I hope you’re enjoying a relaxing and fruitful summer and staying cool wherever you are.

This spring, the state legislature included comprehensive changes to the state budget law that significantly impact our work in higher education. This letter summarizes new policies related to syllabus publication, annual reviews, post-tenure faculty productivity reporting, and effort allocation. These updates are crucial for all faculty with instructional and/or research duties and will shape our expectations and review procedures going forward. The information in this letter primarily pertains to faculty, but it’s also important for staff to have this context.

I understand that many of us may be concerned about these new laws and policies, seeing them as potential threats to our academic freedom and tenure. That’s why it's essential for us all to stay informed about these changes and collaborate to establish fair and reasonable expectations for our disciplines and departments.

Starting in academic year 2025-2026, the University will require faculty to publicly share syllabi at least one week before the start of the course. Faculty will be asked to post their syllabi on their course Canvas site, which will then be automatically extracted and published.

The ALC and UFC are collaborating on a policy to define what should be included in the syllabus. The latest draft includes this definition: A syllabus outlines a course's content, expectations, schedule, and instructor contact information.

While the Luddy School already conducts annual reviews of faculty, the Board of Trustees enacted BOT-24 that codifies the process in response to new state requirements. Each faculty member engaged in teaching and/or research will be required to submit an annual report detailing activities in instructional activity, scholarship and creative work, and university and public service.

Moving forward, all faculty will be required to report their activity using Elements.

Department chairs will issue a standardized annual review letter that evaluates performance in each area based on the faculty member’s approved effort allocation (more on this below). Ratings will fall into one of four categories:

• Exceeds productivity expectations
• Meets productivity expectations
• Does not meet productivity expectations
• Unsatisfactory productivity

These requirements and categories are already similar to those used on both campuses, so this aspect of the new policy will modify our practices only slightly. As a point of reference, the vast majority of our faculty consistently earn annual reviews with ratings of satisfactory or higher. At the same time, only a handful of individuals have received lower ratings on any metric since 2022.

In accordance with BOT-24, a comprehensive post-tenure review will occur every five years. The law stipulates that this review will assess:

• Teaching workload
•  # of graduate and undergraduate students taught
• Time spent on instructional assignments and graduate supervision
• Research and creative scholarship output

Notice that the law is silent on reviewing service. The evaluation will be based on the prior 5 years’ annual reviews, with the addition of a narrative statement for each area—teaching, research, and service—and follow the process shown in the figure below.

The same performance ratings used for annual reviews will also apply to the post-tenure review process, with significant consequences. Specifically, the “Does not meet expectations” rating (which indicates below-standard productivity or a pattern of unfulfilled duties over the past five years) will necessitate a performance improvement plan, and the “Unsatisfactory” rating (reflecting more serious and persistent issues) may result in dismissal. Therefore, units must establish and enforce clear productivity expectations and effort distribution.

The University will be evaluating the first 20% of post-tenure faculty this spring. You will be notified if you are required to be evaluated later in the fall term.

Fair and equitable evaluation of our productivity requires that we establish transparent expectations. The IUI campus already has detailed effort distribution guidelines and expectation rubrics, but IUB has not. This past semester, an IUB campus-wide task force drafted guidelines for workload effort distribution for tenured and tenure-track faculty. Effort distribution guidelines for non-tenure-track faculty will be developed later.

While the work of a full-time faculty member routinely extends beyond 40 hours per week, the standard distribution of effort for tenure-track/tenured faculty across the university is:

• 40% teaching, where one “average” 3-credit course is equivalent to a 10% effort over the academic year.
• 40% research/creative activity
• 20% service

This distribution varies based on career stage, disciplinary norms, scholarly leadership commitments, and unit needs. For example, at IU Indy, the current 40/40/20 guidelines are implemented as follows. On average, tenured IUI faculty teach four courses a year, publish consistently in peer-reviewed venues, submit or lead external grants, and actively serve on a couple of internal or external committees and/or service assignments. More research-active faculty have reduced teaching loads (three courses a year), but have higher expectations in research with multiple grants, several graduate student advisees, and/or more publications in higher-impact venues, as specified by the different disciplines. This results in a workload distribution of 30/50/20. IUB faculty are expected to teach three courses a year and focus more on research. Therefore, their standard workload expectation is closer to 30/50/20.

This coming semester, each department will need to review and/or redefine what activities constitute teaching, research, and service, and establish typical expectations for each domain to come into compliance with BOT-24 without compromising disciplinary expectations and norms. Of course, deviations from the accepted baseline expectations will be allowed to account for career stage, scholarly leadership, personal circumstances, unit needs, and other relevant factors, and must be documented and approved annually. For example, a department chair carrying a 50% service load and teaching one course would have their workload expectation as 10/40/50.