Overview:
Tenured faculty are required to undergo periodic intensive review via the comprehensive periodic review of tenured faculty (CPR) process no less often than every six years in tenured rank.
This article is intended to help department staff understand the COLA-specific requirements for this process, especially due to the significant procedural changes introduced as of AY2024-25, as well as provide links to policies and related information.
Reminder: This article is a guide to the process but is not a substitute for the Provost’s Guidelines. An important part of managing and facilitating any major faculty review is to be certain to read the annual Provost’s Guidelines, as there may be changes--sometimes significant ones--from year to year.
Relevant Definitions:
Admin: For the purposes of this article: a shortened version of the term “Administrator” as defined in the Provost’s CPR Guidelines (sec. 2) “Administrator refers to A&P roles held by tenured faculty including but not limited to department chair, director, associate dean, dean, vice provost, senior vice provost, provost, vice president, president, etc.”
The Guidelines also specify that for “Admin” (or “Former Admin”) rules to apply, the faculty member must have held the Admin role for at least one academic year (two consecutive long semesters; Fall-Spring, or Spring-Fall) during the CPR review period.
NOTE: A faculty member who has not been assigned to a WD A&P job for their administrative role would not be considered an Admin for this process.
Administrative (Admin) Supervisor: Per the Guidelines (sec. 2), refers to the supervisor of a faculty member who has served, or is serving, as an Admin.
NOTE: This may or may not be the faculty member’s direct supervisor. For example: a tenured faculty member could be the director of an academic center, reporting to an associate dean in their Admin role (at 0% time), but their faculty position reports directly to their department chair (at 100% time). In this scenario, the Admin Supervisor would be the Associate Dean.
In this article, will capitalize and italicize “Admin Supervisor”, to help clarify the reference to a person’s Admin Supervisor role, especially when individual faculty may hold multiple roles.
AIR: Additional Intensive Review; not a standard part of every CPR process but can be triggered by a variety of different mechanisms (see Guidelines sec. 5.e.iv.).
Areas, or Areas of Specialization: For purposes of this article, refers to categories of tenured faculty responsibilities reviewed as part of CPR (Guidelines sec. 5.c.):
For Not-Admins, each of 4 Areas will need to be reviewed and given a rating:
Teaching,
Research and creative endeavors,
Mentoring,
Service, and
There is a 5th Area that should be evaluated if it is ever applicable: “patient care, and administration”
NOTE: This last area will apply so rarely within COLA that this article will assume it does not generally apply. If/when it does apply, the faculty and/or department involved are responsible for evaluating this area and including it in their reports.
For Admins and Former Admins, only the areas which apply (for the review period) need to be reviewed and rated.
Examples:
Prof. Blue is in her second year serving as department chair and held no Admin position the other years of the CPR review period. We would expect that all 4 areas would be reviewed.
Prof. Yellow is in his eighth year as a full-time Associate Dean and has done no teaching or publishing within the past six years. We would expect that Service and probably Mentoring would be reviewed.
AY: Academic Year; August 16->May 15; or August 16-August 15, when including summer terms. Usually expressed as “24-25”, “2024-25”, or “2024-2025” because it is a span of time that bridges two calendar years.
CPR: The process formally labeled “Comprehensive Periodic Review of Tenured Faculty”, a.k.a. Post-Tenure Review.
EVPP: Provost’s Office (The Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost); specifically, Faculty Affairs and/or Academic Personnel Services (APS), the teams within the Provost’s Office who support most faculty HR and review processes.
Former Admin: Refers to someone who is not currently an Admin, but was an Admin for at least one academic year during their CPR review period.
FTE: Full Time Equivalent; 1.0 designates 1 full-time position; typically relates to budgets and funding for positions. When discussing joint faculty appointments, it typically refers to how the overall appointment (1.0) is split between the 2 departments.
Note: The actual SWH may differ over time within each position, but the FTE established by the joint agreement serves as the maximum hours for either position unless/until the agreement is revised.
Ex. Faculty member with 50-50 joint appointment (two 0.5FTE jobs) might go on a partial LWOP that only impacts one of the two jobs, bringing the SWH below 20 in one department. But neither department would appoint the faculty member above 20 SWH during the 9-month academic year, as that would change the terms of the joint appointment.
Full: Term used to refer to a tenured Professor; sometimes referred to as a “Full Professor” (as distinct from Assistant or Associate Professors)
FWP: Liberal Arts Tenured Faculty Workload Policy Review; see also FWP page.
Guidelines: For this article, the Provost’s Office document of policies and procedures for CPR; rules established on an annual basis, separate from the HOP, Regents Rules, or other sources of university policy: 24-25 Guidelines
Joint (Appointment): For this article, when a tenured faculty member’s holds a salaried Associate Professor or Professor job in more than one department concurrently.
One department will be designated as “Primary,” and the other department will be designated as “Joint.”
When the two appointments are unequally distributed, e.g., 2/3 and 1/3, the department with the greater FTE is designated as “Primary.”
In WD, Joint positions are indicated by a (+) sign, but it is not the case that (+) will always indicate a Joint position. Faculty may have sporadic employment or additional jobs (paid or unpaid). When joint-appointed faculty take on 100% Admin jobs, both faculty positions will be marked as “(+)”, so in those cases, you would need to look at the Academic Appointment information to determine which department is primary.
The most common joint appointment arrangement involves two equal (0.5 FTE; 20 SWH) concurrent appointments; called ’50-50’.
When the two appointments are equal, either department could be designated as officially “primary,” but when using the term of “primary”, it should accurately reflect the official designation recorded in Workday.
Not-Admin: A faculty member who is not currently an Admin and has not been during the review period.
Note: Not-Admins are different from Former Admins.
Overall (Rating): the one rating reflecting a holistic view of the faculty member’s performance during the CPR review period; as opposed to Area ratings (see above).
Rating: One of 4 categories required by the Guidelines, Regents Rules, and State of Texas Education Code to evaluate a faculty member’s overall performance and specific contributions within areas of responsibility. There are only 4 allowable ratings categories, and these are defined in the Guidelines (sec. 5.e.i.):
Exceeds expectations
Meets expectations
Does not meet expectations
Unsatisfactory
For each Overall and Area rating, the faculty member can only be placed in one category. E.g., “Meets and exceeds expectations” is not acceptable under the policy.
Report: For purposes of this article, the written evaluation summarizing the results of the CPR and which must include an overall ratings category and ratings for each of the relevant areas of specialization.
Review AY: The academic year in which the actual review occurs. Important to clarify as the identification and notification of CPR reviewees takes place in the year prior to the review AY.
E.g., Faculty with a review AY of 24-25 will be notified in AY23-24 (Spring term).
Reviewee: The faculty member undergoing CPR.
WD: Workday; the system used by UT for human resources functions related to hiring, compensation, onboarding, timekeeping, and related functions.
Process:
Related Policies:
HOP 2-2150: Comprehensive Periodic Evaluation of Tenured Faculty