The end-of-year conversations between junior faculty or faculty on continuing appointments and their chairs/directors are designed to be opportunities for professional development, not a part of the formal evaluation process. However, for junior faculty these meetings provide essential feedback and opportunity for improvement before the formal third-year and tenure reviews. For faculty on continuing appointments, these conversations are an opportunity for the department chair/program director and the faculty member to discuss accomplishments, challenges, and plans for the future.
Thoughtful organization of these meetings is one step towards facilitating the development of a community of mentors for junior faculty. Learn more about best practices for these conversations.
Topics that have been identified as helpful for junior faculty
- Review the teaching schedule for the coming years so that junior faculty members are clear on what they will have an opportunity to teach and what they will be required to teach. This is an opportunity for junior faculty to express goals and hopes for future courses.
- Strategize together about new teaching assignments and the cumulative number of new preps for junior faculty members.
- Discuss the balance of conference presentations, publications, grant writing, creative work, and other activities as part of the scholarly agenda.
- Invite junior faculty members to share long-term goals (beyond immediate teaching assignments or current research projects) and identify what support they need to achieve those goals.
- Reflect on the sustainability of the teaching workload, research project plans, etc.
- Consider the role of junior faculty members in the department and in service to the college.
- Are they doing too much? Are they doing too little?
- Ask junior faculty members who they turn to for mentoring outside the department.
- Do they have mentors in their discipline outside of Carleton who can provide guidance about scholarship?
- Are they using their assigned mentors at Carleton, or have they found someone else at Carleton outside of the department?
- (Ideally, junior faculty members would have multiple people to mentor them in different domains. Help encourage the development of a network of mentors.)
Topics that have been identified as helpful for faculty on continuing appointments
- Discuss preparations for any upcoming scheduled reviews.
- Review their teaching schedule for the coming year and discuss goals related to those classes Consider innovations that the faculty member has implemented in their courses in the past year and how they can be sustained
- Plan for the future to accommodate potential leave requests.
- Discuss overall professional goals for the next several years and how the department/program or the College can provide support for those goals.