Department of Statistics Bylaws

A. Adherence with Other Governing Documents. At all times, department policy shall adhere to and be consistent with all university policies found in the FSU Constitution, the BOT-UFF Collective Bargaining Agreement (if applicable to the college), the Faculty Handbook, and the Annual Memorandum on the Promotion and Tenure Process issued by the Office of Faculty Development and Advancement.

B. Bylaws Revision. This document can be modified by a two-thirds vote of the permanent faculty and in-unit staff members.

C. Substantive Change Statement. Faculty and staff members are expected to be familiar with and follow the Florida State University Substantive Change Policy.

A. Faculty Membership. The faculty of the Department of Statistics shall consist of those persons holding Full-Time appointments at the rank of Specialized Faculty, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor.

B. Department Membership. In addition to the faculty defined in II.A (above), the following are members of the Department of Statistics: postdocs, visiting professors, and staff.

C. Faculty Voting Rights. Tenured, tenure-track, and specialized faculty shall be considered permanent faculty and shall have the right to vote on all Departmental governance issues and to be involved in unit reorganization.

D. Non-faculty Voting Rights. In-unit staff members shall have the right to vote on the department bylaws and revisions.

A. Faculty Meetings. Faculty meetings are typically called by the chair or by petition to the chair of at least three permanent members. In the latter case the meeting is to be held within three weeks. Voting is limited to permanent faculty; one-half of their number constitutes a quorum. Robert’s Rules of order constitute an informal guide to the conduct of meetings.

B. Department Chair Selection. The chair is the chief administrator and academic leader of our department. The chair shall be elected by the faculty of the Department to serve a three-year term, with the consent of the Dean of the College.

The Chair's administrative duties include preparing the annual assignments of responsibilities (AORs) of the faculty and writing annual evaluation narratives for all faculty. The narrative is then attached to the Annual Evaluation Summary Form. The chair is responsible for providing annually a written letter for both tenure and specialized faculty. These letters are prepared in consultation with the Department’s Faculty Evaluation and Salary Increase Committee (FESIC) and Promotion and Tenure (P&T) committees and reflect the university and the Department's criteria for the promotion. In addition, the Chair is responsible for the financial affairs of the department.

At the beginning of the last year of the sitting Chair's three-year term, the Department will elect a Chair Selection Committee consisting of three members of the permanent faculty; the Dean may appoint an outside member of the committee. The committee will establish the procedures for reviewing applicants and making its recommendation to the Dean.

Sitting chairs may ask for a recommendation of reappointment.

The chair may be recalled by a two-thirds vote of the permanent faculty. The results of the secret ballot would be forwarded to the Dean of the College.

C. Department and Leadership Committees. The three permanent committees of the Department are the Executive Committee, the P&T Committee, and the Faculty

Evaluation and Salary Increase Committee (FESIC). Each committee consists of four members elected annually from the tenured faculty by all faculty members who have the right to vote. The chair serves on these committees as ex-officio.

Associate Chair and Directors shall be appointed by the Chair annually.

The chair appoints standing Committees. The standing committees of the department are:

1. The Curriculum Committee
2. The Graduate Student Recruiting and Admissions Committee
3. The Graduate Student Evaluation and Awards Committee
4. The Computing Policy and Acquisitions Committee

The chair may appoint such other committees as necessary.

D. Faculty Senators. Faculty senators are elected by the department faculty. They are responsible for attending Faculty Senate meetings and informing the department of developments affecting the department or its members.

E. Faculty Recruitment. The Faculty recruiting committee for the department consists of the executive committee and two tenure-track faculty members elected annually. The executive committee may appoint additional members to the recruiting committee. The committee identifies the area of specialization for which there will be recruitment, reviews all applications, and seeks feedback from the faculty on all candidates.

Faculty participation in the hiring process consists of providing input to the executive committee on the applicants (prior to inviting interviewees) and the candidates (once interviews are complete). The final choices shall be decided by the recruiting committee taking into account input from all faculty members.

F. Unit Reorganization. Internal reorganization of the department will be overseen by the executive committee and approved by the chair. Faculty participation consists of providing input to the executive committee.

The department curriculum is designed and modified by the Curriculum Committee. This committee shall consist of two members from the Statistics Program, two members from the Biostatistics Program, and the Undergraduate Program Director. The program curriculum of the department shall be reviewed annually and curriculum changes shall be proposed by the committee. Curriculum changes shall be voted by the department faculty.

