Promotion Open Session Introduction This document outlines the full - PDF document

Transcript of the FAQs from the Promotion Open Session Introduction This document outlines the full transcript of the FAQS from the Open Promotion Session that happened on the 16 October 2013. What do you expect from the external assessors and if there are any restrictions on them are there any on whom we can put forward? No there are no restrictions; I would strongly advise you to make sure that you choose people who have real standing and distinction in their field. You can nominate up to three of them. This year the Dean will select one of those, the Dean will also select an international referee and the Dean will also select somebody to give a reference around the candidate’s educational achievement s and that’s a new part of the process this year, but it comes back to the Universities commitment to recognise both the education and the research. Now educational achievements are quite difficult to find an external assessor for, so what I expect will be happening will be a landfall in the process in that we will use an internal referee for educational achievements and performance. Frankly when I’ve been up for promotion in the past, of course what I did was I talked to potential referees I think that’s just a polite thing to do and frankly it gives you the best chance of getting a positive report from them. I wouldn’t just pluck someone of high standing who you know of but don’t know , let’s put it that way. You can do it but it’s a risky strategy. Is it a problem if you have worked closely with the individual? Not really, because the reason why we have the process we have and why we only select one referee from the candidate’s selection of three is that often these are people who have worked closely with the individual. So the University or the Dean in this case has the opportunity to get an independent view as well. Principle teaching fellow level 6 promotion you talk about the need to be a balance of teaching research to what extent..? That’s n ot true for principle teaching fellow, so I knew I should have made that clarification at the time, I was talking about people on the balanced pathway going through. FAQs from open session presentation.docx

This question is regarding the Level 6 Chair and Director of Education to what extent is their experience within the University of staff being promoted to Director of Education routes as opposed to Professorial Chairs, this seems to be certainly experienced within our schools mostly of people being promoted on the research route to Chair positions as opposed to Director of Education. Just wanted to get a sense of the Universities view on that … Yes, so again we really are trying to rebalance the situation because there was a view, which probably had some justification, that in order to become a professor at level 7 research was the most important aspect of it. I hope from what you’ve heard that’s no longer going to be the case. We are expecting a significant a 20% educational activity at the right sort of level. That then does then beg the question of University director of education, now those are usually somebody who has and is involved purely on educational track or largely educational track and is delivering or well not delivering, but leading and delivering significant parts of the curriculum and showing leadership in it and innovation in it for example and is working not just within the academic unit, but more broadly either across the faculty or across the University . And over the years and I don’t know the numbers but we’ve probably got 10 -20 directors of education at the moment, so I hope that clarifies your question. Can you say a little bit on the front of the form this time, you’ve got the balance and you’re asked to estimate the balance for yourself, so can you say a little about that? Is that your current balance or over or since the period you were appointed and what its purpose in the following assessment? I think I would want to view that in terms of what I call the area under the curve so you’re presenting to the University a portf olio of work, so what we’re looking for is 20% of that to be education and 20% of it to be research. You may be doing more than that at the current time, but it’s the portfolio we are looking at, not your current activities. It is a look at the portfolio over a period of time really since your last promotion or from your appointment. But it is supposed to be indicative so can any of us judge whether it’s 19 or 21% probably not, but a sense for the panel should we be reading this as someone who really 2/3, 3/4 of what they are doing is education or the reciprocal of that. So you would be looking to someone who mentions in terms of that? I would be viewing it as providing guidance on the filter with which we should be reading this case, and if there are lots of educational activities it just warns us that’s what we are going to see and not get frustrated where are the research papers where are the grants, well actually no the impact of this person is on the educational side or vice versa. Not a precise science just tries to be indicative of what we’re looking for. And of course what follows on from Marks point, if you are 80% education then you can expect the interview will talk mostly about that. We won’t neglect the research but we try and tailor the intervi ew to the portfolio of the candidate being presented to us. How do you measure educational performance? That’s quite a complicated question and there’s no easy answer. Part of it of course is just looking at metrics, the student evaluation scores are part of it, but they’re not the whole of it , as you know you can teach very well and still get poor or not as good evaluation scores as you would like. I think the other aspect of it this year will be the input from the educational referee to get a sense of how this person is performing in education. It will be partly about how you have actually developed your educational activities and portfolio over time. FAQs from open session presentation.docx