1Does not include course credits taught by LOAs, TAs, DRI faculty, temporary faculty or others.²Rank 0 includes a large number of part-time and research faculty, accounting for the low number of course credit hours taught.

LOA faculty are primarily used to teach basic skills courses in departments with large service teaching loads within the undergraduate curriculum, such as English, Foreign Languages, and Mathematics. In this role, they account for about 14% of the total undergraduate student credit hours taught. LOAs drawn from professional ranks (i.e. school district administrators, local businessmen, etc.) are also used by some colleges, including Education and Business, to provide upper-level and graduate training, but they account for only about 6% of the total graduate student credit hours taught. Graduate TAs primarily teach discussion sections of courses lectured by regular faculty, laboratory sections of science courses, and some basic skills courses (for example, foreign language and writing courses). There is also some use of TAs to teach more advanced courses when their experience and training are appropriate, but this accounts for a very small portion of the total TA workload (and only 0.7% of graduate student credit hours taught).

Student evaluations of teaching are routinely gathered in most courses; however, the evaluation form used differs greatly from one unit to another. In 1992-93, both the university and the College of Arts and Science attempted to develop a standard teaching evaluation form to be used by students, but the resulting instruments have never been universally adopted. More recently the university has emphasized the use of multiple evaluation indices to document teaching effectiveness, including student evaluations, peer evaluations and teaching portfolios. However, although requested by the UPT,the use of multiple indices has not been universally embraced.

Faculty have a strong voice in shaping the curriculum. Oversight for the core curriculum is headed by a regular faculty member who serves as the coordinator, while the Core Curriculum Board is advised by several faculty subcommittees. Undergraduate and graduate major curricula are shaped by faculty in individual departments, often guided by discipline-specific accreditation guidelines. Curricular changes, new courses, and degree programs are generally proposed by faculty, then evaluated by college and university curriculum committees. While the recommendations of these committees are subject to approval by the Vice-President for Academic Affairs, the President, and the Board of Regents, faculty recommendations are almost always adopted in practice (See also Standard V).

The relevant policies concerning faculty security have been set at the system level.Faculty security and academic freedom are intrinsic to the health and well-being of educational institutions in their mission to promote the "common good" (UCCSN Code, section 2.1.1). Academic freedom at the University of Nevada is explicitly provided under section 2.1.2 of the UCCSN Code and section 29 of the UNR By-Laws.

Prior to the previous self-study, there was widespread dissatisfaction among faculty with policies introduced into the UCCSN Code by the Board of Regents in 1982 concerning adequate reasons for faculty dismissal. In section 5 of the UCCSN Code, several sections (including 5.7.2, 5.4.5, and 5.4.6) delineate mechanisms by which faculty may be dismissed for reasons of "financial or curricular exigency." Untenured faculty are particularly vulnerable because they have no formal right to a grievance procedure. While the 1988 self-study recommended that parts of the Code be rewritten, little or no progress has been made. This issue has not retained high visibility, however, primarily because the mechanisms introduced for faculty dismissal have never been utilized. In situations where the Code might have been invoked, the university has always reassigned and retained faculty. Nevertheless, the Code continues to give broad powers to the administration which are not commensurate with general faculty security.

Another measure of faculty security is the degree to which the university is able to retain its faculty ; in this regard, the University of Nevada seems to have done well. (see also Standard VIII) As yet, there is no systematic measure of retention, in spite of its emphasis in the previous self-study. The Special Assistant to the President for Diversity and the Affirmative Action Officer both reaffirm the need to conduct exit interviews and follow-up questionnaires by mail with faculty who leave the university as a means for tracking retention. In the absence of reliable documentation, an informal retention study was performed by the Standard VII subcommittee to ascertain how many faculty had left the university in the past five years and for what reasons. The results of that study are summarized in Table VII-3 below.