A. Peer Involvement in Annual Performance and Merit Evaluation. Each faculty member’s performance will be evaluated relative to his or her assigned duties. Each faculty member’s performance will be rated annually using the following university rating scale:

1. Exceeds Expectations
2. Meets Expectations
3. Official Concern
4. Does Not Meet Expectations

Faculty and in-unit staff’s annual evaluation will be conducted in the spring semester of each year. The following evaluation criteria and procedure shall be effective on January 1, 2022. Each faculty and in-unit staff member shall submit an annual report of Evidence of Performance in teaching, research or creative activities, service, and other Universities duties to the department’s Faculty Evaluation and Salary Increase Committee (FESIC).

Faculty and in-unit staff’s Evidence of Performance Report shall include the following parts:

1. Teaching Assignments: including course taught, graduate degrees awarded, graduate student direction, graduate student committees;
2. Research Assignments: including papers and books published, papers in press, papers submitted, papers given in meetings, invited papers, colloquia and individual talks, grant funding;
3. Service Assignments: including department committee service, university and SUS committee service, international, national, and regional committee service, office held, honors received, service to public schools, and service to the industry;
4. Curriculum Vitae;
5. Summary Statement.

The FESIC of the department shall read the Evidence of Performance Reports and determine a merit score for each tenure and specialized faculty member in the department as well as any staff who are considered “in-unit” under the collective bargaining agreement. Specialized faculty members and “in-unit” staff in the department shall be reviewed first by a subcommittee consisting of their peers. The subcommittee shall submit an evaluation report, including scores for teaching and service of each specialized faculty member and “in-unit” staff, to the department FESIC for further review and evaluation. For each member under the annual evaluation, a score on the scale of 4 to 10 with 10 as the highest score will be determined by each member the FESIC for each of the three areas: teaching, research, and service, based on the performance of the member in the evaluation period. A FESIC member shall not assign scores to them. For each of the three areas a trimmed-mean score (after removing the highest score and lowest score among all scores including the score assigned by the subcommittee for specialized faculty members and “in-unit” staff) shall be calculated for each member under evaluation. The final merit score for each member shall be calculated as a weighted average of the three scores in accord with the Assignment of Responsibility (AORs) for the calendar year being considered and achievements during the period being reviewed.

Based on the final merit scores, faculty and in-unit staff’s performance during the evaluation period will be classified into the following categories:

1. Merit score 8 or higher: Exceeds Expectations. A faculty member who exceeds performance expectations during the evaluation period and achieves a noted accomplishment or recognition in teaching, research, and service, which may include several of the following: significant research or creative activities; demonstrated recognition of the individual by peers as an authority in their field; securing significant external funding; attaining significant national or international achievements, awards, and recognition.

2. Merit score between 6.0 and 7.99: Meets Expectations. A faculty member who demonstrates the requisite knowledge and skills in their field of specialty and completes assigned responsibilities in a manner that is both timely and consistent with the expectations of the university.

3. Merit score between 5.0 and 5.99: Official Concern. A faculty member who demonstrates the requisite knowledge and skills in their field of specialty but is not completing assigned responsibilities in a manner that is consistent with the expectations of the university.

4. Merit score below 5.0: Does Not Meet Expectations. A faculty member who fails to demonstrate with consistency the knowledge, skills, or abilities required in their field of specialty and/or in completing assigned responsibilities.

The Chair of the department shall write the annual evaluation narratives for all faculty. The narrative shall be attached to the Annual Evaluation Summary Form. A tenured faculty member whose overall performance is rated ‘Does Not Meet Expectations’ in more than two of the previous six evaluations shall be placed on a Performance Improvement Plan. A specialized faculty member or an in-unit staff member whose overall performance is rated “Does Not Meet Expectations” shall be placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) in one or more areas of assigned duties. The Performance Improvement Plan shall include specific performance targets goals and timetables to assist the faculty member or in-unit staff member in achieving at least a “Meets Expectations” rating.

The merit scores shall be used by the chair to determine merit increase recommendations which shall be sent to the Dean when such increases become available. A merit pay award is not mandated for all members of the department and merit increases shall reflect distinctive levels of merit reflecting the differences in performance. If the Chair’s final merit recommendation should deviate from the FESIC recommendations, the Chair will notify the FESIC of that difference and both plans will go forward to the dean and the provost for review and final recommendation.

