College of Business Merit Evaluation

I. Premises and Principles

1. A college-wide approach to faculty performance evaluation and merit allocation increase will be followed.

2. The order of importance of (degree of contribution to) the individual performance areas to the overall performance rating are in order of descending priority:

A. Teaching and Learning
B. Scholarly and Creative Activity (Research)
C. Service

3. Basic definitions of performance in teaching, scholarly activity/research, and service in the Faculty Handbook are supplemented by language from the AACSB standards.

4. The assessment of teaching and learning will be multidimensional and will not solely rely on student evaluations.

5. Only items related to the missions of the department, college, and the University may be included as part of a faculty member's performance record on which an evaluation will be based.

6. Although multiple, independent ratings of each individual's performance would be preferred, existing University policies, especially some contained in the Faculty Handbook, restrict the Dean from being directly involved in faculty performance evaluations.

7. With the exception of salary equity/market adjustments, annual merit allocation will be based entirely on performance evaluation.

8. The period of evaluation will consist of the calendar year.

9. Administrators in the college will maintain confidentiality of individual performance ratings. Performance ratings within departments or across the college will not be made public.

10. New faculty members who have been appointed for less than one year will not be disadvantaged in the evaluation process. New faculty members with less than one calendar year of employment will receive the higher of (a) the average total rating for all faculty in the College of Business or (b) their own performance rating based on less than one full year of work.

11. The annual performance evaluation process and RPT promotion/tenure decision processes are independent processes.

12. The rating scales provided in this document serve as a general guideline.

13. The annual merit pool will be divided into two equal pools, one based on the Percentage Method, the other based on the Unit Method.

14. This document supercedes all previous college guidelines. It will first be utilized in 2005 for performance evaluation and merit allocation covering calendar year 2004.

II. Annual Performance Review

Faculty members will be evaluated in the areas of teaching and learning, research, and service. The overall evaluation will be the weighted average of the scores received in the three areas. Faculty member performance will be based on the documented evidence in those three areas from the year under review. The weights assigned to each area will be determined by the following:

The percentage distribution must be agreed to in writing by the chair and faculty member as part of the Faculty Development Goals for the calendar year following the one under review. In cases where the chair and faculty member can not reach agreement, the issue may be appealed to the dean.

Evaluation Weighting Plan:

1. Non-tenured, tenure track faculty:

2. Tenured faculty:

3. Full-time renewable faculty:

4. Tenured faculty with administrative assignments:

5. Full-time Advisors

III PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

In accordance with Section IX of the NKU Faculty Handbook, the chair will review the faculty member's performance based on the written documentation provided by the faculty member. The chair's written evaluation summary will include a rating (0-4) and a completed Faculty Evaluation Form, and a Faculty Development Form. In addition, goals and objectives for the coming year will be set, as well as weights.

A. For guidance, the following scale describes performance ratings in each category and total evaluation:

Evaluation Ratings

IV. Merit Allocation Policy: Percentage Method

The total evaluation score received by a faculty member shall determine, in direct proportion, his/her share of the total merit pool provided to the college for all continuing faculty. The merit increase distribution policy is based upon the premise that faculty with performance ratings above the average for the college should receive above average percentage distributions and faculty with performance ratings below the average for the college should receive below average percentage distributions. The attached examples provide a model for such a policy.

For example, Professor Staff has the following faculty performance evaluation:

To illustrate the merit distribution policy, the examples shown on the following spreadsheet assume only 9 faculty members in the college. For the year the College received $26,640 in merit money (a 4% merit increase pool) to be allocated over the faculty in the College. The base salaries of the 9 faculty which are used by the university in allocating merit dollars are shown in column a. In this example, the total base for the college is $666,000 and the merit pool of 4% amounts to $26,640. The steps used in developing the individual merit increases can be summarized as:

Step 1 Individual Performance Rating - Average Rating for all College Faculty

Step 2 Individual Merit % Increase = NKU Merit % + (Step 1 * NKU Merit %)

Step 3 Individual Merit Increase = Individual salary * Individual Merit % Increase

Step 4 Adjustment = [total individual increases - total merit pool]*[ individual merit increase ( total of individual merit increases] (Only used if total of individual merit increases is different from total merit pool allocated to the college)

Step 5 Adjust merit increase from Step 3 by amount of adjustment from Step 4.

Click to View Examples

Column b provides the individual performance ratings from the faculty performance evaluation model. The possible range of these ratings is zero to four. In the example, the average performance rating for the faculty in the college is 2.6. Professor Staff is listed first with a performance rating of 1.9

Column c is the difference between the individual faculty member's rating and the college average. For Professor Staff, his (her) rating of 1.9 is 0.70 less than the college average of 2.6 (hence, the negative 0.7).

Column d is the individual's merit increase percentage which is based on the amount that the faculty member's performance rating is above or below the college average performance as shown in column c. The merit increase percentage from the university (4%) is adjusted by the factor of the difference of the individual's performance rating from the average. For Professor Staff, the difference of -0.70 is multiplied times the merit increase of 4% (or .04) with the result (-.028) added to the base percent (.04 or 4%) for an individual merit increase percentage (.012 or 1.2%). Since Professor Staff's performance rating is below the college average, the percent increase will be below the average, too - the merit increase for Professor Staff will be 1.2% of his/her base of $55,000 or $660 (column e). In contrast, faculty member B has an individual performance rating that is the same as the college average and so that faculty member's merit increase percentage is the same as the merit increase percentage from the university (4%). Faculty member E has an individual performance rating (2.9) that is 30% above the average rating for the college so the individual's merit increase percentage (5.2%) is .3 above the percentage increase for the college.

Because the performance ratings are not equally distributed across the base salaries, the merit increases (column e) will not equal the merit pool exactly (although the amount will be close). In the first example, the difference between the merit pool ($26,640) and the total merit increases computed for the faculty ($27,980) is $1,340. The total merit increases must be brought down to the amount of the pool.

Column f is the adjustment to the merit increase dollars shown in column d based on the relative merit increases. Each faculty will share proportionally in the adjustment. For Professor Staff, this means that $660/$27980 X $1340 (or $32) will be subtracted from the original merit increase. Although in this example the merit increases are greater than the total merit pool, the combination of performance ratings and base salaries could result in an under-allocation of the total merit pool. If this were to happen, the process would be reversed and the unallocated merit pool would be added to each faculty's merit increase.

The final merit increase for each faculty member is shown in column g and the percentage increase for each faculty member is in column h.

Example 2 uses the same model but the performance ratings are "shuffled" to present another pattern.

NOTES:
* A widely dispersed level of faculty performance ratings will result in greater percentage fluctuations among faculty.
* A tight distribution of faculty performance ratings will result in small differences among the percentage distributions.
* Performance ratings at the college average will receive average percent increases. Performance ratings above the college average will receive above average percent increases. Performance ratings below the college average will receive below average percent increases.

V. Merit Allocation Policy: Unit Method

This proposal for salary distribution is based on the concept that all faculty with the same performance evaluation number will receive the same dollar raise. The process for this method entails summing all of the evaluation numbers (called "units") assigned to faculty and then dividing the raise pool by that total to determine a "dollar per unit" of salary increase. Each individual's salary is then adjusted by the amount of the units earned multiplied by the dollar per unit. Thus, two faculty with identical performance evaluation numbers will have identical dollar increases; the percentage increase will differ if the base differs.

Rating Scale for Categories of Evaluation General Guidelines: