Guidelines for Faculty Annual Reports
As a full-time member of the faculty, you are required to prepare a calendar year annual report. This report serves as input to the annual evaluation that will be prepared by your evaluator (faculty mentor for postdoctoral faculty; chair, director or dean for faculty appointed in a department, center/institute or college, respectively). Faculty evaluations are intended to be both formative (contributing to your ongoing professional development) and summative (contributing to contract renewal, promotion and salary adjustment decisions).
Your evaluator will integrate input from your annual report with their own professional observations of your work throughout the year. A faculty member who does not complete their annual report by the published deadline or any extensions granted for extenuating circumstances, will be assigned an overall score of 0 (not evaluated), unless evaluator observations over the course of the year indicate a score of 1 (failure to meet responsibilities) or 2 (needs improvement) are warranted. A faculty member receiving an overall score below 3 (including 0) will be ineligible for merit- or performance-based salary adjustments until the next Annual Performance Review cycle is concluded. A faculty member receiving an overall score of 1 will be ineligible for across-the-board salary adjustments until the next Annual Performance Review cycle is concluded.
Faculty reports have six content sections that you may report on and receive category scores for. Report in all content sections that are relevant to your job type, workload assignments, and expectations defined in prior year annual evaluations. Other sections will not be evaluated and will not contribute to your overall evaluation score. Consult with your supervisor if you are uncertain whether one or more of these sections should be included in your report. Each section you do include in your report should include a narrative discussion of your accomplishments over the calendar year you are reporting on along with your plans during the next calendar year. Note that you should aim to provide valuable information for the evaluation process while being reasonably concise (if your supervisor does not provide length recommendations, aim for about half a page per section you complete). The type of accomplishments and plans to report in each content section are summarized in the next section.
Faculty Annual Report Content Sections
Teaching
The teaching section of your annual report should include a narrative reflection on your teaching efforts, typically with respect to for-credit courses unless your supervisor directs you to discuss non-credit teaching efforts. It is relevant to discuss mechanisms you use to create an inclusive climate in your classroom or asynchronous course, new pedagogy or assessment types you have implemented with reflection on what worked well and what you will change in the future, special efforts you made to support student academic success and learning, course design/redesign efforts, any internal grants you applied for or received related to course or program design/redesign, any professional development activities you engaged in to improve your teaching, and student responses to your teaching. You do not need to include all of these in any single annual report! Your teaching narrative should illustrate your commitment to providing a valuable learning experience for your students as well as your commitment to continual improvement as a teacher. You should attach copies of SETE evaluations and comments to your annual report for all courses you taught during the calendar year (note that some course types and enrollment sizes will not have SETE evaluations available).
Advising/Mentoring
The advising/mentoring section of your annual report should include a narrative reflection on your academic advising and mentoring efforts. It is relevant to discuss your efforts to provide your academic advisees with quality advice supporting their academic progress. It is also relevant to discuss your effort to provide your mentees (whether formally assigned or not) with essential professional development experiences (such as your work to help them develop and deliver presentations at professional conferences or to produce creative works for juried exhibitions) and career advice, efforts to connect advisees (whether formally assigned or not) with academic, psychosocial, and financial supports, and any professional development activities you engaged in to improve your skills as an advisor and mentor.
Scholarship/Creative Activities
The scholarship/creative activities section of your annual report should include a narrative reflection on your scholarship and creative activities for the year and plans for the coming year. As scholarly/creative products vary widely by discipline (ranging from published books and refereed journal articles to juried or invitational exhibitions), please refer to your department or college promotion guidelines for examples of scholarship/creative products and reflections of scholarly/creative impact you should discuss in your narrative. You may also reflect on any internal grants you applied for or received for your scholarship/creative activities and any professional development activities you engaged in to improve skills relevant to your scholarship/creative activity.
External Support
The external support section of your annual report should include your efforts to apply for and accomplishments in winning external support for projects in the areas of teaching/curriculum, scholarship/creative activities, professional service activities (such as funding for conferences or symposia), outreach activities, and other project types. Note that any support mechanism restricted to University of Memphis faculty or employees should not be reported in this section but can be reported in the most appropriate other section (examples of internal support mechanisms include research grants from colleges or centers and Community of Research Scholars/CoRS grants from the Division of Research and Innovation). You may also discuss any professional development activities you engaged in to improve your skills in applying for external support.
Outreach
The outreach section of your annual report should include your efforts in providing programs, services, activities, or expertise to those outside the university community for the benefit of participants that are not in your scholarly/creative discipline (so a talk you give to a rotary club would be outreach but a talk you give at a professional conference should be in the scholarship/creative activity section). You may also reflect on any internal grants you applied for or received for your outreach activities.
Service
The service section of your annual report should include a narrative reflection on your departmental, college, university, and professional service activities. Service activities may be assigned to you (such as service on a departmental committee), or you may elect to perform them (such as volunteering to serve as the faculty advisor for a registered student organization). You may also reflect on any internal grants you applied for or received related your service activities. Activities such as student recruitment and fundraising for departmental or university programs from private sources are among those that can be reported in the service section.