

6. Distributions of college/department resources for travel, research assistance,

secretarial support, etc. should reflect the performance level of individual faculty

members. Such expectations must be established prior to any evaluation period.

3

7. Faculty teaching assignments (e.g., measured by courses or credit hours) can

reflect the contribution levels of faculty to different college/department missions.

Thus, in order to secure roughly comparable support levels, faculty not

contributing significantly to research objectives should expect to contribute

through higher quality or more extensive service or teaching loads than faculty

having significant research impact. Similarly, faculty with outstanding teaching

performance may well expect lesser service obligations, and so on. The point is

simply that no two faculty members are exactly alike in ability to fulfill specific

department or college missions. Therefore, resource distributions to support them

should vary, and it follows that evaluation should then be different. The key is to

have discussions about such issues prior to any evaluation period.

8. There are times when faculty members or administrative leaders may wish to

change the nature or pattern of contributions an individual faculty member makes

to department goals. In such situations there should be agreement about

something akin to "investment credits" that a department or college is willing to

make to support the change needed or desired. However, those agreements

should be explicit and in the form of "if you do this (e.g., reinvigorate a research

program or improve teaching effectiveness) at a particular level of success (e.g.,

publish in a top tier journal or secure external funding or achieve specific

measures of teaching success), the department/college will do the following (e.g.,

provide summer support for x summers or provide a teaching assistant or provide

travel funds)."

9. Perceptions of fairness and equity are essential in any system for distributing

resources. If differentiation is perceived to be based not on performance but on

prejudice, stereotyping or other bias this will affect a unit's ability to recruit and

retain the very best talent available. If, over time, such inequities develop in a

unit, good leadership calls for the active correction of such inequities. But this

refers to market based inequities, not differences based solely on rank or time in

system unless these factors are explicitly made part of the reward distribution

system. If a unit's leadership waits for someone to demonstrate "market value"

by waiting for actual receipt of an outside offer, it is simply granting another

institution the psychological edge for recruiting away an undervalued faculty

resource. As a simple practical matter, it is almost always the case that it is more

expensive to retain a faculty member after an external offer is received. A key

function of department/college leadership is to proactively assess the market value

of faculty and allocate resources in a way consistent with such assessments.

Recommended: Articles that may interest you

Be the first to comment on this article!







log out