	Professor (Rank IV)		Assoc. Prof. (Rank III)		Asst. Prof. (Rank II)		Lecturer (Rank 0)		Total
	F	M	F	M	F	M	F	M
Denied tenure	0	0	2	0	3	6	0	0	11
Retirement	2	24	4	15	1	1	0	1	48
Hired to another university	0	5	3	3	7	9	1	0	28
Hired elsewhere	0	2	2	3	3	1	1	0	12
No other employment	0	0	0	0	0	2	0	0	2
Family relocation/ spousal employment	0	0	0	0	5	2	2	0	9
Other	0	3	3	4	3	1	1	0	15
Total	2	34	14	25	22	22	5	1	125

Although there has been a relatively small number of denied tenure cases (11 of 132 considered), more lower-rank faculty left by being hired at another university or due to spousal relocation (23). Some of these faculty relocated in anticipation of being denied tenure (about half). Among the faculty who left for "other" reasons, the most common causes were the assumption of an administrative position within the university, the issuance of a terminal contract, and death.

It is possible that the university will see an increase in the trend for young faculty to move to other institutions as nationwide hiring of faculty rebounds from the economic slump of the early 1990s. This will be exacerbated by the increasing occurrence of two-career families, especially when both spouses seek academic jobs. The University of Nevada is a relatively small university, geographically isolated from other four-year and graduate institutions (the nearest neighbor, U.C. Davis, is some 140 miles away). Thus, opportunities for two-academic-career families are limited. The issue of spousal hiring has been examined recently by a subcommittee of the Dean’s Council, but a university policy has yet to emerge.

Many faculty consider that a faculty club would enhance collegiality, improve the campus atmosphere and thus indirectly aid retention, as well. In the early 1990s, the Faculty Senate and the Vice-President for Administration and Finance, launched a serious and well supported campaign to this end. Unfortunately no progress was made at that time. The issue remains important. New plans to build a Conference Center for the campus should include this important aspect of faculty life, heretofore lacking at UNR.

Our young faculty are, in many cases, challenged by the task of raising children and keeping up with the demands of academic research. Existing on-campus child care facilities can accommodate only a fraction of faculty children and many are forced to find less convenient off-campus child care programs. Studies performed by the Faculty Senate and by the Committee on the Status of Women have noted the growing need for more child care, and The Regents’ Committee on the Status of Women has charged the campuses to assess the issue. (Report and Recommendations, 1994). However, little progress has been made beyond the institution of a referral service for off campus child care. The Department of Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) administers the on-campus child care center as a research and training facility. Their immediate programmatic goals seem to exclude expansion both of places and of hours of service. Furthermore, the university has not found space for expansion. Given the growing number of faculty with pre-school age children, the university must seriously consider the need to provide more on-campus child care options and greater flexibility of hours. It should be noted also that the university faculty are increasingly called upon to teach and attend meetings during the evening hours whereas the child care centers close at 5:15 PM (See Standard IX).

Under the Child and Family Leave Act, parents may take family leave without pay; however, leave without pay often introduces financial burdens that young academic families are unable to bear with a newborn child. University policy allows mothers to use sick leave to tend newborn infants if the mother's physician indicates medical need, but there is no consistent practice nor policy in granting maternity leave. There is also no provision for fathers or for adoptive parents to take paid leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child . Faculty facing the necessity of caring for aging or critically ill parents also have no clear rights to leave. The Regents Committee on the Status of Women has directed the campuses to examine and make needed changes in family and sick leave, but this process seems stalled. As the Regent’s Report notes, UNR has fallen behind other universities in providing Family Leave (Regents Committee on the Status of Women: Reports and Recommendations, 1994).

In the previous self-study, a number of critical issues concerning faculty salaries were raised including the under-compensation of rank IV faculty, salary compression across the ranks, and the need to insure that starting salaries are competitive with comparable institutions. Since that time, several pro-active salary studies have been performed and there is good reason to believe that that UNR’s salaries for most ranks are competitive with those of other universities.

A salary adjustment for full professors was made in 1990, and adjustments were made to make compensation more commensurate with experience after the university-wide salary equity studies of 1988 and 1992. These adjustments relieved salary compression, as the 1995-96 salary data of Figure VII-1 indicates. UNR has now adopted a policy of implementing salary equity studies on a biennial basis.

