09 October 2018 
Martin Higgs, Communications Officer
Gillian Muir is HR Business Partner at Edinburgh Napier University and was runner-up in the UHR-CUPA Bursary process 2018. She is being funded by the university to attend the CUPA-HR conference, which is taking place in Indianapolis this week. To make the most of her visit to the US, Gillian is conducting some research on how universities in the US approach issues similar to those we are facing in the UK and aims to bring the learnings back home to share with colleagues across the country. Gillian has taken the opportunity to arrange CPD visits to three universities - the University of Illinois at Chicago, Drexel University and Brooklyn College - and will meet with staff at each institution.
During her US visit she will explore how American universities measure the performance of their academic staff on a yearly basis and how they persuade academics to value leadership and management in their role. Gillian writes:
The focus of my study visit is to explore how American universities measure the success of their academic staff and how they rate their performance. In most American universities, academics are expected to achieve tenure at the Associate Professor level within a seven-year period. Newly hired professors (generally at the Assistant Professor Level) must impress their school with their accomplishments to be awarded tenure, usually but not always combined with promotion to Associate Professor. Those not awarded tenure within a fixed time may be expected to leave the institution. There is no such common system of deadline-driven promotion in the UK at this level.
Edinburgh Napier University introduced a new Academic Framework in 2015 for all academic staff from Associate Professor and above. Staff were asked to apply for an award of title or promotion against the new criteria. Staff that did not meet the criteria were given feedback on how to achieve the new criteria but no deadline was given. Currently only 40% of the staff meet the criteria at this level so we need to pursue a range of approaches to ensure staff are meeting the criteria. As the HE sector changes the role of an academic is changing and I think we could learn from the American universities in terms of how they strive for excellence and deal with change.
I am really interested in finding out about practically how American universities measure success of academic staff and how they rate their performance with the common conflict felt amongst academic staff of research outputs, teaching and administration. My focus will be on the year-on-year rating of an academic’s performance, as opposed to academic career progression, although both will be interlinked. How do US universities manage the tenure process?
In the HE sector leadership and management can be seen by some academics as non-value adding: an additional responsibility they don’t want. Often academics are given line-management responsibilities but can view this as an administration burden, as opposed to capacity building. I am interested in exploring how American universities develop their academic leaders to become successful leaders and managers. I often reflect on how can we improve staff engagement if line-managers are not engaged in their role and do not take ownership of the responsibilities that come with line-management.
Most promotion criteria across the HE sector includes academic leadership and academic staff need to demonstrate capacity building. But I often find that the basic management responsibilities are not taken seriously by academics; and often the academic environment can generate challenging behaviours which focus on individualism. The result can be that both line-managers and academics don’t value leadership and management. Often the basic pastoral support is not given to staff by their line-manager and they are “just left to it”.
I believe I can build on the learnings Sophie Harris (2017 UHR-CUPA winner) gained from American universities on exploring the gender imbalance in academic progression by looking at the systems and processes they have in place to rate the performance of staff and develop their leaders to achieve this.
