The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of the university’s operation and, in turn, every faculty and staff member. The University of Illinois is committed to the welfare and well-being of our faculty and staff and acknowledges the differential and negative impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic may have on career development. In particular, many women faculty and faculty of color have faced significant challenges in managing the pandemic. As an executive officer, you have a responsibility to make sure that every faculty and staff member in your unit has an opportunity to succeed.
This memo discusses how you can provide support to faculty, including tenure track and specialized faculty. Guidance about supporting staff will be forthcoming in a future message.
Understanding the Pandemic’s Impact
During the Spring 2021 semester, the university encourages you to have candid conversations with the faculty in your unit about how the pandemic has affected their scholarly progress; how it has influenced their goals; and whether they remain on target to achieve their objectives. This is particularly important for junior and mid-career tenure-stream faculty. It is also important for specialized faculty--while their career progression might not be affected in the same way as tenure-stream faculty, it is still essential to discuss the pandemic’s impact on their well-being, performance and plans.
- Emphasize the purpose of these conversations is not the evaluation of their scholarly activities; rather, you are interested in discussing the challenges they have confronted and ways to support them and help them re-build scholarly momentum.
- Be proactive in asking about the impact of the pandemic on scholarly activities. Help each faculty member to reflect on the pandemic’s effect on their activities, effort, and goals.
- Help faculty identify strategies and actions to get back on track. Ask what the unit can do to support those activities (e.g., rearranging teaching schedules; modifying service obligations; additional mentoring opportunities; seed funding to re-start research; etc.). Where appropriate, discuss the impact of the pandemic on the faculty member’s graduate students.
- Provide faculty with an opportunity to discuss the pandemic’s impact through your annual review process. For some, it will be important to document personal challenges and professional obstacles. Others may prefer not to address these issues in the annual review process. Be flexible with your approach and respect the choices of the individual.
- When making decisions that require you to evaluate performance (e.g., merit raises), consider using accomplishments over a multi-year window rather than just focusing on the last year.
Developing a Plan
While each individual faculty member will have a unique experience, it is likely that they will fall into one of four situations:
- the pandemic has enhanced their progress by creating new opportunities for research and scholarship;
- the pandemic has had only a minor disruption on scholarly progress; the faculty member remains on target (or close to it) to meet previously identified objectives;
- the pandemic has led to a significant delay in the ability of the faculty member to complete their scholarly endeavor. This delay may be due to personal (e.g., illness, family care, mental distress, etc.) or professional (e.g., lab/studio/library/archives shut down; research subjects unavailable, etc.) reasons, but with extra time the faculty member should be able to complete the work;
- the pandemic has disrupted the faculty member’s progress in such a way that it is impossible to continue the previous research program. The faculty member will have to reconsider their objectives and plan of action.
The specific circumstances of each faculty member will vary, but in general, faculty in categories 1 and 2 can be encouraged to continue on track. For faculty who have experienced a more significant disruption, you should work closely with that faculty member and a group of mentors to craft a plan to get the research program moving again. For some cases, this may simply involve an additional rollback (e.g., “Research subjects weren’t available last year; they can be tested next year.” “It was impossible to travel to the archives; you can access them next year.”). Other situations may be more complicated. In those cases, you should work with the faculty member to redefine scholarly objectives and priorities; identify attainable milestones; re-focus plans on core objectives; and/or connect with new opportunities. These may be difficult conversations, but faculty will appreciate your guidance and interest.
Refining Expectations for Promotion
It is also important to have conversations with senior faculty—the individuals who will be evaluating their colleagues for promotion. These conversations will shape their expectations about what activities and contributions are reasonable, appropriate, and feasible for tenure and promotion within the context of COVID-19.
- Help senior faculty understand the pressures and challenges of managing careers during the pandemic, including issues around childcare, senior care, and mental distress.
- Discuss how the pandemic has affected the discipline more broadly (e.g., changes in conferences, funding opportunities, etc.).
- Remind colleagues that Provost Communication #9 asks them to apply a forward-looking judgment about a candidate’s potential based on the quality and impact of the work, rather than simply counting publications or meeting a numeric benchmark. Help them reflect on what this implies for upcoming decisions.
- Discuss emerging expectations with your dean, to make sure the college understands and is comfortable with your unit’s position.
Connecting Conversations
You need to connect these conversations by discussing your unit’s expectations with the junior, mid-career, and specialized faculty. While the university will evaluate each candidate’s research, teaching, service, and engagement activities within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the university still expects excellence. Even with the challenges of the pandemic, faculty must demonstrate visible and meaningful contributions to the research, teaching, service, and engagement missions of our institution. You need to be clear about what your unit expects when it comes to those concrete contributions.
The pandemic is likely to have potential long-term impacts, so these types of conversations within units, colleges and the university will have to occur repeatedly over the coming years.
Modifications to Communications #9 and #26
The university is implementing temporary modifications to Communications #9 and #26 to recognize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty careers. These modifications will remain in place for several years.
The modifications provide an opportunity for the faculty candidate to indicate how the pandemic affected the candidate’s professional activities and accomplishments, including disruptions and new opportunities.
The modified language reminds both internal and external evaluators to consider the candidate’s research, teaching, service, and engagement contributions within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Evaluators must recognize that they cannot simply rely on traditional milestones and benchmarks. Instead, they must take special care to evaluate the candidate’s record and make inferences about a candidate’s future potential in light of the pandemic.
We encourage you to read both Communications carefully as you begin to consider promotion cases for Fall 2021.
Modifications to Annual Reviews and Third Year Review
The university is also making similar temporary modifications to Communications #13 (Third Year Review) and #21 (Annual Faculty Review). The modifications encourage units to consider the context of the COVID-19 pandemic when making their evaluations. These reviews are important opportunities to check in with faculty and staff about their progress and communicate about expectations.
Tenure Rollbacks
In March 2020, the university established a COVID-19 rollback to accommodate the impact of the pandemic on pre-tenure faculty. The COVID-19 rollback remains available to pre-tenure faculty through August 15, 2021. Probationary faculty currently in tenure code 5 (i.e., those scheduled to be reviewed in AY 2021-22) and Q appointments scheduled to be reviewed in AY 2021-22 must apply for the COVID-19 rollback by April 15, 2021.
Rollback requests for COVID-19 will not count against any limit on the overall number of rollbacks.
Consistent with existing policy, faculty who take a rollback for COVID-19-related reasons may later choose to apply for tenure “early” (i.e., on a timeline consistent with their original tenure clock) if they choose to do so. There is no penalty for those who come up “early.” That is, those candidates are not held to a higher standard than those who are evaluated “on time.”
As an executive officer, it is imperative that you impress upon everyone in the unit that taking a rollback does not affect the evaluation of the candidate for promotion and/or tenure. The fundamental question in the decision to promote/tenure is whether doing so is in the best interest of the university. The overall time to consideration is not a factor in that decision.
The university is not currently planning a second COVID-rollback opportunity. However, the university will entertain requests for an additional rollback, if one is necessary, through the usual process in Communication #16. The university will interpret the eligibility requirements flexibly and generously and will recognize circumstances such as childcare and mental distress as justifications for an additional rollback. Faculty may seek an additional rollback to address personal issues arising from the pandemic (e.g., illness, family illness, child-care, mental distress) or to address an extended disruption in professional activities (e.g., lab or studio shut down; research subjects unavailable; archives or access to primary sources closed).
Sincerely,
Andreas C. Cangellaris
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost
