Dear colleagues,

As you know, the time to submit Annual Activity Reports is upon us. These reports are important for several reasons, not the least of which is they can protect you in your annual evaluations. In many departments, chairs rely primarily on these reports and any supporting documentation—along with the department’s annual evaluation standards—to assess our year’s performance.

One particularly important provision of Article 10 of the contract (and one over which we have an ongoing arbitration) prevents a chair from basing a faculty member’s teaching evaluation primarily on student evaluations, but only if the faculty member makes additional teaching-related materials available to the chair.

With this in mind, make sure you include all relevant teaching-related activities (e.g., advising, mentoring, directing of theses, guest lecturing, course and curriculum development) in your annual report, and, if applicable, also tell your chair about any teaching-related activities not asked for in the report. If you notify your chair of any such activities via email, keep a copy for yourself.

We hope that none of you encounters problems with your annual evaluations. If you do, however, remember to contact the Grievance or Contract Enforcement chair (see http://www.uffucf.org/grievances/index.php) within a couple weeks of receiving your evaluation (you have 30 days to file a grievance from the time of infraction).

In solidarity,

Your UFF Grievance Team