The Provost’s Office has the important task of managing the Rank and Tenure and Annual Evaluation of faculty processes at the University. This process includes multiple layers of review; faculty are evaluated in the areas of teaching, scholarship and service by department members, Deans and, in the case of Rank and Tenure, the Board of Rank and Tenure. This year, the office was faced with the challenge of transforming the mainly paper-based process into a paperless undertaking. Furthermore, the office was tasked with facilitating discussions, deliberations and votes in the most confidential and private manner as possible.

The first step in the process transformation was to create an area for faculty to share their dossiers and work products with departmental colleagues. Infrastructure and Security Services, IT, created an individual SharePoint folder for each full-time faculty. The folder was earmarked with permissions and privileges to allow fellow department members and Deans to review the work of the faculty and write an evaluation. These permissions/privileges were added and removed to each faculty member’s folder based on the timing of each step in the evaluation process.

After written assessments were complete, departmental meetings were held on Zoom. A secret vote was conducted in the areas of teaching, scholarship and service. Microsoft Form templates were created and distributed to allow the vote to occur. These templates assured that only the department chair would see the results of the vote. In the last step of the process, the department chair used the information from the assessments and vote in his/her final evaluation.

All told, there were 369 evaluations done by faculty, department chairs and deans. Over 400 Microsoft Form templates were used to collect over 500 votes. 200-300 files were uploaded, shared and managed in the process.
The success of the online, paperless process can be attributed to the innovations introduced by Sharepoint, Zoom and Forms. The use of these technologies in upcoming academic years will definitely continue to be explored.

Article by Richard Walsh, Assistant Provost of Operations and Data Analytics Officer