*Data obtained from the Office of Planning, Budget, and Analysis.

While Nevada was in the bottom quartile of faculty salaries for land-grant state-funded institutions in 1988, it has now risen to slightly above the median. Table VII-4 compares median salaries for each UNR faculty rank (not including the School of Medicine) with the average salaries reported in the March/April, 1996 issue of Academe for public Category I (Doctoral-level) and Category IIA (Comprehensive) institutions. The table also includes UNR’s median faculty salary ranking among the 47 land-grant institutions.

One can see from this comparison that Nevada's faculty salaries are now in league with those of similar institutions with the possible exception of our rank II faculty (assistant professors). Since the recruitment of high quality junior faculty remains critical for the continued improvement of the university, UNR’s rank II salaries should remain competitive. The University System has recently reviewed different models for setting rank II salaries, and a revised market-based model, designed to maintain competitiveness with comparable institutions, is currently under consideration.

To examine how excellent faculty have been rewarded, the salaries of faculty who have received awards for research and teaching have been compared (by the standard VII self study subcommittee) to the salaries of their peers. Research award winners had an average salary about 16% above the corresponding median salary for rank and college, while the average teaching award recipient salary exceeded the corresponding median by 7%. However, there are a number of distinguished faculty whose salaries remain at or below the median salary for their rank within their college, including almost a third of all teaching award winners.

In the early 1990s, the State Committee on Benefits attempted to reduce the medical benefits of state employees to compensate for shortfalls in the state budget. These changes threatened to increase the cost of health insurance while reducing the covered services. The state’s efforts were successfully challenged by an intensive lobbying effort, led in part by faculty committees that oversee benefits. The present benefits package is, in fact, much improved since the last self-study, with faculty now enjoying a broad range of health insurance options, many of which provide expanded services over previous options at a lower cost. Retirement benefits also include several competing options; however, most faculty utilize the TIAA/CREF retirement plan.

Part-time faculty: At the request of the Chancellor’s Office, issues concerning part-time faculty at UNR and UNLV were studied in 1994-95. The recommendations coming from the study were: (i) to increase compensation of part-time faculty to keep pace with inflation; (ii) to lengthen the time-frame typically available for hiring part-time faculty (sometimes department chairs do not know if a part-time position exists until a few weeks before the semester begins), (iii) to reduce the university’s dependency on part-time faculty, (iv) to produce a part-time faculty handbook in those departments that hire a large number of such faculty; and (v) to form standing committees charged with reviewing part-time faculty issues and making recommendations. UNR has created a standing Committee on Part-time Faculty in response to the last of these recommendations and will be addressing the other recommendations through this new committee.

The Faculty Senate provides a direct line of communication between faculty and the university administration, the university system chancellor, and the Board of Regents. The Faculty Senate helps formulate university policy through its standing and ad hoc committees and offers faculty advice and reaction to policies originating with the administration. Because so many of the present administrators have participated in the Faculty Senate—the President, the Vice-President for Academic Affairs, and the Interim Dean of Arts and Science—the responsibilities and powers of the Faculty Senate are often pivotal, perhaps more so than similar bodies at other institutions. Upon occasion, however, the Senate has found itself left "out of the loop" on major issues. The decision-making process in acquiring the Redfield campus is a notable recent example (See also Standard VIII).

Faculty self-governance within colleges and departments follows no general guideline. Most department chairs are elected by a majority faculty vote subject to the approval of the college dean. Occasionally, at the dean’s request, a department fills the position of chair via an external search procedure in which department faculty play a strong role. Most chairs serve terms of limited length (typically three to six years), and many departments have provisions for re-electing particularly effective chairs. In the School of Medicine, chairs are appointed for an indefinite term and serve at the pleasure of the dean. Faculty satisfaction with these methods of selection is predicated primarily on the effectiveness and fairness of the person serving as chair.

