An Expanded Faculty Activities Inventory

 Sarah Trainer, Amelia Derr, Donna Sylvester

Many faculty and academic administrators consider Seattle University’s current, traditional “buckets” of teaching, service, and scholarship to be neither inclusive nor mission resonant. Numerous types of essential work done by faculty are invisible in these traditional assessments, as reflected by previous iterations of our Annual Performance Reviews and promotion and tenure statements. The traditional frameworks also exacerbate inequity among faculty – and this is true at institutions of higher education all over the United States – because women faculty and faculty of color report heavier institutional asks around certain types of under-valued teaching and service work.[i]

Accordingly, we have compiled a working draft of a “Faculty Activities Inventory” that provides an innovative way to examine activities and work done by SU faculty. We hope this resource helps faculty to recognize the myriad ways in which they support the mission of our university. We further hope it will be actively used by faculty who are completing their Annual Performance Reviews or compiling review files for tenure and promotion.

Rather than being split into teaching vs. service vs. scholarship, we have divided the Inventory into the following twenty-two categories, which more comprehensively reflect the work that our faculty members engage in:

1. Classroom-based Activities;
2. Learning Assistance-related Activities;
3. Activities for Internships/Independent Studies/Honors/Student Research Projects/Senior Synthesis/Clinical Supervision;
4. Recognition of Teaching Activities;
5. Publications and Productions Based on Peer Review;
6. Conference Presentations with Professional Peers;
7. Community-Based Research;
8. Public Scholarship;
9. Contribution to a Creative Work for a General Audience;
10. Application of Scholarship to the Classroom;
11. Grants and Funding;
12. Recognition of Scholarship;
13. Mission Aligned Scholarship;
14. Curriculum and Academic Program Development;
15. Student Support;
16. Governance and Institutional Processes/Change;
17. Campus Leadership and Mission Integration;
18. Colleague Mentoring and Support;
19. Administrative Duties;
20. Contribution to Professional Community;
21. Community Engagement;
22. Recognition of Service.

In the Inventory itself, we have included extensive examples of different types of faculty work for each of these twenty-two categories. To view the full Inventory, please go to our website at https://www.seattleu.edu/advance/reports-and-products/ and click on the “Expanded Faculty Activities Inventory.”

 The Faculty Activities Inventory is data driven and reflects the following information gathered by SU ADVANCE:

1. Analysis of faculty self-assessments of their own work. These self-assessments took the following forms:
1. A sample of 20 SU faculty promotion statements;
2. A sample of 40 SU faculty CVs;
3. Discussion amongst women full professors, via 2 focus groups;
4. A sample of 77 faculty interviews from faculty in all schools and colleges.
2. Feedback from the SU ADVANCE Task Force Working Group to ensure alignment between the proposed revised promotion guidelines and the Faculty Activities Inventory;
3. Feedback from SU ADVANCE Team Members involved in faculty mentoring and development.

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