The Role and Responsibilities of Committee Chairs

At each stage of the process, and in addition to ensuring the business of each committee is carried out in accordance with this guidance, the Chair is required to ensure that:

  • Each application is assessed against the published Assessment Criteria; 
  • Committee members are aware of School/Institution Indicators of Excellence and understand that Indicators of Excellence are suggestive in nature and non-exhaustive; not all indicators will be relevant to all applicants;   
  • Committee members declare any conflicts of interest and agree the appropriate action to take to address them.  It is recommended that in circumstances where a member has a personal relationship with an applicant, or they could be perceived to benefit from the promotion of an applicant (e.g. they are joint applicants for a research grant for which the decision is pending), they excuse themselves from the meeting for the duration of the discussion about that applicant;
  • Appropriate consideration is given to any declared Contextual Factors and advice is sought from the relevant HR Business Partnering Team in advance of the meeting as appropriate; 
  • Appropriate consideration is given to applications where the subject area crosses committee boundaries (see Multidisciplinary Applications here); 
  • Prior to concluding business, committees must review and consider the scoring of applications holistically, to ensure they have applied the scoring methodology consistently across all applications;
  • The minutes and Assessment Records of each committee meeting are an accurate record, include the justifications for the committee’s decisions, reflect the scores awarded and are approved by each member.  The Assessment Record should be a summary of the committee’s assessment and the recommendation, and should not include detail on the contents of the application; and
  • All necessary action is taken following approval of the minutes.

 

Faculty Committee Chair

Specifically, the FC Chair is expected to ensure that: 

  • applications are assessed to check whether the appropriate academic office/post has been applied for (and may request a revised application to be submitted in time for consideration; such cases are exceptional and must be clearly justified); and
  • the Institutional Statement is sufficiently detailed and contains sufficient explanation.   

School Committee Chair

Specifically, the SC Chair is expected to ensure that they: 

  • liaise, if necessary, with the Chair of any other SC to which a FC has referred an application; and
  • liaise, if necessary, with the Chair of any FC that considered applications submitted to the SC.