UVA Faculty Senate Advisory Document: Faculty Annual Review Procedural Guidelines
Faculty annual reviews are conducted each year to provide information to the department (this also
refers to any relevant school or unit of the university), and to the administration about faculty achievements
and activities, and to provide guidance and feedback to faculty about their service, teaching, and research
activities. The goal of these reviews is to gather information, and to ensure that faculty are fairly evaluated
when being considered for merit raises. These reviews will provide a source of data when faculty are
considered for promotion and/or tenure, and for post-tenure reviews, throughout their careers at the
University. Evaluations should be offered to faculty with a focus on addressing their progress towards
promotion and tenure when applicable.
Departments (or units) should exhibit flexibility with respect to the differing sub-fields of their faculty.
Department chairs (equivalent or designee) will normally conduct reviews of each faculty member. If the
faculty member, or the reviewing administrator, with the faculty member’s approval, requests, a senior
specialist in the faculty member’s sub-field, not necessarily in the same department or unit, will be appointed
to do the review of a particular faculty member. While each college or school will distribute a general rubric
for faculty to note their achievements and accomplishments that year, faculty should be evaluated by the
standards of their particular discipline or sub-field, reflecting the nature of the work that they do individually.
Particularly in fields where books, projects or publications based on long-term research spanning several years
are common, the reviews should be structured to enable evaluation of the part of this process accomplished
in a given year, with an eye towards appreciation of the whole work as outlined in a timeline constructed by
the faculty member.
Reviews should be geared towards the development of individual faculty members. Tone should be
encouraging, professional, and productive. Faculty should be afforded the opportunity to receive feedback
from their reviewer in written form, and if requested by faculty, in face-to-face meeting as well. Faculty should
have the opportunity to provide a response to their review, either in written form or via a discussion with their
chair, if they choose. Chair’s feedback should be offered in a timely fashion, prior to the chair’s meeting with
administrators in determining faculty merit raises.
All faculty should complete an annual report. Faculty should have the option of writing a statement
describing their progress and trajectory in research, teaching and service. This will give faculty members an
opportunity to showcase work done on long-term research projects that might interfere with yearly
productivity; particularly complex or difficult projects; long-term projects which should be introduced with a
proposed timeline; especially demanding teaching assignments, new classes, etc.; and particularly timeconsuming service commitments. All reviews should take into account the well-documented fact that women
and minority faculty members, and joint-appointed faculty, face increased service requirements vis-à-vis
others, in the form of mentoring and supporting other members of these under-represented groups at the
undergraduate, graduate, and more junior professorial levels, and reviews of these faculty members, and
teaching and service assignments, should be cognizant of the extra time and efforts demanded of women and
minority faculty in order to fulfill these roles. Joint-appointed faculty should be reviewed only by their primary
departments.
Departments (or units) should self-evaluate their fulfillment of the requirement to provide each faculty
member a productive annual review, and should refine and improve their review process whenever necessary.
Faculty should have regular input in evaluating their unit’s procedure for conducting annual faculty reviews.