Expectations for Faculty Collaboration and Participation in Teams in Research, Teaching, Extension

Annual Academic Performance Evaluation and Progress towards Promotion 

IANR encourages team science and is actively supporting it.^[1] Forming teams can increase the scope, scale and impact of relevant research, scholarship, teaching, and Extension. Well functioning teams can harness collective contributions in a way that accentuates individual efforts resulting outcomes that are greater than the sum of the individual contributions. Being part of well functioning teams can also position individuals for career-long success that could be much greater than they could accomplish on their own. 

IANR leadership acknowledges that there is an historical structure of policies, procedures and mores  governing faculty evaluation that is biased in favor of individual, primary investigator, and first author contributions. Unacknowledged and unchecked, these traditions disincentivize contributions to teams. To counteract these biases, IANR is examining and revising, as needed, policies and procedures to encourage and incentivize team science and collaborative efforts while at the same time supporting and rewarding individual contributions. 

1. Training and support 
   • IANR’s colleges and divisions provide training and instruction on effective team management and reporting on team efforts. 
   • Mentoring and coaching in best practices in team science is provided through deans, associate deans, and within academic units, centers, and other administrative units. 
   • Guidance and instruction is provided to those contributing to teams in how to document team contributions. 
   • Guidelines for evaluating team contributions and collaborative efforts are provided to peer review committees, supervisors and others who evaluate faculty work, and training is provided to these individuals in how to apply these guidelines. 
2. Setting and clarifying expectations 
   • Position descriptions are written and updated as necessary to reflect expectations for contributions to team and other collaborative efforts. 
   • IANR colleges and divisions publish criteria for evaluating collaborative effort and team contributions, and how those contributions will be recognized and rewarded in annual and promotion and/or tenure evaluation. 
3. Faculty reporting of accomplishments and impacts 
   • Faculty members are encouraged to identify team projects as such in annual reports of faculty accomplishments and in dossiers for promotion and tenure. o In narrative descriptions of accomplishments, individuals contributing to team projects (including multi-state or international) are encouraged to identify their role in the project and products (e.g., publications). 
   • If a project is identified as a team project, written goals for the team, and the role or responsibility for each collaborator, should be identified.   
     • It is encouraged that this is authored by the team and shared with all team members to be included in annual reporting or in the appendices of the tenure and/or promotion dossier. 
     • Faculty members may submit a description of the team goals and roles as a supplement to their two-page maximum summary of accomplishments for annual reporting. 
   • Recognizing that team-generated products and outcomes may take longer to accomplish than individual efforts, team progress toward these expected outcomes should be reported annually. 
   • The individual faculty member is responsible for clearly identifying in their annual report and promotion and tenure dossier the team projects they participated in and their role in the associated outputs and impacts. This should be described in the Candidate Summary of the tenure and/or promotion dossier. Supporting information could also be included in the appendices. 
   • Every member of the team, including those identified as primary investigator, lead author, or equivalent, is responsible for describing their contribution to the team. It cannot be assumed that a person’s contributions to the team will be self-explanatory based on the label used to describe the role. 
4. Evaluation of contributions to teams 
   • Faculty members should be evaluated in light of their position description, and the expectations for collaboration and team work identified therein. 
   • Individual or PI, co-PI, first author, or other leadership role contributions and accomplishments should not be required to receive positive performance and progress toward tenure and/or promotion evaluations, or favorable tenure and/or promotion decisions.   
   • Evaluators should recognize the importance of team efforts and the crucial role various members of a team play in solving real-world issues. Teams cannot be successful without the influence, contributions and leadership of those who are not identified as lead authors and primary investigators. Evaluators must recognize that all contributions to a team project are essential to the success of the project and should not be minimized. For example, the PI’s, coPI’s, or project lead’s contribution should not be assumed to be more impactful or meaningful than that of any other member of the team. 
   • In annual review, achievement of benchmarks that demonstrate progress toward and promise in achieving expected outcomes of team and collaborative efforts should be acknowledged as accomplishments. Evaluators should take into account the additional time required in a team effort (e.g., team meetings, understanding other disciplines, awaiting feedback on products from other members of the team, etc.). 
   • Specialized skill and expertise that is critical to the success of team and collaborative projects should be valued just as highly as leadership roles. 
   • Repeated invitations to participate on and contribute to teams should be acknowledged as peer recognition of expertise and the value of an individual’s contribution. 
   • Annual and tenure and/or promotion evaluation should be based on expectations for teambased efforts, including interdisciplinary research, as outlined in the faculty member’s position description. 
   • Focus in evaluation should be placed on relevance and impact of products and outcomes and not on the quanitity of the outcomes or on traditional definitions of peer reviewed products. All relevant reported outputs (e.g., grants, publications, webpages, maps, patents, curriculum), as well as project impacts, should be valued in faculty evaluation. 
   • Effective team leadership roles should be valued and properly credited. 
   • Administrators should not ask team leaders and members to evaluate each other as part of or to inform the administrator’s evaluation of individual faculty members. . 
   • Administrators should not ask team leaders or members to identify percent contribution or percent effort for themselves or for others. 
5. Rewarding
   • Team contributions, regardless of role, are deserving of favorable annual, promotion and/or tenure evaluations, and of annual salary increases. 
   • Other mechanisms for recognizing successful team and collaborative efforts include: 
     • IANR Team Awards—hold a Team Recognition event (research, extension, and teaching). 
       • Recognize team efforts at the end of the grant, not just when the grant is awarded. 
       • All individuals within the team should be recognized. 
     • Award additional funding for successful teams. 
     • Award professional development opportunities for team members. 

