Managing Disruptions to Faculty Work: Guidance for Academic Leaders

Addressing Disruptions to Faculty Research/Scholarship/Creative Works, Teaching and Mentoring, and Service Activities

November 6, 2025

Overview

The University of Maryland, College Park (“the University”) recognizes that our faculty engage in visible, meaningful, innovative, and impactful research/scholarship/creative works, teaching and mentoring, service, extension, and librarianship activities that further the mission of our University. The creativity, ingenuity, and excellence of our faculty propels the University’s success as we reimagine learning, take on humanity’s grand challenges, invest in people and communities, and partner to advance the public good (Fearlessly Forward).

Emerging and sustained excellence in faculty activities and expectations varies by discipline, field, and subfield. Its assessment relies on a broad range of evaluative processes based on a combination of field/subfield norms, unit criteria, and University and unit policies and procedures engaged through the good-faith judgements of internal and external evaluators. When conducting evaluative reviews (e.g., annual, third-year, merit, promotion, tenure, and comprehensive periodic reviews), we are at once looking at a candidate’s accomplishments and future potential (often referred to as trajectory) based on a candidate’s documented record of accomplishments and activities at the time of review.

Underlying the University’s expectations is a certain amount of stability in the internal and external supports that provide conditions for the success of our faculty. The current higher education environment, however, is highly variable due to disruptions that faculty members may have experienced (e.g., the cancellation of competitively secured contracts and grants, criticisms of certain types or kinds of research/scholarship/creative works, changes in laws/regulations, supply chain issues, travel restrictions or bans, other). Disruptions to research/scholarship/ creative works, teaching and mentoring, service, extension, and librarianship activities can vary within and across disciplines, fields, or subfields, and can have long-term impacts on our faculty members collectively, a subset of faculty, or individual faculty members. The Office of Faculty Affairs (“OFA”), in collaboration with the Associate Deans for Faculty Affairs and ADVANCE, as well as in response to expressions of concerns from academic leaders and faculty, has developed this guidance in part to address the disruptions that faculty may face in their research/scholarship/creative works, teaching and mentoring, service, extension, and librarianship activities due to a dynamic and unpredictable operating environment.

Faculty Guidance

This guidance seeks to enable faculty members and units to consider disruptions that faculty members have encountered as they engage in their evaluative processes through the following:

Individual Statement

University evaluative processes typically offer faculty members the opportunity to provide an accompanying statement. For example:

• Promotion (including PTK and Librarian, as well as tenure track) dossiers include a personal and/or teaching statement; 

• Faculty annual reports submitted through Faculty Success can include a personal statement; 

• Third-year and post-tenure review materials submitted by faculty members typically include a personal statement.

While such statements, when combined with supporting documentation (e.g., grant cancellation notices, stop work orders) can provide important and useful context for reviewers regarding any disruptions experienced by faculty members, faculty members are not required to include or disclose such information. Faculty members should take note that some statements may go to external reviewers, such as the required personal statement included in promotion and tenure dossiers.

Unit Level Reviews

Units (departments, schools within colleges, and non-departmentalized colleges or schools) may provide additional evidence (e.g., cancellation of contracts and grants, defunding and/or criticisms of certain types or kinds of research/scholarship/ creative works, changes in laws/regulations) and contextualization regarding disruptions in the following ways:

• Evaluative Letters. Unit heads may choose to include general contextual information regarding disruptions in their evaluative letters. In addition, unit heads may provide specific contextual comments regarding a candidate who has elected to disclose disruptions in their materials.
• Evaluative Reports. Evaluative committees (e.g., APT, subcommittee, merit review, post-tenure review) may choose to include general contextual information regarding disruptions in their reports. In addition, evaluative committees may provide specific contextual comments regarding a candidate who has elected to disclose disruptions in their materials.
• Documented Evidence. Units may develop a summary document that provides evidence (e.g., notices of grant cancellations, stop work orders, increased costs associated with equipment purchases) of the overall impacts of disruptions on the unit and faculty activities.

CV Annotation

Faculty members may elect to annotate their CV that is submitted as part of evaluative processes (e.g., merit reviews, third year reviews, tenure and/or promotion reviews). OFA recommends the below annotation for grant/contract cancellations/terminations. If used by faculty members, the annotations would appear on any CV sent to external evaluators.

• After the normal citation for a grant, contract, or award, include an asterisk (*) by the end date for period of the award, and, following the citation include a note similar to the following example: *Note: This grant/contract/award was terminated on [date of termination] by [name of funding agency terminating the award] due to [reason provided, if any, by the funding agency; if no reason provided, indicate “for unknown reasons.”].

Notice(s) from Granting / Contracting Agencies

Candidates may elect to include in their review materials, as evidentiary documentation, the official notice(s) received from funding entities cancelling/terminating their grants and/or contracts, or requests for modifications to their grants/contracts. If provided, such notices would remain internal to the University and not shared with external evaluators (e.g., external letter writers).

Tenure Delay

Pre-tenure or permanent status faculty may be eligible for a tenure/permanent status extension due to personal or professional circumstances as per University policy (see II-1.00(D) Section I.C.).

