Converting Faculty Performance Evaluations Into Merit Raises: A Spreadsheet Model

Abstract

One of the most important, yet difficult tasks of any academic department chairperson is to evaluate the annual performance of individual faculty members and then to convert the array of performance evaluations into a structure of merit raises.  Building on previous literature, this paper presents a spreadsheet model to convert qualitative performance evaluations into merit raises subject to 1) a limited pool of funds for salary adjustments and 2) a requirement that the relative structure of percentage raises match the relative structure of performance evaluations as defined by a linear evaluation scale.  The contribution of the paper is its practical nature in that the proposed spreadsheet can immediately be put to use by academic chairpersons, is readily understandable by the faculty, and is useful for all institutions with various combinations of teaching, research, and service expectations for the faculty. 

To match the structure of raises with that of performance evaluations, qualitative evaluations in each of the three areas of faculty performance—teaching, research, and service—are first converted into numeric equivalents based on a linear evaluation key.  Next, the numeric equivalents are weighted according to a weighting scheme dependent on the amount of release time provided to the faculty member for research and/or service, in order to generate an overall numeric evaluation for each faculty member.  Finally, the weighted numeric evaluations are converted into percentage merit raises subject to a finite salary adjustment pool using the Goal Seek function in Microsoft Excel.  The model is illustrated using a hypothetical department of ten faculty members with varying teaching loads and thus different amounts of release time for research and/or service.