REPORT OF THE AD HOC COMMITTEE TO COMPARE THE
UVM LIBRARY FACULTY GUIDELINES FOR APPOINTMENT, REAPPOINTMENT, AND PROMOTION
AND THE
NEW COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT
April 24, 2012
Submitted by:
Trina Magi, committee facilitator
Fran Delwiche
Prudence Doherty
__________________________________________________________________________________
PART I:
INCONSISTENCIES BETWEEN THE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENT AND UVM FACULTY
GUIDELINES FOR APPOINTMENT, REAPPOINTMENT, AND PROMOTION
1. NEW LANGUAGE ABOUT SERVICE ACTIVITIES
CBA 14.5.e.iii says “Faculty may make contributions through effective participation in community,
state, national or international outreach or other endeavors relevant to their professional discipline,
such as through. . . .community partnerships; and the like.”
CONFLICT: Our guidelines do not include the phrase “community partnerships” on the
list of activities; this should be added.
2. NEW LANGUAGE ABOUT SCHOLARLY AND CREATIVE ACTIVITY
CBA 14.10.h.ii.b.ii includes the following new language: “The University recognizes scholarship of
engagement, that is, research/scholarly activity conducted in collaboration with, and/or for the
benefit of, community stakeholders. Such research should be judged on its research rigor as well as
its influence on the discipline or some community of people.”
CONFLICT: This language does not appear in our guidelines, and should be added.
3. DEADLINE FOR REBUTTALS TO THE DEAN’S EVALUATION
CBA 14.5.f.iii says the faculty member may add a written rebuttal to the faculty standards
committee assessment and dean’s assessment “within ten (10) days of the date the letter was
delivered either by email or by email and hand.”
Our guidelines say “The candidate is entitled to include in the dossier a rebuttal or explanation of
the deans’ evaluation, but must do so within seven days of the date of the dean’s letter.”
CONFLICT: Number of days to submit a rebuttal.
4. REBUTTALS OF FACULTY STANDARDS COMMITTEE STATEMENT
CBA 14. 5.f.iii says “The faculty member shall receive from the Dean a copy of the FSC’s and the
Deans’ written assessments and may add a written rebuttal to the file. . .”
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Our guidelines say “The candidate shall receive a copy of the recorded opinion of the Library Faculty
Standards Committee. The candidate is entitled to include in the dossier a rebuttal or explanation of
the Faculty Standards Committee evaluation.”
QUESTION: Who is responsible for sending the Faculty Standards Committee’s opinion
to the faculty member? Is it the committee or the dean’s office (for reappointments)?
CONFLICT: The CBA has the candidate receiving both the committee’s statement and
the dean’s statement at the same time, which makes sense in cases of promotion, but
not reappointment. We need to make it more explicit in our guidelines that we are
referring to the reappointment process when we state that the candidate may see the
committee’s statement and offer a rebuttal. For promotion cases, our guidelines should
agree with the CBA.
5. WITHDRAWAL OF REQUEST FOR REAPPOINTMENT
CBA 14.5.f.iii says “Except in cases where the Dean’s decision is the final University action, a faculty
member may elect to withdraw his or her request for RPT action within fifteen days of receipt of the
Dean’s assessment. The faculty member shall communicate his/her decision to withdraw the file in
writing to the Department Chair and Dean.”
Our guidelines say that “A faculty member may elect to withdraw his or her request for
reappointment/promotion action within 15 days of receipt of the dean’s assessment.”
CONFLICT: Our guidelines do not make sense. In cases of reappointment (where the
Dean’s decision is the final action), one cannot logically withdraw the request for
reappointment after the dean has made the decision on the case. Also, for cases of
promotion, our guidelines need to indicate that the request to withdraw must be made
in writing.
6. MULTIPLE APPOINTMENTS
CBA 14.2 refers to “split” and “multiple” and “secondary” appointments, and says “The reviews and
recommendations of the responsible administrator of any units. . .in which a faculty member holds a
secondary appointment shall be requested by the Department Chair/Associate Dean or Dean of
the primary unit. . .”
Our guidelines refer to “joint” appointments, and say “Library faculty members who hold joint
appointments must provide documentation of effective performance from the secondary unit. . .”
CONFLICT: Who has responsibility for getting documentation from secondary unit?
QUESTION: To avoid confusion, should we edit our guidelines so that we use the same
terminology for these appointments?
7. ANNUAL PERFORMANCE GUIDELINES
CBA 14.4 says “. . .all academic departments and all academic units with responsibility for making
the first recommendation in RPT cases are required to prepare RPT and Annual Performance
Guidelines. . .”
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QUESTION: Do we have library-wide Annual Performance Guidelines?
8. FACULTY INPUT AND VOTING ON REAPPOINTMENT CASES
CBA 14.5.f.ii says:
“The Chairperson/Dean’s designee is required to seek and incorporate the input of . . .the
departmental/unit faculty, subject to the following limitations:
-All departmental/unit faculty are permitted to read and comment on the dossier.
-In all other promotion cases—whether tenure-track or non-tenure track—only those department
faculty who hold the same or higher rank than that being sought by the candidate are permitted to
vote on the promotion recommendation. However, a department may allow Associate Professors to
vote on promotion to Professor if indicated in its RPT guidelines and procedures.”
Our guidelines say:
“The department head shall solicit advice from all members of the candidate’s department. “ AND
“In matters of promotion, only those department faculty who hold the same or higher rank that that