Unit Level Guidance for Administrators and Faculty

All University evaluative processes rely on the good faith efforts of reviewers to base their assessments individually – not comparatively – for each faculty member based on established unit and University criteria and documented accomplishments as articulated in the review materials. Faculty members and academic leaders involved in the review process should examine faculty activity reports, dossiers, and other materials for evidence that a discipline, subdiscipline or field has been altered in such ways that it may be necessary to recalibrate our normal performance expectations as appropriate to the review (e.g., annual, merit, third year, post-tenure) and/or promotion review processes. Units should establish evaluative frameworks/rubrics designed to aid in the assessment of any impacts as appropriate to the individual faculty members, or groups of faculty, within their disciplines or subdisciplines prior to engaging in evaluative processes.

The University recognizes that the work of faculty members may look different than it has in the past and that the impacts of disruptions (e.g., grant cancellations, changes in law/regulations, supply chain disruptions) can accumulate over time. Some examples of disruptions and their professional impacts may include, but are not limited to:

• The need for faculty members, especially early career and mid-career faculty members, to shift their research/scholarship/creative activity focus, populations of study, or other aspects of their scholarly activities.
• The defunding of research areas and topics by the federal government (e.g., National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health), as well as the overall decrease in available federal research funding.
• The elimination or substantive reduction (proposed or actual) of federal agencies that supported faculty research, scholarly, and/or educational activities (e.g., the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts/Humanities).
• Concerns regarding the teaching of controversial or sensitive topics that fall within the areas of a faculty member’s expertise and course content, though protected by Academic Freedom.
• The inability to attend conferences due to funding cuts, which can affect the ability of faculty members to present their work and/or develop extended networks.
• The recent immigration enforcement actions and changes that affect the ability of international faculty members to travel overseas.

The above list of examples is not intended to be exhaustive, and any impacts may differ by specific discipline, field, subfield, individual, or group.

OFA offers the following guidance regarding the conduct of periodic review (e.g., annual, merit, third-year, comprehensive) and/or promotion review processes:

Review Processes

The conduct of periodic and/or promotion review processes are centered on demonstrated excellence, fairness, uniformity, independence, and integrity. The assessment of each faculty member’s contributions, impact, and potential should be:

1. Evidence-based, as documented in the materials;
2. Individual and not comparative;
3. Holistic;
4. Forward-looking, factoring any identified disruptions to the extent possible;
5. Discipline-specific, discipline-informed; and
6. Guided by our principles and language, both University and unit, as articulated in University and unit policies and procedures, as well as the University’s Fearlessly Forward strategic plan.

Discussion of Impacts

Units should engage in broad discussions to explore how the discipline(s) and relevant subdisciplines may have been impacted by relevant disruptions, the types of evidence that would be used to demonstrate the disruptions, and an evaluative framework/rubric designed to facilitate the assessment of the accomplishments of faculty members. For example, units may wish to broadly discuss how they will consider and evaluate  grant/contract cancellations by federal funding sources for internal and higher levels of review.

Value of Faculty Statements and Materials

Statements, as well as other evidentiary materials, provided by faculty members are valued, and are taken in the context of their entire record.

1. Given the variable professional impact(s) of disruptions on faculty members, units should engage in holistic assessments of faculty activities that focus their assessments on the quality and impact of faculty scholarship, the relevance to increasing knowledge and understanding, appropriate level of productivity, teaching and mentoring, and service activities.
2. Units should also consider that, given the emerging realignment of federal research funding, historical expectations for securing external funding may require adjustment both in the near- and long-term.

Unit Attention to Faculty Materials

Units must attend to the statements, materials, or evidentiary documentation provided by faculty members during review processes. Internal reviewers involved in the promotion and/or periodic review processes should note the range and depth of specific obstacles to faculty productivity, and consider how each candidate is addressing, or seeking to address, these obstacles. Units should also identify and consider any potential long-term disciplinary, field, or subfield impacts to the extent possible. Likewise, units should recognize innovations and/or creativity in the research/scholarship/creative works, teaching and mentoring, service, extension, and librarianship activities in which faculty members engaged in response to any disruption(s).

Assessments about annual reviews, merit reviews, reappointment, tenure, promotion, etc. must be made on the information and documentation provided by faculty members and any unit-level observations. In the case of promotion and/or tenure reviews, the impacts of the disclosed disruptions on candidates should be addressed in the committee evaluative reports and unit head letters in relation to unit expectations and criteria (e.g., research/scholarship/creative works, teaching and mentoring, service, extension, and/or librarianship).

Additional Guidance

While faculty members are not required to provide a statement or other materials, reviewers should not speculate on any impacts on behalf of faculty members who elect not to identify disruptions. Reviewers (unit heads, evaluative committees), however, may offer general contextual information regarding disruptions and the impact of such disruptions on their field/discipline.

Units should view any statement or other materials as providing context about the impacts of the identified disruptions on faculty members. Units can draw on this information as they assess faculty performance and trajectory based on existing unit evaluative criteria and expectations. 

Noting our University’s focus on and expectations for excellence in faculty-engaged activities, units may wish to consider reviewing their various performance criteria and expectations through their shared governance processes as appropriate to the impacts on respective fields, disciplines, and subdisciplines, to inform their evaluative criteria and reviews in the near- and long-terms.

Given the fluidity and uncertainty of the disruptive environment, OFA will continue to monitor current events and update its guidance as necessary, in collaboration with the campus community.