i. institutional support and commitment to continuous improvement

I. Institutional Support and Commitment to Continuous Improvement
B) Institutional assessment
There are a number of institution-wide assessments that are regularly practiced in the course of the
academic year, which include: course evaluations; Curriculum Committee and Academic Steering
Committee evaluation of proposed new or altered courses and programs; annual budget review;
institutional part-time promotion review; part-time faculty evaluations; Full Professor Review
Committee; contract and tenure reviews; departmental self-studies; adjunct stabilization review; recent
Strategic Planning Initiatives; and two-year formal self-study processes undertaken each decade in
preparation for regional accreditation. The process of the Curriculum Committee is discussed in detail
in section II.2.3 Curriculum Review and Development of the APR. The Strategic Planning process is
described in section I.1.4 Long-Range Planning. The remaining examples are described briefly below:
1) Course evaluations
Near the end of every semester, each course at SAIC is evaluated by the students via an anonymous
evaluation form. Students evaluate the faculty, the facilities and their own performance. Short
written answers are most common; therefore, these forms are essentially qualitative rather than
quantitative. Faculty members leave the classroom after distributing the evaluations, and a student
in the class collects and delivers the completed forms to the Office of Student Affairs. The most
recent two semesters of evaluations, organized by class, semester and instructor, are available for
students and faculty to examine. Evaluations from earlier semesters are stored and, under certain
restrictions, shared electronically. Evaluations are routinely used in assessing faculty members in
their departments and by committees when considering promotions.
2) Budget review
Periodic budget review and capital asset requests are also opportunities for departments to assess
and prioritize their operational needs.
The Deans Office—specifically the Associate Dean and the Assistant Director of Academic
Administration—meet periodically with Department Chairs and Administrative Directors to evaluate
their departmental budgets, which include both discretionary (e.g. travel and research support
money) and operational (equipment, departmental purchases, office expenses, etc.) funds. Annually,
toward the end of the third quarter of each fiscal year, departments may petition the Deans Office to
redistribute monies among different line items. Final budgets are approved by the Fiscal Office.
Departments may petition Institutional Resources and Facilities Management (IRFM) for one-time
capital assets expenses. The Director of Facilities Management and Budget Planning compiles such
requests, which are filled through committee negotiation including staff from IRFM, the Deans
Office, Fiscal Affairs, and the Fiscal Affairs Committee, which is one of the governance committees
of the Faculty Senate. Recent recessionary tendencies in the global marketplace have made this
regular practice an even more incisive opportunity for assessment, as fiscal planning has been more
conservative over the past two years, which is discussed more fully below.
3) Adjunct stabilization
An aspirational goal of SAIC Faculty Handbook is to “strive to maintain a ratio as high as possible
of full-time to part-time faculty.” The current goal is to institutionally move toward a model in which
half of all classes within a department are taught by full-time faculty, with the remaining classes
taught by part-time faculty, half of whom are adjunct faculty. Within the adjunct population, the
School strives for a balanced, stable distribution in which the greatest number of adjuncts are
Adjunct Assistant Professors, with fewer Adjunct Associate Professors, and the smallest number of
Adjunct Professors.
41 | Spring 2011
SECTION I Institutional Support and Commitment to Continuous Improvement