Guidelines for Selecting Committees
DEPARTMENT AND PROGRAM REVIEWS
College and Visiting Committees
Departments and programs under review are asked to nominate individuals to serve on the internal and external review committees. Departments and programs develop a list of nominations for the College Committee and the Visiting Committee that is submitted to the Dean of the Faculty, after consultation with the appropriate division chair.
The College Committee
Usually three to four members of the faculty serve on the College Committee. Many departments and programs find that faculty from departments that work closely with the department or program under review offer sound assessments, but any faculty member who is not a member of the department or program under review may be nominated. Faculty who teach courses cross-listed with the department or program under review should not be nominated. Please nominate eight to ten candidates and designate a preferred chair.
The Visiting Committee
The Visiting Committee includes three or four faculty members from other institutions, one of whom is asked to serve as chair.
When discussing the composition of this committee, the department or program is advised: 1) to concentrate on individuals whose strength is teaching; 2) not to nominate the most famous scholars in the field, as they are likely to be too busy to serve; 3) confine the nominations to individuals in the East or Midwest, since faculty from the West Coast often cannot take the extra travel time away from their teaching in order to participate.
The department or program should remember to include individuals from diverse sub-fields, and from a variety of institutions (avoid, for example, nominating individuals who all hail from large research universities or all, from small liberal-arts colleges). Please keep diversity of gender, race, and age in mind as well. Departments are advised not to recommend individuals who have close professional or personal ties to the department or program or who are actively seeking employment at Bates. Please provide at leastfifteen names of potential outside evaluators (many may not be able to serve). In the list submitted to the Dean, please include information on nominees’ institutions, institutional addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, their academic backgrounds, their research or teaching fields, as well as those attributes which make them particularly qualified to review the department or program.
When the department or program has made its nominations, the division chairs review the nominations, and make recommendations for committee composition. The Dean of the Faculty will inform the department chair and the division chair, and will contact nominees to ask them to serve.