• Department chair job description
• Department chair compensation
• Definition of an interdisciplinary program
• Interdisciplinary program coordinator job description
• Interdisciplinary program coordinator compensation

Enrollment management: New students register at the end of July. As needed, the Associate Dean in charge of staffing (Sharon Feldman) will work with you regarding the addition and cancellation of classes and changes in assignments of adjunct faculty. Please also be in contact with your divisional Associate Deans regarding academic planning. 

• Hiring:
  • If your department will be hiring in the upcoming academic year for tenure track or continuing faculty, please consult the Guidelines for tenure-track faculty searches. 
  • For all other hires, contact the associate dean responsible for term hires (Sharon Feldman) and the academic employment coordinator to get started.
• Annual reviews: Continue working on faculty annual reviews, due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in November.
• Tenure cases: Check on student letters, external scholarship letters, and service letters.

• Annual reviews: Continue working on faculty annual reviews, due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in November.
• Registration: Meetings with new students and parents, be available (or have someone in department) for over-rides.
• Sabbatical support letters due. Please be sure to discuss staffing implications with the associate dean that oversees staffing (Sharon Feldman). 
• Contingent faculty review form due. (Instructions for accessing a saved contingent faculty review form in Dynamic Forms)
• Review contingent faculty standard practice for placement and performance review in A&S.
• Tenure cases: Check on student letters, external scholarship letters, and service letters.
• New (and adjunct) faculty: make sure they are settled in and have what they need (a continual process)
• Hiring: Continued from July.
• Requests due for new, revised, or field of study course proposals. The timeline for the current academic year is here.

• Scheduling: Spring teaching schedules due. For the spring semester: send hire requests to Sharon Feldman, by the end of September.
• Annual reviews: Continue working on faculty annual reviews, due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in November.
• Review new or revised courses by mid-to-late September.
• Tenure cases: In consultation with the tenured members of the department, write departmental letter; materials due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in October.

• Enrollment management: Students register for spring semester. As needed, the Associate Dean in charge of staffing (Sharon Feldman) will work with you regarding the addition and cancellation of classes and changes in assignments of adjunct faculty. Please also be in contact with your divisional Associate Deans regarding academic planning. 
• Continuing requests due for new, revised, or field of study course proposals. The timeline for the current academic year is here.
• Major degree audits for graduating seniors.
• Work with Andrea Vest in Academic Advising to reassign majors for faculty members that will be on leave in the spring term.
• Tenure materials due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in October.
• Annual reviews: continue working on faculty annual reviews, due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in November.
• Assessment Plan for Academic Programs: Submit the completed assessment plan template outlining student learning outcomes and how those outcomes will be assessed to the Office of Institutional Effectiveness by October 1. Plans must be submitted annually.

• Annual reviews: Due to the Dean’s Office by the first Monday in November. Set time to talk with faculty individually about their annual review (progress, goals, etc.).

• Check in with new faculty, debriefing on first semester, planning for second semester and summer, read teaching evaluations and discuss any problems.
• Read teaching evaluations for adjuncts and term hires and discuss any problems.

• Be available the first week in January (before courses start) to work with the Registrar’s Office and the Advising Office on course approvals/registration for mid-year transfer students.
• End of first semesters/start of second semester: longer departmental meeting/retreat-planning.
• Staff reviews: schedule midcourse staff reviews
• Scheduling: Fall teaching schedules due. For the fall semester: send hire requests to the associate dean in charge of staffing (Sharon Feldman) by the end of January. Send departmental plans for FYS to the FYS Coordinator (Mary Tate). 
• Start of new semester: be available (or have someone in department) for over-rides.
• New (and adjunct faculty): make sure they are settled in and have what they need.
• Review budget status.
• Requests due for new, revised, or field of study course proposals. The timeline for the current academic year is here.