Context for This Document 

In 2016, Dr. Archie Clutter, Dean and Director of the Agricultural Research Division, asked Dr. Larry Van Tassell, Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics, to lead an ad-hoc Committee on Teams consisting of a cross section of faculty from multiple disciplines. The charge to the committee was to address how IANR can ascertain, evaluation and reward interdisciplinary research, Extension and educational efforts. Three questions guided the committee’s work: 

1. How can individual contributions to teams be reported within our current reporting system? 
2. How can administration, promotion and tenure committees, and other value and demonstrate individual and leadership contributions to teams? 
3. How can IANR recognize/reward individual and leadership contributions to teams? 

The Committee on Teams submitted their report in May 2017. The report resulted in a revision to the Activity Insight annual reporting system to include prompts for faculty to indicate whether activities were part of team or solo efforts. 

In Fall 2021, the IANR deans and Associate Vice Chancellors met to revisit the Committee on Teams report. As a result, the report and other related information was shared with the IANR Liaison Committee with the charge to determine the continued relevance of the information in the Committee on Team’s report and how it could be updated to operationalize it across all mission areas. The revised report generated from the work of the IANR Liaison Committee was shared with the IANR deans in April 2022. 

The document will be shared with the Faculty Advisory Committees for ARD, CASNR and Extension for feedback, and with IANR’s Leadership Council prior to publication on the IANR web site and implementation in faculty evaluation.              

References 

Mazumdar, M. et al., (2015). Evaluating scientists collaborating in team-based research: A proposed framework. Academic Medicine, 90(10), 1302-1308.
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4653084/)
Academic Scholarship: Contributions to grantwriting, research design and execution, scholarship/publication, 
Leadership/influence 
Ask for collaborator feedback, evaluating the contribution as major, moderate, or minor 

Omar, Z., & Ahmad, A. (2014). Factors contributing to research team effectiveness: Testing a model of team effectiveness in an academic setting. International Journal of Higher Education, 3(3), 10-26. 
(https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1067562.pdf). 
Factors associated with productivity and effectiveness included: 
Team commitment 
Team climate 
Team member satisfaction 

[1] IANR faculty members are not required to be members of research, teaching, or Extension teams. Relevant and impactful contributions can be made by individuals. These individual contributions are to be acknowledged and rewarded.