B. Criteria for Evaluation of Tenure-track Faculty.

1. Teaching. The typical assignment of teaching load in the department for a tenured or tenure-track faculty member is four courses per year and an aspiration assignment is three courses per year when the faculty member has outside funded research that supports at least one research assistant or when the faculty member directs five or more Ph.D. students.

All faculty members in the department are expected to provide high-quality teaching and graduate student direction, including effectiveness in presenting statistical knowledge, information, and ideas in the classroom and/or online lectures, and in one-on-one advising of graduate students. The faculty’s teaching evaluation will consider the following factors:

• Effectiveness in stimulating students’ critical thinking and/or creative abilities, the development or revision of curriculum and course structure, and adherence to accepted standards of professional behavior in meeting responsibilities to students
• Class size, course preparation time, and new course or not
• Relevant materials submitted by the faculty member, including class notes, syllabi, student exams and assignments, supplementary material, and possible peer evaluations of teaching
• Students' evaluation of faculty's classroom teaching in the SUSSAI forms. required for all courses in both spring and fall semesters
• Direction of graduate students culminating in awarding of degrees

2. Scholarship/Research. The faculty’s performance in research is mainly based on the number and quality of publications, and the amount of grant funding.

For peer-reviewed journal publications, the Statistics field and our department usually use alphabetical order as the order of authorship. When exceptions occur, then the order is important with the first author’s contributions considered the most significant, the second author’s considered the second most significant, and so forth. In interdisciplinary areas, generally, the order is important with the first author’s contributions considered the most significant, and so forth. In biology and computational biology as well as computer vision, however, contributions of the corresponding author who is often the last author are considered as the most significant.

The Department has a strong commitment to interdisciplinary work through the Statistical Consulting Center and through joint collaborations with faculty from various departments including biology, computational sciences, engineering, mathematics, medical school, meteorology, oceanography, and psychology. It is expected that faculty members having major percentage assignments to the Consulting Center and to interdisciplinary work will likely produce subject-specific interdisciplinary papers as well as general research contributions to statistical methodology.

In recent years, the Department has been very successful in obtaining external grant and contract support, with grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, MSP, NCI, the National Institutes of Health, the National Security Agency, the National Science Foundation, and different state departments and agencies.

3. Service. Service at different levels (department, university, regional, national, and international) is necessary and important to the health of the department. Faculty in the department are expected to participate in departmental service. The major administrative posts are assigned to tenured, full professors. In general, more junior faculty are assigned to minimal service in order to free their time for teaching and research. Nevertheless, we expect all faculty to be good citizens in the department and to be amenable to assisting when asked.

Most faculty members perform service to the larger community of scholars. Faculty in the department serve as referees, associate editors and editors for journals, as reviewers for research proposals, and as officers in various professional organizations.

C. Criteria for Evaluation of Specialized Faculty

1. Teaching. The typical assignment of a teaching load in the department for a specialized faculty member is eight courses per year. A specialized faculty with a 12- month appointment also teaches courses in the summer semester. A specialized faculty with a master’s degree usually teaches lower-level undergraduate service courses. These courses include either three- or four-hour single-section courses and large-lecture formats with supporting recitation sections. Specialized faculty with a Ph.D. can teach both undergraduate and graduate courses. Course reduction may be granted to a specialized faculty member with additional service duties in the department or administering large lectures.

All specialized faculty members in the department are expected to deliver high-quality instruction in all classes that they teach. Specialized faculty members are to demonstrate effective teaching by engaging students. This includes producing, organizing, and disseminating statistical information in face-to-face and distanceformats, stimulating student thinking about the subject matter, and helping students to discover the relevance of statistical principles. Specialized faculty teaching evaluation will be based on the following components:

• The degree to which the instructor facilitates student engagement. This can include student engagement with the course materials, with problem solving, with the instructor, and with peers. The goal is to have students to think critically and analytically in exploring solutions to statistical problems.
• The ability to innovate in the instructional process. Specialized faculty are expected to use best teaching practices. To enhance the student experience, specialized faculty should investigate and implement methods that go beyond the traditional classroom lecture.
• The effectiveness of the specialized faculty in managing resources in the educational process. The specialized faculty is expected to prepare adequately for their instruction including producing course syllabi and materials, managing the course schedule, handling the number of students, addressing potential student issues, coordinating teaching assistants, and dealing with similar aspects associated with their teaching.
• The students’ perception of the quality of instruction by the specialized faculty. Included in this is the communication of course expectations and how students felt they were able to meet them. The data for this component is primarily gathered from SPCI evaluations.
• The ability to develop new or revise the existing curriculum. When the need arises, specialized faculty are expected to effectively contribute to the creation or modification of course offerings in the department. 

