Probationary Peer Review and Confidential Formative Mentoring

Peer-Review Team

When a new tenure-track faculty member comes to Berea College (at the latest by the beginning of the second semester of the first year), the Division Chair, in consultation with the new faculty member, constitutes a Peer-Review Team of not more than five faculty from Berea College, including faculty from the department, if applicable, the division, as well as outside the division if desirable. Most teams will include the Division Chair and the Department Chair. Peer-Review Team members should not be composed of faculty colleagues who are also concurrently serving in the role of Mentor (see Confidential Formative Mentoring) to the candidate. Only in rare cases, and with approval from the Dean of Faculty in consultation with the candidate, should a former Mentor serve as a Peer-Review Team member. Teams may or may not meet as a group during the course of a review period. The primary purpose of the team is to provide peer perspectives on the tenure-track faculty member’s work and development in teaching, scholarship/creative work, advising, and service, particularly in the form of concrete input for the Division Chair’s letter to the Faculty Status Council for probationary reviews. The specific role a Peer-Review Team member plays in the process (e.g., focus on teaching vs. focus on scholarship/creative work; focus on all parts undergoing review, etc.) will be determined in conversation with the probationary faculty member and the Division Chair. The Division Chair’s letter should be shared confidentially with Peer-Review Team members. Peer-Review Team members should also share their observations about a tenure-track faculty member’s work directly with that faculty colleague as they collect these observations, and they may also offer some advice in relation to that feedback. For example, after a class observation, it is always good practice to write up notes for the colleague and to sit down for a conversation about those observations. Although Peer-Review Team members are not primarily charged with mentoring, they are encouraged to provide information, feedback, context, and their own perspective on the probationary faculty member’s work directly to that faculty member in an ongoing dialogue to the degree possible. Division Chairs may take on a significant advising function. Best-practice protocols and guidelines to help guide observations and assessments are available from the Center for Teaching and Learning. Over the course of a probationary appointment, Peer-Review Team membership may change as a result of consultations among the probationary faculty member, the team, Division Chair, and/or the Dean of Faculty. 

At tenure review, the candidate’s Peer-Review Team and, where applicable, the Department Chair, assist the Division Chair in developing a comprehensive, evaluative letter. This assistance may include, but not be limited to: consultation, review of scholarship/creative work and other materials related to the College’s Tenure Review Standards, classroom observations, student interviews, and review of student evaluations (IEQs) and/or alumni surveys. Once the Division Chair has drafted the letter, each member of the Peer-Review Team and Department Chair, where applicable, receives a copy. Any member of the Team or the Department Chair, where applicable, who feels that one’s contributions are not adequately addressed in the letter is encouraged to write an additional letter and submit it to the candidate’s file.

Confidential Formative Mentoring

Opportunities for individual or group mentoring are available to probationary faculty members upon their arrival at the College. All new faculty members, regardless of appointment type, are required to participate in an intensive two-day orientation designed to communicate not only basic information plus implicit as well as explicit institutional expectations and norms, but also to launch their work as critically reflective faculty members. Any new faculty member may then elect to participate in a year-long New Faculty Seminar led by the Director of Faculty Development/Director of the CTL, often in partnership with another faculty member. The particular focuses for each annual Seminar group emerge from participant needs and combine pedagogical learning and discussion with guidance about College culture, norms, practices, and policies. Supplemental sessions are offered for those participants on the tenure-track to introduce the review process, and among other things, these sessions provide broad timelines and recommendations for documenting work and engaging in critical self-reflection. In addition, during the first year and beyond, the Director of Faculty Development/Director of the CTL is available for individual consultations, to provide guidance and support for teaching development, and to conduct student focus groups at midterm to gather and then discuss responses to student feedback for the remainder of the course. To facilitate risk-taking and honest exploration of challenges, participants can expect confidentiality in the Seminar and all other CTL-sponsored faculty development programming and services.   

As they engage in ongoing development, improvement, and reflection processes in the second year and through the remainder of the probationary period, tenure-track faculty members are encouraged to seek additional mentoring, which is available in many forms. Like the first-year programs, such mentoring is characterized by its nature as voluntary, confidential, and developmental for the participant in order to foster, where necessary, honest self-assessment and critical self-examination and improvement efforts in a supportive context removed from the summative evaluation process. Participants are encouraged in their second year to join the annually offered faculty-led and facilitated Teaching Strategies Learning Community or another sustained development opportunity, and/or to seek mentoring through one of the CTL-sponsored mentoring programs. Research on faculty development indicates that sustained development efforts are necessary to support deep and lasting change. Scholarship on mentoring encourages those in pursuit of guidance and support to think in terms of multiple mentors for different areas of need or growth. Feedback from probationary reviews should constitute an important form of guidance for probationary faculty as they prioritize areas for ongoing growth and development in working with an individual mentor or as part of a professional development group. In working with mentors or mentoring groups, tenure-track faculty members are strongly encouraged to integrate the recommendations of their Peer-Review Team members (and from FSC, as applicable) into their conversations and work with mentors to ensure consistency of focus for guidance and development.