Practitioner perspectives on evaluating the work of language program directors

Abstract

As administrators responsible for overseeing multi-section university language programs, language program directors (LPD) play an important role in the life of modern language departments. Their administrative work in developing curricula and mentoring teachers, however, can be challenging to evaluate in higher education where faculty productivity is still by and large measured in terms of traditional teaching, research, and service categories. Despite long-standing recognition of the unique contributions that LPDs make in collegiate language departments (e.g., Guthrie, 2001; Lee & VanPatten, 1991; Lord, 2014; Paesani & Barrette, 2005; Ryan-Scheutz, 2010; Schulz, 2005), little guidance exists to help those involved in the review process of LPDs’ work. To address this gap, this article reports on guidelines that were developed and used to assess the work of non-tenure-track (NTT) LPDs in a modern language department at a large R1 public university in the United States. In 2021-2022, the guidelines were developed collaboratively by the authors, three NTT LPDs leading French, German, and Spanish programs, and were approved with minor revision by the LPDs’ department and college. The article describes the process of creating the guidelines, the evaluation criteria the authors settled on, and experiences in using the guidelines in two recent retention reviews.