Over the last few years faculty members working on tenure or non-tenure reviews have been faced with a big question: To Sedona or not to Sedona. I recently passed the 6-year mark of employment at Cedarville, and at every review–2, 4, and 6 years–Sedona was the issue. Never completely clear or confident on the directives, I created both paper and Sedona versions for every review. When I was awarded tenure this past January, one of my first thoughts was, now I can forget about this, at least for a while.
Meanwhile, I was getting involved in the University re-affirmation of accreditation process, and I realized that ignoring university-mandated systems and processes was something that I could no longer afford to do. At the same time I began to understand that having inconsistencies in and inaccessibility of the evidence of our faculty’s high level of teaching, research, and service was going to be problematic for our Assurance Argument.
I had heard for some time that there was another program being developed, one that would replace Sedona and would be custom-fit to Cedarville’s review process. Just a little too late for me, it appeared on the scene, and was the center of two Academic Day Sessions on Aug. 10, led by Dr. David Gallagher. Under Dave’s direction as project manager, the software was developed by students in the Engineering and Computer Science Dept. This new program, the Cedarville Academic Portfolio System, or CAPS, is much simpler than Sedona, is more user-friendly and intuitive than Sedona, is tailored specifically for Cedarville University, and is organized in such a way that it matches the tenure process schedule.
In fact, CAPS was carefully designed to follow the guidelines in the Faculty Handbook. Sections 3.9 and 3.10 address the Tenure and Non-tenure Review policies respectively. 3.9.3 specifically applies to pre-tenure review at the 2, 4, and 6 year marks. 3.10.1 applies to the 3-yr cycle for non-tenure review. CAPS has areas for uploading all of the observations, letters, and responses that are described in these sections. Furthermore, for a specific review, all deadlines are indicated, and reminders are sent to the candidate and all those involved in the review. It has a privacy feature in which letters from supervisors later in the process can not be seen by reviewers earlier in the process. For example, the letter to the candidate from the vice president for academics in the 4th year of review can not be seen by the faculty members in his/her department in that same year of review.
All full-time faculty now have a portfolio in CAPS populated with name, rank, and scholarly works that were already listed in Digital Commons. Although data in Sedona does not automatically transfer to CAPS, Dave estimates that it will take an average of 2-3 hours for each faculty member to manually move files over to the new system. He suggests exporting our Sedona data into a pdf report, and then attaching that to CAPS as evidence of what faculty had stored in Sedona. The report will not include all the separate letters of recommendation and support materials that have been uploaded into Sedona, although it will show that they do exist. It will still require a manual transfer of these into CAPS.
General Reno is asking that all faculty, whether or not they are under review in 2015-16, to update their portfolios in CAPS preferably by January 15, 2016, but no later than May 15, 2016. Sedona will no longer be available after June 2016, and it is expedient that important documentation be retrieved before that time. The HLC Steering Committee is furthermore asking that faculty portfolios be updated, if possible, by the January 2016 deadline. Criterion #2: Integrity, Criterion #3: Teaching and Learning: Quality, Resources, and Support, and Criterion #4: Teaching and Learning: Evaluation and Improvement will all be helped by the portfolios centralized and systematized in CAPS.
Although an initial overview was given at the Academic Day Sessions, further training for individuals and/or groups might be necessary. General Reno asks that you direct any questions and requests for training to Dr. Pamela Johnson. Dr. Johnson has been a crucial factor in the development of this program.
Dave reminds us that any new software has a learning curve; for some it is steeper than for others. He asks that we exercise patience as we go through this, for “once we get through this process, it will be a time saver.”
Link to CAPS at caps.cedarville.edu
Link through Resources on Faculty/Staff page.
Posted in: Uncategorized