being sought by the candidate may vote on the promotion recommendation. However, in the case
of promotion to Library Professor, those in the rank of Library Associate Professor may vote.”
QUESTION: Although our guidelines are consistent with the CBA on matters of
promotion, they are not clear about how reappointment cases are handled. Do we want
to require votes on reappointment cases as well as promotion cases? If so, do we want
to limit the vote to only those faculty members of the same or higher rank, as is done
for promotion cases? In our guidelines, did we intend for the words “advice” to include
voting as well as commenting?
9. COPY-EDITING CLEAN-UP:
o Page 7, section D.iv.1: The last line trails off with no end punctuation. Recommend
ending the sentence after the phrase “mitigating circumstances.”
o
Page 8, section D.iv.7: Include the full, formal name of our guidelines document.
o
Page 9, section D.v.1: replace the words “ascertain that the recommendation is”
with “make a recommendation.”
o
Page 9, section D.vi.1: replace the words “ascertain that the recommendation is”
with “make a recommendation.”
o
Page 9, section D.v.3: Insert after the word “expected” the phrase “as outlined in
the UVM Library Faculty Guidelines and collective bargaining agreement.”
o
Page 9, section D.vi.3: Insert after the word “expected” the phrase “as outlined in
the UVM Library Faculty Guidelines and collective bargaining agreement.”
o
Page 1, section A: Edit the footnote to end after the word “considered,” and
incorporate the language of this footnote into the body of the guidelines.
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PART II:
OTHER SIGNIFICANT ISSUES TO BE CONSIDERED IN REVIEWING OUR GUIDELINES
1. FREQUENCY OF LIBRARY-WIDE REAPPOINTMENT REVIEW AND USE OF GREEN SHEET FORMS
CBA 14.10.a says that “Reappointment reviews” shall be completed by the department chair/dean’s
designee (formerly a “pink sheet review”), and that library faculty members must have at least one
“Formal Peer Review” at the library level every four years (formerly called “blue sheet review”).
“Green Sheets” review is now called the “Promotion Review.”
Our guidelines and our practice have been to require everyone to do a full library-level peer review,
every two years for faculty members at the rank of library assistant professor. It has also been our
practice to require faculty members to use the “green sheets” form even when not going up for
promotion.
QUESTION: Do we want to discontinue the practice of having library assistant
professors undergo full, library-level peer review every two years? Should we make it
optional?
QUESTION: Do we want to discontinue the practice of using the “green sheets” forms
for cases other than promotion requests?
2. EXTERNAL EVALUATORS
CBA 14.5.e.ii covers external evaluators, but it’s within a section that pertains only to tenure-track
faculty. The Contract Administration Committee advises that we do need to include external
evaluators in our promotion process, but we can elaborate on it in our own library guidelines or
adopt language similar to that of clinical faculty. In such language, we could state who may serve as
evaluators (e.g., “scholars and practitioners,” “former students,” and/or “community members”
rather than only “scholars”) and explain what they are to evaluate (e.g., candidate’s overall
performance rather than just scholarship).
QUESTION: Do we want to revise our guidelines regarding who may serve as external
evaluators and what they are to evaluate?
3. DOCUMENTING EFFECTIVENESS IN EDUCATIONAL MISSION
Our guidelines section C.i.b explicitly require evidence of teaching effectiveness for library faculty
members who teach, but don’t explicitly require documentation of effectiveness for others. This list
does not appear in the CBA. This concern was raised last year and tabled after some discussion.
QUESTION: Should this be changed, and if so, how?
4. WORK CONSIDERED TO BE SCHOLARLY AND CREATIVE ACTIVITY
CBA 14.10.h.ii.b.ii includes a list of items that constitute scholarship and creative activities for
librarians that is not exactly the same as the list in our guidelines.
QUESTION: To avoid confusion, do we want to use the CBA language in our guidelines?
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PART III:
ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING
UVM LIBRARY FACULTY GUIDELINES FOR APPOINTMENT, REAPPOINTMENT, AND PROMOTION
1. Create two separate guidelines documents—one for reappointment and one for promotion—to
minimize confusion.
2. To create the above documents, begin with Article 14 of the CBA (only sections that apply to
library faculty), and annotate and embellish it as necessary. This would minimize the potential
for conflicts between the CBA and our guidelines, and it would give us a single source of
information about the reappointment process and about the promotion process.
3. In our careful review of the guidelines, we noted a number of areas that the faculty may want to
consider addressing or changing:

Guidelines must be reviewed and approved every five years. Who is responsible for tracking
on this to make sure it happens?

Should professional development (attending conferences and webinars, doing coursework,
pursuing degrees) be considered part of educational mission? If so, where in the dossier
should it be recorded?

Do we need to add language to the section on scholarship to better explain the work of
special collections librarians and archivists?

Do we want to add language from the CBA stipulating that standards committees and
administrators cannot augment or supplant criteria in the guidelines (CBA 14.4 paragraph
3)?

Do we want to strike the requirement that CVs be arranged according to the format
provided by the Faculty Standards Committee?

Do we want to strike the work “unsolicited” in the Candidate’s Self Evaluation section, item
number 5, to accommodate the inclusion of both solicited and unsolicited letters?
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