Leadership and Program Reviews
Our deans and vice provosts undergo comprehensive reviews every five years in accordance with university regulations.
The participation of unit employees is critical to a meaningful review process and faculty and staff can take part in several ways.
College/Unit Sessions with Employee Groups
For each review, the Provost’s Office schedules a half-day of meetings, which include a presentation and listening sessions.
Dean/Vice Provost Presentation
The dean/vice provost provides an overview presentation on unit programs and goals. All unit employees, as well as NC State senior leaders and other members of the campus community, are invited to attend. A question and answer opportunity is provided at the end.
Listening Sessions
The provost meets with unit employees by category (e.g. faculty, staff, direct reports). All unit employees are invited to a listening session based on their position. The provost typically asks 4-5 guiding questions to open conversation. The dean/vice provost does not attend any of the sessions and they are not recorded.
Unit employees can also request a confidential 15-minute meeting with the provost, either as individuals or in small groups. These meetings are not recorded and will take place during the 2-week survey period noted below.
The report to the dean/vice provost includes a summary of the provost’s key takeaways from the listening sessions and individual meetings. These summaries are general in nature (e.g. “Faculty commented positively about…,” “An area of staff concern was….”) and never include names of individual participants.
College/Unit Survey
Each review includes a survey instrument that has a standard set of closed-ended evaluation questions and concludes with three open-ended questions on strengths, areas for improvement and other general comments. For college dean reviews, a College Leadership Survey Committee (CLSC) has the opportunity to add up to 10 college-specific questions.
Unit faculty and staff, as well as other NC State senior leaders and external constituents of the unit, receive survey invitations. Direct reports and department heads receive either the faculty or staff survey instruments as appropriate. Unless specifically requested by the provost, excluded from the survey populations are those who are classified as retired or emeritus, ‘no-pay,’ post-docs, graduate or undergraduate students, and temporary employees with less than 0.75 FTE.
Institutional Strategy and Analysis (ISA) administers the survey and maintains the confidentiality of participants. The survey is open for two weeks after the unit overview presentation and listening sessions.
In the report to the provost and the dean/vice provost, ISA presents the survey results in aggregate by participant category (i.e. faculty, staff, senior leaders, and, if n>5, direct reports) and creates a summary of the open-ended responses. For college dean reviews, the CLSC sees all open-ended responses and provides the provost with any context (usually in a brief memo) that may be useful in interpreting the results
Report-out on the Results of the Review
All unit employees are invited to attend a brief meeting with the provost where he summarizes the outcome of the leadership and program review and provides a question and answer opportunity at the end. The dean/vice provost does not attend and the meeting is not recorded.
The provost also prepares and sends a memo summarizing the outcome of the leadership and program review to unit employees.
Resources
The following links provide additional details about the leadership and program review process.