Faculty lack a formal, systematic means of providing input in the specific formulation of instructional and research policies. The Associate Vice-President for Instruction and Undergraduate Programs (VPI) and the Vice-President for Research (VPR) have great latitude for setting policy governing instructional and research programs, respectively. The VPI oversees the Honors Program, International Activities, K-16 bridging programs, Instructional Enhancement grants, and technology initiatives in instruction and outreach instruction. Although there are several faculty bodies who are called upon to contribute advice, and the present VPI has been conscientious about seeking faculty input, no formal faculty advisory board exists (other than the Faculty Senate) to make specific recommendations on instructional policy. There is a Research Advisory Board (RAB) that serves the VPR, but it is used only to make recommendations for the disbursement of Junior Faculty Research Awards. In particular, the RAB is not consulted by the VPR when formulating new research initiatives for the campus or in setting space allocation priorities for research (See alsoStandard X).

The Vice-President for Academic Affairs (VPAA) is the chief academic officer of the university and plays a major role in policy formulation and instructional program transformation. Since the last self-study, we have had two permanent and two interim VPAAs (See Standard VIII). Turnover in this position has hampered the university’s ability to sustain the pursuit of some long-term academic goals due to the changes in leadership.

The faculty have gained a greater voice in the formulation of planning documents. The Academic Master Plan adopted in the Spring 1996 semester for the period 1997-2001 was the product of a faculty committee, chaired by a faculty member (now the VPAA). This was also true of the preceding Master Plan. These documents have been taken seriously by the administration and reflect the goals and aspirations of the faculty. The present university self-study is also the product of a largely faculty committee and the views and recommendations made here are generally representative of faculty views.

Since the previous self-study, a number of programs for faculty development have been initiated, including Instructional Enhancement grants, International Activity grants, Outreach Enhancement grants, Instructional Development seminars, and the Faculty Development leave program (see Table VII-5 for a complete listing). These augment more established programs such as Faculty Travel grants, Junior Faculty Research grants, UNR Foundation Professorships, and the Sabbatical Leave program. These programs support the university’s mission by promoting the intellectual growth of its faculty.

However, over time, funding for these development programs has remained constant or declined, in spite of the growth of the faculty. Moreover, many of these programs tend to be either reduced or eliminated in years with budgetary shortfalls. For example, the largest single grant program, the Junior Faculty Grant program, was suspended during 1995-96 because its funding source was redirected (Fortunately, this program will be reinstated in 1996-97).

The tendency has been to initiate faculty development programs as particular needs are identified. Consequently, the existing programs are presently managed by a variety of administrative entities. Establishment of a central oversight authority for all faculty development programs could be administratively useful.

In the 1988 self-study, a major issue was the limited number of legislatively allocated sabbatical leave positions available: 2% of tenured faculty population or about 12-13 positions per year (1988 UNR Self-Study, Vol. I, p. 104, 105). To address this, the university instituted the Faculty Development Leave program which roughly doubled the number of total leaves granted. However, this still means that only 4% or so of the faculty can be granted leave in any year, whereas approximately 14% are eligible to apply.

Presently, the number of applications received is only slightly greater than the number of available leave positions. Through informal interviews and a faculty survey administered by the Self-Study Steering Committee, we have learned that faculty do not apply for a variety of reasons, including economic (they cannot afford to take a year at 2/3 pay), personal (their school age children cannot easily be relocated for a year), and professional reasons (they cannot leave research groups unattended). In addition, small departments (which may describe most of those on campus!) can be heavily burdened by the absence of even a single faculty member on a sabbatical leave. Given the potential value of sabbatical leaves, the university should be concerned that so few faculty are choosing to take a sabbatical leave. As the university focuses more on scholarly achievement and strives to hire and retain a high-quality faculty, leave programs should become more important.

As more faculty conduct grant-funded research, effective faculty development increasingly depends upon maintaining research funding. Consequently, there has been a recent call for a "bridge funding program" to assist researchers whose sponsored projects are between grants (Academic Master Plan, p. 14; see also Standard X).

To recruit the best faculty:

• Funding for candidate interviews and moving costs should be consistently available.

• Start-up package should be available at the time faculty begin their contracts and should not depend on unstable funding.

