ERIC Number: EJ960022
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0009-1383
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Rating Faculty Collegiality
Cipriano, Robert E.; Buller, Jeffrey L.
Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, v44 n2 p45-48 2012
Most position descriptions for college and university faculty include benchmarks that indicate assumptions about collegiality. Criticism about this practice has been voiced for years. But case law in the United States has upheld the use of collegiality as a factor in decisions regarding faculty employment, tenure, and promotion. Indeed, several courts have ruled that the lack of civility or collegiality can be used as a legitimate basis to terminate a full-time faculty member. Yet, the concept of collegiality is unclear in the minds of many faculty members and administrators. What is needed, therefore, is not only a consistent definition of collegiality but a standard instrument that can be used to evaluate its presence or absence. The authors pilot tested the the Collegiality Assessment Matrix (CAM)--as well as a slightly modified version, the Self-Assessment Matrix (S-AM), that faculty could use to evaluate their own collegiality--in five departments at Southern Connecticut State University in order to determine its ease of use and clarity of language and to validate it for use during evaluations as a reasonably objective measure of a faculty member's collegial behavior. Five department chairs participated in the pilot by completing the CAM for a group of faculty members who simultaneously filled out the S-AM. The chairs completed the CAM while 32 faculty members in the five departments took the S-AM. All of the chairs agreed that the questions on the CAM objectively measured a person's collegiality as they were written, that the CAM could be used to initiate a department-wide conversation on collegiality and civility, and that it would be useful to have each faculty member complete the self-assessment form. The CAM provides a much-needed resource to guide departments to focus on what collegiality actually is and to help them document problems in as objective a manner as possible. (Contains 8 resources.)
Descriptors: Collegiality, College Faculty, Department Heads, Court Litigation, Self Evaluation (Individuals), Psychometrics, Standard Setting, Program Validation, Test Construction, Employment Practices, Definitions, Faculty Evaluation, Evaluation Criteria
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Connecticut
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A