The committee found these few sentences very enlightening, and urges the Dean's office to review this additional material. Collectively, these variations reflect reasonable differences in Departmental cultures and traditions, the priorities of the Department Chairs, the priorities of the current Department merit review committees, and the collective expectations of the several faculties. Overall, the committee considers these modest differences to be healthy, a likely source of satisfaction for Chairs and faculty members alike, and a likely source of insight for the Dean. None of these variations strike the committee as unreasonable, with one exception. There are almost always special exceptions to any Department's standard faculty profile, often reflecting long standing contractual agreements with individuals.
Departments admit different degrees of variation across faculty members.
The committee feels that faculty members whose base weights are subject to adjustment should be permitted an opportunity to negotiate with the Department Chair the elements of the weight vector that define his or her Profs. This is most often the case when variable weights are used, but not always, and we urge the Dean to be alert the prospect of merit scores based on weights that the faculty being evaluated have not been party to determining. There was general agreement across Department Chairs that it is difficult to evaluate teaching, and several Chairs were skeptical about the quality of information from course reviews. A few Departments stratify scores by course level to try and control for systematic variations in student attitudes. Most Chairs have considered observing faculty in the classroom, but the Committee is aware of only one who does.