Writing the Annual Activity Report

What is the Annual Report?

"Each year the Dean's Office asks all full-time faculty to complete a professional activity report. The report solicits information on teaching activities, achievements in scholarship and/or the arts and service to the community and professional organizations." (The Faculty Handbook of St. Lawrence University)

What is it used for?

The annual report is used by you and by your department chair to review your progress as a teacher, scholar and colleague. It gives your department chair a chance to monitor your progress and also gives you an opportunity for reflection and the selfexamination of your goals. The annual report provides a faculty member with an ongoing record that is extremely useful when preparing mid-probationary and tenure and promotion cases. Department chairs and program heads will write their responses to your self-evaluation, usually one paragraph in length, and share them with you. Chairs and program coordinators then meet with the Dean by the end of the summer to discuss all department members’ self-evaluations and their responses to them.

When is it due?

The annual report is due at the end of each academic year in early June.

Where do I start?

The first step in writing the annual review is to update your vita. Be sure to include any new courses taught and any committee work from the academic year. In addition you should add any new research projects. We talk more about this later in the section titled , Things You May Want to Add to Your ‘Annual Review’ File. Your next step is to ask to look at past annual reports of one of your colleagues. It is important that you choose this person carefully. Although you may be tempted to ask the most senior member of your department, this is probably not a good idea. First of all, a tenured faculty member may not change their annual report much from year to year and they will probably have much more included in their vita. A more senior faculty member may have a report style that is "outdated" and may not be to your liking. You also should not ask a non-tenured colleague. Although you may feel more comfortable asking a colleague who is at the same stage in their career as you, they may not have mastered this task either. The ideal colleague to ask is a recently tenured faculty member. They have been here long enough to learn the ropes and they will have obviously demonstrated "the right stuff" (at least enough to get them tenured!). Each spring, as part of the new faculty orientation follow-up sessions, the CTL sponsors an informal workshop for new faculty on writing your first annual review. In addition to receiving practical tips, a few seasoned faculty members attend the meeting and share copies of their own annual activity reports. This session affords new faculty an opportunity to ask questions about topic, content, and page guidelines.

Writing the Review

Seek Balance

Don’t be shy; tell it like it is. Don’t hide your light under a bushel basket. If you have had minor successes over the year (e.g., got a manuscript accepted, presented at a regional conference, became actively involved in a new student-faculty initiative, etc.), don’t be afraid to “brag” about your success -- or at least call it to the attention of your department chair.

In the same vein, be certain to mention areas that are of concern to you (i.e., rejection of a manuscript, low teaching evaluations, delays in your individual research, etc.). Sure, we all know it’s hard to mention areas that are of personal concern because you think that you run the risk of “exposing” yourself – letting your department chair know that you aren’t as brilliant as she/he originally thought upon hiring you. But the reality is, neither is your department chair – brilliant that is. (You know what? You will find that most of your senior colleagues really are interested in helping you become a better teacher/researcher/university citizen.)

Okay, now that you’ve laid your heart out on the table, be sure to follow up with positive action plans as to how you are going to actively address possible areas of concern. (How are you going to revise that manuscript? How are you going to change that teaching technique that flopped? How will you find time to do first-rate research while still maintaining your other responsibilities?)

Be revealing enough that the reader gets a sense of the level of introspection, thought and effort you have put into it, but don’t approach the task as if you are going to befriend all of your inner demons by simply writing about them. The point here is to follow the same rule of thumb when sitting down to write a manuscript – that is, engage your reader, be interesting, be exacting, but cut out the fat, and be pithy with your words. Focus on the Words “Annual” and “Review”

Remember, this is an annual report, not a day-to-day account of the multitude of successes and failures that each of us faces in any given day as a college instructor. Think of Stephen Hawking’s bestseller, “A Brief History of Time” when writing your report. That is, focus on the big picture (the entire landscape of the year – not just the day-to-day peaks and valleys). Step away occasionally as you are drafting the annual report, let yourself “breathe” and expand your self-understanding as you engage in the writing process – looking for common themes in your daily performance. This will probably be a good indicator of areas in which you need to develop, or areas that you have already mastered and are very good at.

