Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation

General Policies on the NAU Annual Review Process

1. Instructors - policy adopted by dept. vote on 21 August 2003

• Instructors are not eligible to vote for Faculty Status Committee members. (Only tenured faculty can sit on FSC.)
  
  
• Instructors submit material for the Annual Review process, which are evaluated by a subcommittee of the Annual Review Committees -- one representative from each ARC will sit on this committee. Instructors do not sit on the Annual Review Committees. (Still required to do an annual SOE, which must be evaluated. But they are not paid to take on full ARC responsibilities -- should not be expected to take on same service tasks as permanent faculty. Past experience has found that having instructors on the ARCs has generated some conflict in their not being tenure-eligible.)
  
  
• First Year Instructors follow the same process as other First Year Faculty: they submit a Faculty Retention Review packet to the Chair only in January.

2. Annual Review Committee Structure - policy adopted by dept. vote on 2 February 2004

• The Department's three-person Faculty Status Committee will also serve as the Department's Annual Review Committtee. The ARC will review all faculty members first, then will review each other. The ARC member who is being reviewed will not be present during the discusssion and will not participate in the analysis of his/her own review.
  
  
• Only tenured faculty can serve on the FSC/ARC. Efforts will be made to balance each committee in terms of academic specializations, including: Planning, Human and Physical Geography, Recreation, and Technical Geography. We recognize, however, that given the size of the department, a perfect balance among these many specialities will not be possible. The Chair will maintain a rotation schedule to ensure that a regular rotation takes place each year. Final approval of the FSC/ARC will be by department vote at the Fall retreat.

OLD POLICY

Annual Review Committee Structure

• The department will make an effort to form three committees of eligible faculty who will evaluate each other in a round-robin format. Committee 1 will evaluate Committee 2; Committee 2 will evaluate Committee 3; Committee 3 will evaluate Committee 1.
  
  
• Efforts will be made to balance each committee in terms of academic specializations, including: Planning, Physical Geography, Recreation, Human Geography, and Technical Geography. We recognize, however, that given the size of the department, a perfect balance among these many specialities will not be possible.