2. Scholarship/Research. The specialized faculty evaluation in scholarship is mainly focused on the quality and amount of scholarly activity in which they are engaged. Scholarly activity can include pursuits that are used to enhance instruction; for example, attending teaching conferences, developing new instructional methods, participating in undergraduate research programs, developing new programs that augment the student’s educational experience, and other creative projects. A specialized faculty member involved in their own program of research where they publish papers and attend conferences in their research fields is also encouraged.

3. Service. The various levels of service ranging from the departmental to international service level are extremely beneficial to the department’s mission. All specialized faculty are expected to perform departmental service. Although any specialized faculty can serve on an appropriate committee, more senior ranked faculty (e.g., Specialized Faculty III) will assume more of the leadership roles on such committees. Whatever the service role, the expectation is that faculty will make departmental obligations a priority and be willing to aid when asked to serve.

Specialized faculty members are also anticipated to provide service beyond the department to other communities when the need arises. Examples include involvement in the administration of professional organizations, K through 12 activities, and Florida Department of Education initiatives. Service can also take on roles other than committee members such as advising, supervision of students (e.g., supervising teaching assistants, student organizations, honors theses, etc.) and the administration of extra programs such as certificates. Specialized faculty are evaluated in the area of service by the quantity and level of service performed.

A. Progress Toward Promotion Letter. Each year, every faculty member who is not yet at the highest rank for their position will receive a letter by the Chair that outlines progress toward promotion and/or tenure.

B. Third Year Review for Tenure-track Faculty. Tenure-track faculty in their third year of service will receive an evaluation of their progress toward meeting the department’s expectations for promotion and tenure. The third-year review for each tenure-track faculty member will be conducted in the spring semester to evaluate the candidate's progress towards promotion and tenure. These reviews and candidates’ annual chair evaluation letters form the basis of the P&T committee chair’s review letters when these letters are appropriate.

C. Peer Involvement in Evaluation of Promotion and Tenure of Faculty. Promotion in the department (to Associate Professor with Tenure or to Full Professor) shall be evaluated by at least three independent outside reviewers who are experts in the candidates’ research field. The outside letters shall be included in the online promotion binder for the department P&T committee, college committee, and university committee to review.

The basic procedure for promotion and tenure in the department shall be:

1. P&T Committee members vote anonymously on the promotion (to full professor or to associate professor) and tenure of a candidate. Negative votes need to specify the reasons based on the definitions provided by the university.
2. Tenured faculty, including the P&T Committee members and chair, review the whole binder of a candidate and vote anonymously on the tenure of a candidate. Negative votes need to specify the reasons based on the definitions provided by the university.
3. Chair votes separately on the promotion (to full professor or associate professor) and tenure of a candidate.

D. Criteria for Promotion and Tenure of Tenure-track faculty

The P&T Committee provides recommendations on all issues involving promotion and tenure. The Committee recommends promotion to Associate Professor based on the University criteria published by the Vice President for Faculty Development and Advancement which include superior records of teaching, research, and service provided to the Department, the University, and the scientific community.

The Committee recommends promotion to Full Professor based on the University criteria published by the Vice President for Faculty Development and Advancement which include superior records of teaching and research, noteworthy service provided to the department, the university, and the scientific community, a sustained record of direction of graduate students through the completion of their Ph.D. degrees and a record of attainment of research funding.

The Committee recommends the awarding of tenure based upon superior records of teaching, research, and service to the Department, University, and the scientific community.

E. Criteria for Promotion of Specialized Faculty. The P&T Committee recommends promotion for specialized faculty based on the criteria of the College of Arts & Sciences and the faculty member’s annual performance evaluations that include a superior record of teaching and service to the Department.