Faculty and Staff Development

Click here for Faculty Onboarding Resouces for Chairs.

1) What is a chair’s responsibility for faculty and staff awards?

Chairs should be on the lookout for awards, honors, grants, or other programs that would benefit departmental faculty and staff, and make sure that the faculty and staff have information about such programs. Whenever possible, the chair should take the initiative in nominating faculty and staff for appropriate awards and honors. https://learn-and-grow.hr.ufl.edu/awards-recognition/

2) How can chairs support staff development?

There are many training and development opportunities for UF staff, and chairs can refer staff to training possibilities offered through HRS: https://learn-and-grow.hr.ufl.edu/courses-registration/

3) How can leadership be fostered among mid-career faculty?

Chairs are encouraged to provide opportunities for their faculty to prepare for leadership positions within and outside the department. 

The Office of Human Resource Services provides a number of leadership development programs https://leadership.hr.ufl.edu/, including Advanced Leadership for Academics and Professionals https://leadership.hr.ufl.edu/programs/alap/.

Additionally, the Office of the Provost offers a variety of programs that provide opportunities for leadership and administrative enhancement for administrators and faculty http://www.aa.ufl.edu/faculty including the Academic Administrators Seminar Series.

4) What are a chair’s responsibilities for faculty tenure and promotion?

The chair must notify faculty annually of any application deadlines, and point faculty to relevant information related to tenure and promotion, most prominently the annual “Guidelines” published by the Office of the Provost: http://aa.ufl.edu/tenure.

The chair is also responsible for managing any mid-career reviews during the tenure probationary period. The chair must accurately evaluate each faculty member annually and provide guidance to faculty about requirements for tenure and promotion.

If a faculty member wants to self-nominate for tenure (prior to the end of the probationary period) or promotion, the chair may counsel against it if she or he believes it is inappropriate at that time. However, if the faculty member insists (and they are not in non-renewal status), the chair must put the candidate forward.

When the faculty member chooses to become a candidate, the chair must manage the following:

• The solicitation of external and/or internal letters of evaluation
• A letter of evaluation of the candidate (including explanatory material to help college and university evaluators understand the candidate’s contributions)

NOTE: The annual letters of evaluation as well as the tenure and/or promotion letter are the chair’s specific evaluation, not merely summaries of the file or the opinions of the departmental faculty. They should be accurate and informative assessments, not “cheer-leading” letters. Letters should clearly indicate the chair’s support or non-support.