• Enrollment management: students register for fall semester. As needed, the Associate Dean in charge of staffing (Sharon Feldman) will work with you regarding the addition and cancellation of classes and changes in assignments of adjunct faculty. Please also be in contact with your divisional Associate Deans regarding academic planning. 
• Midcourse review portfolios due to department chairs by the first Monday after spring break.  In consultation with the tenured members of the department, write the departmental letter.
• Student award (graduation, departmental scholarships, David Evans) nominations/selections.
• Summer transfer credit: be available to approve (or designate a departmental representative) off campus summer courses for students.
• New, revised, or field of study courses will be approved at appropriate meetings. See timeline here.

• A&S Honor’s Convocation and A&S Student Symposium.
• Midcourse reviews due to the Dean’s Office, if possible, by the first Monday in April, but no later than the third Friday in April.
• Majors: Senior exit interviews, yearly departmental/majors celebration.
• Participate in Admissions events for admitted students.
• Begin departmental tenure review process. In consultation with the department put together list of external scholarship evaluators, discuss with dean, line up external scholarship evaluators; materials to external scholarship evaluators; request course lists from registrar’s office, select students to submit evaluations, contact these students; request letters from service commitments.
• Summer transfer credit: Be available to approve (or designate a departmental representative) off campus summer courses for students.

• Graduation.
• End of year: Longer departmental meeting/retreat-planning.
• Staff reviews: Schedule end of year staff reviews due.
• Chair’s professional development.
• Review budget status.
• Work with Academic Advising on fall undeclared advising loads for departmental faculty; work with Andrea Vest in Academic Advising to reassign majors for faculty members that will be on leave in the following term/year.
• Check in with new faculty, debriefing on first year, planning for second year, read teaching evaluations and discuss any problems
• Read teaching evaluations for adjuncts and term hires and discuss any problems.

• Annual reviews: Faculty annual reviews due to chairs (unless chair sets a different date).
• Review budget status.
• Assessment Report for Academic Programs: Submit the completed assessment report template incorporating summaries of the year's assessment results and plans for the use of those results to the Office of Institutional Effectiveness by June 1.

• Arts and Sciences Dean's Office Hiring Protocol for Tenure Track Faculty
• Hiring full-time temporary faculty
• Hiring adjunct or part-time faculty
• Justification for Hiring form
• Term Faculty Request Form
• A&S adjunct faculty information and request form
• Contingent faculty standard practices for performance review
• Contingent faculty review form

Performance Review Guidelines

Mid-Course Review

Tenure and Promotion

Contingent Faculty

• Contingent Faculty Standard Practices for Performance Review
• Contingent Faculty Review Form
• Instructions for accessing a saved contingent faculty review form in Dynamic Forms

Best Practices for Peer Observation of Teaching

• Faculty Handbook
• A&S Shared Governance

Planning

• University Strategic Plan

Policies

• Research and travel funding
• Sabbaticals and other leave
• Registrar's Office policies
• Religious observance policy

• Registrar's Office
• Academic Advising Resource Center
• Registration rotation 
• Undergraduate course catalog
• General education curriculum 
• Special requests from the Registrar's Office (enrollments, grade histories, etc)
• Meeting space requests
• Course Evaluation System
• Banner training
• Approving staff hours
• UR Talent Web Staff Evaluations
• Academic calendar 
• Scheduling and class time 
• Furniture request

• Accounts Payable
• Purchasing Card
• Procurement & Strategic Sourcing
• Expense & Other Accounting Policies and Procedures
• Travel Policy and Resources
• Chrome River

• Journal Voucher/Budget Re-allocation Form or
• Multiline Journal Voucher/Budget Re-allocation Form

Use one of these forms to reclassify charges made to an account, to reallocate your budget or for a transfer of restricted or special funds.

• Purchase Requisition
• Sole Source Justification

• A&S Computer Equipment Form
• A&S Furniture Request Form
• International Travel Information Request Form
• Arts & Sciences Adjunct Faculty Request Form

Academic scholarly and creative production sometimes require subventions. These costs can be incurred from academic presses for scholarly articles, monographs, and books and can include indexing, photographs, copyediting, journal page charges, and permissions fees. Other activities in the creative and performing arts may also be eligible for support. The list of eligible activities described in this document is not comprehensive; faculty are encouraged to contact their Associate Dean if they have questions.