Cheat. That is, it helps to keep a small journal in your office where you try to keep some sort of running dialogue with yourself about the “day-to-day.” This way, when it’s time to sit down at year’s end and write your annual review, you actually have substantial “data” that will hopefully spark your memory and provide you with enough evidence to say, “yeah, I’m doing just fine here as a new-comer to St. Lawrence.” or “Oh, my god, where did the year go and what did I accomplish?!” (Our suspicion is that you will find yourself somewhere in between these two extremes if you are at all honest with yourself.)

After all is said and done, and you have written what you consider to be an annual review, set the draft aside for a few days and then come back to it. You’d be surprised how many noteworthy items seep up from the subconscious over the course of a few days (actually, this usually occurs when one is sleeping, when the mind is at ease, not “asleep” so to speak, just in a more receptive state when the level of inner “static” isn’t nearly so distracting.)

Set some future goals for yourself. Somewhere in your report let your department chair know what your future intentions are. Give her/him the impression that you are thinking ahead, gauging your future progress and being realistic about how much (or how little, whichever is the case) one can accomplish over a year’s time given your individual teaching load, service to other University committees, and pursuing your own on-going scholarly work. Let It Go and Relax

When you have completed the report, be finished. Don’t agonize over things you might have said, or issues you forgot to mention. Remember, you are in frequent (sometimes too much) contact with your department chair and immediate colleagues, and can update them as to any particular challenges you face or relevant “coup” you may have obtained over the course of the semester. Now is the time to relax. Don’t let those incessant little self-critics get the best of you.

Be open and receptive to any immediate feedback you may receive from your department chair. The chair is required to write up a one-page summary of your annual report, which will then be forwarded to the Dean. You should be given the opportunity to review the summary – if not, be bold and ask your department chair to be granted that courtesy. Ask for a written copy of the department chair’s summary to keep in your files if one is not offered freely. (You really shouldn’t have to worry about taking these types of self-protective actions, but it’s to your advantage to have your own complete set of internal files.)

Having said all this, don’t obsess that someone is sitting down and reading these with a “fine-tooth comb” or a “red pen.” These reports are used to serve as one of several tools in evaluating one’s on-going progress here at St. Lawrence University. (Don’t fool yourself into thinking that the Professional Standards Committee–the folks who make recommendations for tenure and promotion to the Dean & President–ever read these summaries. They don’t even have access to them.)

Finally, try and keep things in perspective. All of us are growing deeper into our professions, some just do it with more grace, elegance, and ease, while some seem to struggle, agonize, and regret. Don’t let yourself be one of those who regrets.

Things You May Want to Add to Your ‘Annual Review’ File Teaching

  • Courses taught
  • New courses taught
  • Courses that you have substantially revised
  • Any examples of new scholarship that you have incorporated into your courses
  • Pedagogical techniques
  • New techniques that you have tried
  • Team teaching experiences
  • Course evaluations
  • Pedagogical conferences attended
  • Independent studies you have supervised
  • Ways in which you have solicited help in teaching from colleagues (i.e. visiting each other's classrooms)
  • Faculty development seminars (i.e. reading groups, Shop Talks, Technology for Teaching workshops)
  • Experiences with academic advising

Scholarship

  • Publications (in progress, submitted, in press or published)
  • Presentations
  • Conferences attended
  • Supervision of student research
  • Grants
  • Fellowships
  • Awards
  • Research trips
  • Invited peer review
  • Professional memberships
  • Activities that keep you current in your field
  • Service to professional associations (i.e. treasurer, editor )
  • Organizing panels, chairing a panel or serving as a discussant
  • Current work in progress
  • Discussion of future projects and emerging interests

Service

  • Departmental service (i.e. Colloquium committee, Search committee)
  • Serving on standing University committees (i.e. Faculty Council)
  • Ad hoc committees (i.e. events planning, bringing in a speaker, outdoor studies council, cultural encounters planning board--There are a million of these!)
  • Advising student groups (i.e. Black student union, Greek organizations, Environmental awareness organization )
  • Appointments to task forces (i.e. Alcohol task force, Summer curricular inventory committee)
  • Support of and/or attendance at university wide functions such as concerts, plays, art shows, lectures
  • Individual student advising tasks (i.e. writing recommendations, graduate study advising)
  • Involvement in the wider North Country community (i.e. serving on the Canton Historical Society Board, The CAVA (Citizens against violent acts) board, being a middle school soccer coach)