I like words you can roll around in your mouth like a good wad of Red Man
and spit out with a three-dimensional satisfaction. I suppose that's from my
rogue senior citizen father -- "live long enough to be a burden to your
children" -- who uses them along with dagnabbit and consarned, usually as an
adjective before "Californians!"

I looked bamboozled up just now, and it is of unknown origin, nothing about
bamboo, and I will advisedly use the passive voice because I would guess
that the source of our confusion is of unknown origin, and beside the point.

The point is that the PRC has been laboring under a misconception: the bold
type in the implementation document is NOT sacrosanct which I will
demonstrate below. Someone at the Friday resolution meeting brought a copy
of the UTK Implementation Plan and pointed out editorial changes, but we had
too much to do to follow up. I have finally had time to down-load their plan
and compared at least the most important part with the Trustees mandate, and
find significant emendments, including incorporation of the monetary reward
in their own resolution. Of course they also deleted passages of instruction
that obviously have no place in a Faculty Handbook, such as "Each campus
will..."

You decide. Here is their section on Annual Performance and Planning Review,
with the BOLD TYPE their FACULTY insertions. Compare this critical section
with ours.

Each faculty member and his or her department will engage in a formal annual
performance-and-planning review, examinsing the previous year's activities
IN TEACHING, RESEARCH/CREATIVE ACTIVITY, AND SERVICE and planning what
should occur during the coming year. THE RESULTS OF THESE EVALUATIONS WILL
BE USED TO REWARD FACULTY PERFORMANCE. Each faculty member's Annual
Perfomance-and Planning review should proceed from guidelines and criteria
contained in departmental and collegiate by-laws that are appropriate to the
department, college, and campus. A document summarizing the review WILL
INCLUDE OVERALL RATING OF THE FACULTY MEMBER'S PERFORMANCE AS EXCEEDS
EXPECTATIONS FOR RANK, MEETS EXPECTATIONS FOR RANK, NEEDS IMPROVEMENT FOR
RANK, OR UNSATISFACTORY PERFORMANCE FOR RANK. This document must be signed
by the faculty member (to acknowledge receipt of the review document) and
the department head. COPIES MUST BE PROVIDED TO THE FACULTY MEMBER AND sent
to the dean.  SIGNING THE FORM DOES NOT NECESSARILY INDICATE THE FACULTY
MEMBER'S AGREEMENT WITH THE CONTENT OF THE DOCUMENT. THE FACULTY MEMBER MAY
SUBMIT A REBUTTAL TO THE EVALUATION.  A faculty member whose performance is
deemed to NEED IMPROVEMENT MUST CONSULT WITH THE DEPARTMENT HEAD TO DEVELOP
A WRITTEN STATEMENT OF AREA(S) NEEDING ATTENTION.  A faculty member whose
performance is deemed to be unsatisfactory shall be ineligible for rewards
and must provide to the department head a written interim progress report of
DEVELOPMENTAL steps taken to IMPROVE performance in area(s) noted as
unsatisfactory. The dean must REVIEW AND CONCUR WITH ANY UNSATISFACTORY
RATING. THEREAFTER, the dean must notify the campus chief academic officer
of all faculty members whose performance is deemed unsatisfactory.

Because I did this late last night, I may have some errors, but I think this
does illustrate the idea that we can incorporate our resolution AND many
other important issues surrounding the EDO process. While time and your
patience does not allow a fuller account, let me highlight a few other
points I discovered:

Their Cumulative Review (CR) has a THREE-PERSON REVIEW COMMITTEE of faculty
members.  Those EXCEED OR MEET EXPECTATIONS FOR RANK (our merit and
exceptional merit) ARE ELIGIBLE FOR PAY INCREMENTS ACCORDING TO LEVELS
ESTABLISHED BY THE UNIVERSTIY OF TENNESSEE, KNOXVILLE.

By the way, there are very important and useful points in our own PRC
version that we should retain; I don't think we should dismiss their work on
this.

I didn't scrutinize their probationary faculty section, but I urge those of
you in that limbo status do so. I did notice that they include under
suspension of probationary period, item C: THE FACULTY MEMBER IS GRANTED A
LEAVE OF ABSENCE UNDER THE UTK FAMILY CARE POLICY. Look for that one in the
Trustees statement. I gather from a Raven exchange last year that such leave
at UTC is ad hoc, up to the faculty member's (normally a woman) boss
(usually a man). Certainly we must insert such a clause in our handbook (we
can define the policy later after looking at other examples) in the sense of
equal pay for equal work, and equal leave options for equal labor (child
bearing).

Certainly the Trustees won't argue that motherhood in Chattanooga is less
important than in Knoxville. Some policies DO need to be system-wide, and
especially this one since we are TRYING to employee more female faculty to
reflect our largely female student body. By the way, what is the gender
distribution of the Trustees?

Enough for now, my 8:00 class approaches. While it seems we may have to live
with an annual employment situation, we must protect ourselves with a
faculty-designed plan to give as much protection as possible. There is a lot
more to this, but enough for now.

Richard Rice
History