The School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond has modest funds available to support these types of costs and should not be the funding source of first resort for these expenses. For more details, please see “Guiding Principles including Cost sharing requirement” section of the guidelines.

Purpose and Eligibility: These guidelines are intended to support publications or other costs in any discipline of tenured and tenure-track faculty. Directors who have active research agendas should consult with their departmental chair and divisional dean. Adjunct faculty, courtesy appointments, post-docs, pre-docs, and visiting faculty are not eligible.

When the anticipated book, monograph, article or other work is coauthored with faculty from other institutions, the expectation is that all authors/institutions will proportionately support the publication and/or subvention costs.

For a subvention to be approved, the faculty and the publisher have to agree to the terms that any royalties that are due to the faculty as the author/artist will come to the School of Arts & Sciences, University of Richmond, until the amount of the subvention has been repaid. After that, any additional royalties will go directly to the faculty author/artist. The author/artist(s) shall acknowledge the School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond in the preface, introduction, or acknowledgments.

The School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond has modest funds available to support these types of costs and should not be the funding source of first resort for these expenses. For more details, please see “Guiding Principles including Cost sharing requirement” section of the guidelines.

Guiding Principles Including Cost Sharing Requirement:

1. Subventions are given for discipline specific research/creative work under contract. They are not provided for costs related to research or manuscript preparation prior to submission to publishers.
2. Ordinarily, subventions are made for initial publication only, not for subsequent editions and re-issued titles.
3. Subvention requests should be submitted to your department chair.
4. Cost sharing requirement: Faculty members should make every effort to obtain funds for subvention and/or production costs from a variety of sources before approaching the Dean’s office. Potential sources include:
   1. The faculty member’s research incentive, startup, faculty development or endowed chair professional development funds where applicable;
   2. The faculty member department’s unrestricted gift fund or discretionary funds and operating budget contributions;
   3. Grants available through the press for the project, if any.

Some of these potential sources of funding have established deadlines, thus faculty members who know that they will require support for publication expenses should explore these options as soon as they learn of their needs for such support.

5. Faculty who have substantial dedicated research funds (such as research incentive funds or endowed funds) will usually be required to match funds when seeking a subvention.
6. Subventions are intended for peer-reviewed scholarly and creative work. Other requests will be considered only in exceptional situations.
7. No subvention funds may be used for compensating oneself, purchasing equipment, or reducing teaching responsibilities.
8. Approval of multiple requests from the same faculty member are improbable in a given year and unlikely within a three-year window. 

Open Access Publishing:

Open access publishing refers to free and unrestricted online access to scholarly publications and encompasses journals, book chapters, and monographs. Open access increases the visibility, readership, and impact of an author's works, democratizing access across all institutions, regardless of size or budget. Open access publications are free for all readers, but publishing is not free. A variety of open access payment models exist, and sometimes the costs are the responsibility of the author or their associated institution. Request for support for open access publishing costs will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

The School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Richmond has modest funds available to support these types of costs and should not be the funding source of first resort for these expenses. For more details, please see “Guiding Principles including Cost sharing requirement” section of the guidelines.

How to Apply:

Please submit:

• Your request in writing to your department chair (indicate potential funding sources, if any, from potential sources under cost sharing requirement 4. above)
• A description of the discipline specific research or creative work that includes details such as format, publisher information, and a projected schedule for completion.
• Department chair request for funding from the Dean (identify funding sources and amount of funding covered, if any from potential sources under cost-sharing requirement 4. above)
• This request should be sent to the A&S Dean, divisional Associate Dean, and the Director of Financial Planning and Operations
• The Dean’s office will determine funding after evaluating funding sources that are available.
• Approved funding will be communicated by the Dean’s office to the faculty member requesting the subvention and department chair
• Departments should have the departmental administrative coordinator process payment and split the charge between the various funding sources. The index code to use is 6813.

