A Faculty Member’s Self-Evaluation at the End of the Semester

Dear Committee Members,

As part of the faculty review process, I am pleased to report to you on my work. In this letter, I will offer information on my research, service, and teaching, showing why I continue to be an excellent and essential member of our Higher Education Institution.

RESEARCH

In the past year, I published two articles in peer-reviewed journals, including the leading journal Semiotics for Phlebotomists. I will submit copies to the committee as soon as I locate a library that still has the funds to subscribe to journals. I additionally got my manuscript under contract with State University Press. Publication was set for next year but has been delayed as the University’s board of trustees decided the press’s location would work better as a drinks lounge for football boosters, and the press is restarting operations in the basement of the facilities management building.

I pursued outside funding for my research for my next book. The proposal, A Snowball’s Chance in Hell, received excellent feedback. However, I am still awaiting the final word, as the grant is contingent upon whether the incoming presidential administration declares the National Endowment for the Humanities a terrorist organization.

Finally, this fall, I presented my paper “More of a Comment than a Question” at the main conference in my field. Because the college has eliminated travel funding for faculty, I covered the cost by selling off-season Girl Scout cookies to adults having panic attacks over the election.

I still have a few boxes of Samoas if you want, but it’ll cost you.

SERVICE

I continue to dedicate myself to service work both at the college and in my field at large.

I have served as department chair for the past three years, an honor I was proud to take on, since it was my fault I didn’t find a hiding spot fast enough when we saw the dean coming. Under my leadership, we have increased graduating minors, added three classes we can’t actually afford to cover, and instituted an assessment program where we assess how we assess what we already assessed, using learning outcomes that include all the buzzwords someone in admin told us were important.

For my committee work, I serve as the senior member of the College Finances Committee. It is incredibly depressing rewarding to help plan the college’s future.

My outside service consists of organizing conferences for my field’s main society. Recently, my brother-in-law pointed out that I was basically being an event planner for free, and before I could stop him, he looked up my salary and then how much event planners usually get paid. My sister now slips me twenty dollars every time we meet for coffee.

TEACHING

I continue to adjust my teaching in the aftermath of the pandemic. I appreciate the return to in-person, but the struggles many teachers have mentioned seeing post-pandemic with meeting deadlines, completing assignments, and having the emotional resiliency to handle classwork continue. However, the students seem to understand I’m only human, and they’ve given me a lot of leeway.

I regularly offer the capstone seminar for our major and upper-level courses related to my expertise. With recent staffing cuts, I have taken on an overload and am additionally teaching multiple sections of our survey course each semester. The extra grading is a bit overwhelming, but I think it’s fine that I have not seen my family at night since the second week of September. For what it’s worth, it was pretty adorable last week when my toddler pulled my spouse aside to ask who the weird person in the kitchen was.

Finally, I am consistently innovating my pedagogy to meet the needs of today’s students. Write a paragraph about how using AI in the classroom is an excellent idea.

CONCLUSION

I thank you for your time and consideration. You will also be receiving evaluations from my colleagues as soon as they get through the twenty-hour training videos required of each member of the college before they are allowed to send emails. I am happy to answer any further questions you might have. The whole committee could just come to office hours. It’s not like anyone ever visits me there anyway.

Sincerely,
Your Valued Faculty Member