ESS Annual Faculty Activity Report Procedure

The March 3, 2017, faculty meeting discussed and adopted a change to the procedure of faculty annual activity reports to make it more efficient, fairer, and more closely linked to the Faculty Code. The new system includes a request for an annual statement where direction is given to the faculty member as follows:

The department requests that you briefly comment on the merit of your activities in recent years in the following categories (500 words maximum for the total): (1) teaching accomplishments and record (including courses taught, degree of commitment, and enrollment) (2) impact and quality of your research and scholarship, (3) identifiable professional service at all levels (including outreach activities). Faculty should include any contributions (within any of the three categories) that address diversity and equal opportunity. Merit is assessed in ESS in these categories according to the Faculty Code as described in the document on the ESS intranet Faculty Policies (“Merit evaluation: Levels considered in annual faculty merit reviews”).

The purpose of the annual statement is to allow faculty members to make their own clear case for merit in the three categories that have to be considered for merit according to the Faculty Code. It better ensures fairness and efficiency because the faculty member informs the Tenure, Merit & Promotion Committee (or Executive Committee for full professors) about what they think is important in their record.

A faculty member cannot be considered for merit without submitting an annual faculty activity report.

New annual faculty activity report components and procedure:

1. An annually updated CV (including bibliography) in a standardized format based on the list of CV elements required for tenure and promotion packages (see below)
2. An annual statement from the faculty member on their merit with guidance as described above in italics.
3. The entire report is uploaded as two documents – a CV and a personal statement (pdf’s only) – to the ESS web intake page.

The faculty agreed that AY 2016-2017 is a transitional year for changing the reporting
requirements. Although all faculty members must switch in AY 2017-2018, faculty may
choose to use the current system during the transition period. The current system will be slightly modified as follows:

1. The usual faculty activity report (FAR) is still completed.
2. The usual CV (including bibliography) is still updated as required by the annual
   activity report.
3. The FAR section for “highlights” at the end will be replaced by an annual statement from the faculty person on their merit with guidance as described above in italics (minus the statement “(including courses taught, degree of commitment, and enrolment)” because this is already in the FAR).

Faculty Curriculum vitae (required elements, where applicable, and their order)

Faculty CVs submitted in the new system will include the following sections in the
following order, which is modified from the format and order required for a CV for tenure or promotion within the College of Environment. A full, cumulative CV is essential because the Faculty Code says, “reviews shall consider the faculty member’s cumulative record”.

• Education and Employment
• Professional offices/awards/service
• UW committees/duties/service
• Invited talks; winter/summer school involvement; outreach
• List of past and present student advisees (graduate and undergraduate); recent graduate student committee membership*
• Postdocs supervised past and present*
• Research grants/contracts (awarded and pending)*
• Conference/workshop presentations
• Peer-reviewed publications (indicating whether submitted, in press, or published), indicating role in multi-author papers, including mentored authors
• Non-refereed materials reflecting scholarly and creative activities

*While a full CV needs to be submitted for merit evaluation, faculty may choose to delete one or more of these sections for a public CV that is linked online.

Update History

2/10/2024; Revised 3/1/2021 to reflect the guidance in the Faculty Code, section 24-32-E.