To ensure that its academic mission remains current and to encourage faculty to reflect on the effectiveness of our academic programs for our students, the University of Richmond requires periodic review of each of its academic programs. In order to meet this requirement in a timely and meaningful way, we plan a five-year schedule during which all academic programs will be reviewed. In the course of the five-year schedule, there will be four cohorts each working for two years. Each program will be assigned to a cohort of programs that is reviewed within the period. The program may decide how long the review takes, but it must be completed within the period.  

For the purposes of this period review, an academic program is a major, minor, or concentration. Orientation for the first period will begin in Spring 2015 in preparation for the review period to commence academic years 2015-2017.  

The A & S Dean’s office will work with departments and interdisciplinary program coordinators to identify appropriate members of each cohort, having regard to current or aspirational affiliations as well as shared concerns. Cohorts do not need to remain together for the next eight-year schedule, although every program must plan for a review in the next eight-year schedule. Members of the cohort are not required to collaborate on any part of the review; however, they may wish to do so if it would be mutually helpful.  

In the spring semester prior to the review period, Associate Dean will assemble the leaders of each program in the cohort. The purpose of this meeting is to provide orientation to the review process, and encourage programs to identify shared questions or affiliations. The Dean’s Office will provide institutional support and a small budget to assist the cohort’s work.   

Each program review should be focused on one to three questions of interest to faculty involved in the development of the program. The purpose of the questions and their discussion is to advance the program in ways that enhance student learning and capabilities.   

The question(s) could be thematic, for example, new approaches to electronic technologies in the program; or pedagogical, for example, the use of community-based learning in the program; or, scholarly, for example, development of undergraduate research opportunities. The question(s) should be consequential enough to support new directions or practices to enhance student learning based on the findings. Program review enables a more holistic assessment of program capacity, quality, and goals than does academic assessment, which focuses entirely on student learning outcomes.  

Before the end of the first semester of the review period, after consultation with faculty colleagues, each program leader will make a plan for the review, including a timeline, which will be submitted to the Associate Dean.   

The great majority of the work of the review should be planned discussion(s) among faculty who teach in the program or in affiliated programs. Collegial discussion is the most important substance of the process.   

Program leaders may access information, as desired, from the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (IFX), the Registrar’s Office, or the A & S Dean’s office.

The Associate Dean should be the first point of contact in requesting information because the deans often know if data already exist in another report or project.

The Office of Institutional Effectiveness (IFX) will work with each program to help identify any institutional, survey, or peer comparison data that would assist the review process as needed. This information is solely for use in the discussions.

During the last semester of the review, each program leader will generate a 3-5 pp report. This report is the main documentation of the review. It should delineate the key question(s), the information that was reviewed, the schedule of discussions and their membership, and provide a substantive discussion of the findings. Finally, the report should propose any next steps that will be pursued as a result of the review.  

The Dean may invite selected program leaders to verbally present findings to the Academic Council during the final semester of the review period. The report will be submitted no later than the first Monday in May. Copies must be submitted to the A& S Dean, the Dean’s Advisory Council, and Academic Council.  

The A & S Dean’s office will create a repository of the program review reports. Faculty members may access the repository by request to the Associate Dean. In addition, a copy of the eight-year schedule will be shared with the A & S Dean’s Advisory Council.   

If the Dean determines, as a result of the review, that a particular program in the cohort should have a more focused review or further review with external consultation, the Dean will inform the relevant department chair or interdisciplinary program coordinators, and begin that process in the following academic year.   

• A&S Department or Program Self-Study with External Review Schedule 2019-26
• Guidelines for A&S Department or Program Self-Study with External Review
• Metrics for the Department or Program Self-Study with External Review

Memoranda of Understanding Examples

Interdisciplinary program coordinators and department chairs expressed an interest in a standardized format for memoranda of understanding (MOUs) that would provide a structure for planning and projecting staffing needs. The templates linked below were shared with department chairs and interdisciplinary program coordinators for feedback in 2021-2022.

MOU Template for departments and interdisciplinary programs

MOU Template for contributing faculty, departments, and interdisciplinary programs