The Faculty Committee Meeting

The FC will consider all the documentation for each application and agree collectively the evaluation and scores against each of the Assessment Criteria documenting for each application whether it is supported and the reasons for its decision. The FC should then rank the applicants in a list according to the strength of their applications and make its recommendation to the SC.  The Chair of each FC will be asked to attend part of the relevant SC meeting in a non-voting capacity, in order to answer any questions the SC may have about any applications.   

The Secretary of the FC will attend the meeting to provide advice and guidance as appropriate and, together with the Chair, oversee the fair and effective operation of the procedure.  The Chair might also wish to invite the relevant Head of School (or another nominated member of the SC) as an invited observer, who then may pass any observations on to the SC. 

In addition, FCs may invite additional individuals to attend meetings to assist in the consideration of multidisciplinary applications. These persons are not committee members and are not entitled to vote but the names of those invited to attend may be disclosed to applicants. 

Each member of the FC has a responsibility to ensure its business is conducted in accordance with this guidance; the Chair of each committee has a particular role in this regard. Each committee member, and those attending the committee meetings, should ensure that:

  • they are familiar with this guidance (the Chair will ask each member for confirmation at the start of the meeting); 
  • in considering the applications, they adhere to the Assessment Criteria and do not import additional considerations into their evaluations which may be construed as additional criteria; 
  • they treat Indicators of Excellence as being suggestive in nature and non-exhaustive; not all indicators will be relevant to all applicants; 
  • they are aware of their responsibilities relating to equality, diversity and inclusion, including the potential risk of unconscious bias, and have completed the appropriate training (see Key Principles) to ensure their considerations are collective, fair, impartial and evidence-based;
  • they consider whether allowance should be made for Contextual Factors; and
  • they state any declarations of interest to enable the committee to agree appropriate action to be taken before consideration of applications.

Each committee, together with any other individuals involved, is responsible for ensuring all relevant documentation and associated content is treated in the strictest of confidence.

The Faculty Committee Secretary is responsible for ensuring that each application and supporting documentation is complete and conforms to the guidance.  Any material submitted that is not in accordance with the guidance should be returned, either to the applicant or Secretary of the previous committee as appropriate, for necessary revision and re-submission in advance of the date on which the agenda and documents are to be circulated to members of the relevant committee.

The Secretary will prepare and circulate the documentation not less than a week in advance of the meeting, including: 

  • an agenda;
  • a link to this guidance;
  • the complete documentation for each applicant; and
  • comprehensive lists of all applicants for each office/post.

Following the meeting, the full documentation (applications, references/statements, completed assessment records and minutes) should then be forwarded to the Secretary of the SC. 

Applicants must not be informed of the outcome of the FC’s evaluation or provided with feedback at this stage (see Outcome and Feedback for further information).

Faculty Committee Minutes

The FC will provide a fairly and objectively worded set of minutes that:

  • confirms whether: 
    • an application has been treated as multidisciplinary,
    • an application is to be referred to the SC from an FC in a different School, 
    • if allowance has been made for Contextual Factors, and/or
    • if there has been a departure from the standard scoring model and if so, the reasons;
  • confirms any declarations of interest stated by committee members, and states the agreed actions to address them;
  • provides a reasoned justification of the agreed evaluations and its determination of the rank order for each office;
  • provides a justification where high scores have been awarded that indicate an exceptional contribution; and
  • records where the committee’s assessment differs from that suggested by a referee and where it has either taken strong account of, or apparently disregarded, a single critical reference/statement amongst a group of positive references/statements.