Is the Annual Turner College Faculty Performance Evaluation Process Set to Change?

In February of each calendar year, Turner College and TSYS School faculty submit electronic portfolios describing their accomplishments over the previous calendar year in the areas of teaching, research, service and student success to their respective department chairs. The four areas of these portfolios are rated by the respective department chairs using the categories of "exceptional," "exceeds expectations," "meets expectations" or "satisfactory," "needs improvement," etc. Once completed, each department chair holds an in-person meeting with each faculty member to explain the assigned ratings and answer any questions. Most recently, under former Turner College Dean Deborah Kidder, the department chairs' ratings were considered final, and the Dean had no input. As a consequence, there was no standardization of ratings across departments, meaning that what it took to receive an "exceeds expectations" in one department was not necessarily the same as what it took in another department. The shortcomings of the way this recent process worked were exhibited by the fact that all of the merit raises that were awarded in the Turner College in August 2025 went to computer science faculty in the TSYS School. This historical backdrop serves to contrast with what Turner College Acting Associate Dean and Chair of the Department of Management and Marketing John Finley explained at the February 2026 faculty and staff meeting would be the process going forward. In his presentation, Finley remarked that a new step in the process, harkening back to what occurred years ago in the Turner College, would be a review of the department chairs' chosen ratings by the Turner College dean, in this case Acting Dean Tesa Leonce. This would seem to add a needed step, albeit not the ideal one, to achieve at least some standardization in the process. However, Finley's remarks seemed to suggest that the chairs' ratings choices would hold firm even through this new step. As pointed out before here at Turner Business, in order to best standardize faculty performance evaluations in the Turner College, an Ad Team meeting that includes Leonce, Finley, accounting and finance chair Gisung Moon and TSYS School director Rani Hodhod, during which each Turner College faculty member's annual evaluation is compared with those of all other faculty members, is needed. The changes to the process pointed out by Finley do not appear to include this necessary component.