• The procedure followed for senior-level hires with tenure should be modified to incorporate review by the relevant personnel committees during the negotiation stage.

To enhance faculty achievement in instruction and research:

• Funds should be made available for equipment and computer upkeep, replacement, and maintenance on a regular basis. The university has requested funds for the next biennium to provide computer upgrades for all faculty every three years,and has been successful in achieving some modest technology support (See Standard III).

• Communication between faculty and both Buildings and Grounds and Classroom Services personnel needs to be improved. · For example, technological transformations of classrooms should be undertaken only with significant input from the faculty who will be utilizing the facilities (See Standard III).

• Graduate assistantships should be fully funded and their numbers increased.

• New technical staff positions should be filled to supervise and maintain computer labs, maintain technical equipment in faculty offices, and maintain instructional and research equipment in technical fields (See also Standards II, VIII, and X).

• Better consistency in evaluation and process can be achieved through creating mandatory annual chairs’ workshops on personnel policies and and the creation of a chairs’ handbook on the same topic.

• Policies and procedures for evaluation should be clarified in university and college by-laws.

• A concrete set of policies and procedures for "stopping the tenure clock" should be developed, where the legitimate reasons are specified and the policy is shaped by faculty input.

• University policy on the probationary period for untenured faculty should be clarified in regard to the granting of early tenure and the granting of tenure in the seventh (terminal) year.

• The success of junior faculty should be enhanced through the expansion of the existing mentoring program and the assurance of universal and consistent third-year reviews.

• Annual evaluations should be modified to cover a longer time period, recognizing that most faculty activities are continuous and not easily partitioned into one-year segments

• Teaching should be evaluated more consistently across the university and should employ multiple indices, including for example peer evaluations and teaching portfolios as well as student evaluations.

To create a work environment conducive to retention and outstanding scholarly achievement

• A clearly stated Family Leave Policy should be developed.

• Existing child care services should be expanded providing more spaces, and flexible and extended hours.

• Rank II salaries should be kept competitive.

• Through its new Committee on Part-time Faculty, the university needs to implement the recommendations of the System Report on Part-time Faculty.

• The degree to which the most outstanding faculty are rewarded should be re-examined to ensure that financial rewards are commensurate with university-wide performance awards.

• A Faculty Club should be incorporated into the planned new Conference Center.

To improve faculty governance:

• College administrators should improve the lines of communication with their constituent faculty (See Standard VIII).

• Faculty boards should be established for the purpose of making recommendations and providing advice on instructional and research policy formulation. In the latter case, the existing Research Advisory Board’s responsibilities could be expanded to serve this function (See Standard X).

• Faculty should be consulted concerning the fate of development program funds in times of financial emergency (See Standards II and X).

• The university should examine the reluctance of faculty to apply for funded leave programs and find ways to encourage their participation.

• A formally structured "bridge" funding program should be instituted to assist faculty engaged in sponsored research when grant funding is temporarily interrupted (See Standard X ).

	Full-Time Faculty
Rank	Years at UNR			Total Yrs. Experience			Fall 1995 Credit Load
	Min	Med	Max	Min	Med	Max	Min	Med	Max	Total
IV	1	16	37	8	20	37	0.0	9.0	37.0	1797.3
III	1	9	35	4	12	35	0.0	8.0	47.0	1398.6
II	1	3	26	1	3	26	0.0	7.4	23.5	679.4
0(IV)	1	1	6	1	1	6	0.0	1.5	15.0	24.0
0(III)	1	7	17	1	9	17	0.0	8.0	34.8	193.3
0(II)	1	3	14	1	4	14	0.0	3.5	13.0	164.0
0(I)	1	4	15	1	4	15	0.0	0.0	11.0	58.0
TOTAL										4314.6

	Full-Time Faculty
Rank	Years at UNR			Total Yrs. Experience			Fall 1995 Credit Load
	Min	Med	Max	Min	Med	Max	Min	Med	Max	Total
IV	4	14	26				0.0	0.0	15.0	67.0
III	2	8	25