BENEFITS OF A FACULTY REVIEW

A Faculty Review enables a Faculty and its staff to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and to know where to intervene to make effective and sustainable, continuous improvements. It brings internal benefits to the Faculty and the staff, and external benefits to the students and the reputation of the institution.

A Faculty Review enables leaders and staff involved in the Faculty to formulate, clarify and articulate its mission, vision, goals, objectives and its relation to those of the university, and to review the nature and impact of the academic work in the Faculty.  It enables staff to receive feedback on the Faculty and to take action as a consequence of the feedback, setting collective priorities, and disseminating good practice. Faculty Review enables evidence-based decision-making and leadership to be cultivated and implemented. It identifies needs and resources, and it promotes action planning. It develops the staff's abilities to monitor and evaluate themselves, each other, students and the Faculty. 

A Faculty Review enables Faculty members to develop a systematic, rigorous mentality/mindset towards, and way of looking at, planning, delivering and evaluating a Faculty and their own and others’ work, and to do this methodically, collaboratively and collegially. It develops collaborative and collegial practices and improves morale. It is part of the ongoing professional development of the staff and, indeed, enhances the professionalism of the staff through regulation, self-regulation, and self-organized Faculty development. 

Faculty Review leads to continuous improvement of the Faculty, its staff and students. Continuous improvement is both the medium and outcome of Faculty Review. 

A Faculty Review is a collaborative exercise, and one of its benefits is a consensus on Faculty goals, objectives and intended outcomes, such that there is a common benchmark set of criteria for planning and evaluating the Faculty. It also enables staff to identify the unique and/or distinctive features of the Faculty, and this can help it to position itself for student and staff recruitment and orientation (which, indeed, is also useful for Human Resource Managers and Personnel Officers), and for publicity, identify what the Faculty stands for and where it is going. Indeed, in working toward the consensus, staff will be involved in examining best practice in its own and other, similar Faculties. 

Faculty Review is data-driven, and, amongst the data set, are student outcomes. Faculty Review can help staff to understand the processes that led to the outcomes, so that these can be improved where necessary, i.e. the Faculty Review has a clear formative agenda. 

Faculty Review can also be used in the presentation of proposals for research applications and grants, as some grant applications require applicants to provide information on institutional or organizational capability and capacity; Faculty Reviews can provide a useful source of information here. 

For accountability purposes, Faculty Review enables the Faculty and university to know and to understand the distinctive strengths, accomplishments, needs, and future plans of the Faculty. In turn, this enables the Faculty to offer support, identify areas of common interest in the Faculty, to link individual members of staff or entire Faculties with relevant resources on- and off-campus, and to meet identified resource needs.

Faculty Review is designed to ensure consistency, reliability and excellence in meeting the demands of fitness of purpose and fitness for purpose, and in a timely fashion ('right first time'). It ensures that the Faculty is aligned not only to its own aims, objectives and intended learning outcomes, but also that, these, in turn, are aligned to the strategic direction of the Faculty and the university. It indicates where the Faculty in practice is, and is not, matched to its declared intentions. It improves the quality of the Faculty, the work of the staff and students, and their learning and achievement. 

A Faculty Review enhances communication and within a Faculty and its members, it improves morale and a sense of working towards a common aim of the best performance and operation of the Faculty, by enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of the Faculty.

Faculty Review also enhances the reputation of the institution as well as the Faculty, and it meets external demands for demonstrating quality, quality assurance and quality enhancement.

Quality enhancement is the act of taking planned steps to bring about continuous improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of the Faculty.

One of the effects of Faculty Review is to compile thorough and complete documentation of a Faculty, such that new members of staff can understand, and, indeed fit into, a new Faculty with maximum ease and minimum time; this can be useful if staff turnover is an issue.

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