Faculty affairs
What departments collect from faculty each year
Each year, departments gather what their faculty did in teaching, research, patient care and service. The record feeds annual reviews, promotion decisions and, in residency and fellowship programs, the yearly faculty evaluation ACGME requires. At Tulane, faculty send a self-evaluation with an updated CV.
Updated
Why the review comes every year
The LCME accredits MD programs. Element 4.4 of its standards, effective July 1, 2026, sets the rule for feedback to faculty.
A medical school faculty member receives regularly scheduled and timely feedback from departmental and/or other programmatic or institutional leaders on academic performance and progress toward promotion and, when applicable, tenure.
From Functions and Structure of a Medical School: Standards for Accreditation of Medical Education Programs Leading to the MD Degree, Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME)
The element asks for regularly scheduled feedback. The schools quoted here give it in a yearly review. Harvard Medical School (HMS) cites the LCME when it requires all ladder faculty “to have an annual academic review with their immediate supervisors, division chiefs, or Department Heads”. HMS department heads “will be asked annually to confirm completion of the annual academic review for their faculty”. Tulane names element 4.4 at the top of its annual evaluation policy.
Schools also use the yearly review to find who is ready for promotion. Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine times its reviews so that they “will allow for identification of faculty members ready to be proposed for promotion in the upcoming promotion cycle”.
Residency and fellowship programs have a yearly duty of their own. ACGME’s Common Program Requirements, effective July 1, 2026, say: “The program must have a process to evaluate each faculty member’s performance as it relates to the educational program at least annually”. Section 5.4.a lists what it reviews: “clinical teaching abilities, engagement with the educational program, participation in faculty development related to their skills as an educator, clinical performance, professionalism, and scholarly activities”. It also includes “written, anonymous, and confidential evaluations by the residents”. ACGME’s guide to the 2026 to 2027 Annual Update adds: “Each academic year, programs must review and update their Faculty Roster and add or remove faculty members as necessary”. The guide to ACGME faculty scholarly activity covers what programs report.
What a year’s record covers
Each source names the areas it reviews in its own words.
| Area | What the sources ask about |
|---|---|
| Teaching | Tulane’s annual evaluation covers teaching. UCSF’s chair letters for academic reviews cover teaching and mentoring. ACGME’s yearly faculty evaluation covers “clinical teaching abilities”. |
| Research and scholarship | Tulane covers research. UCSF covers research and creative work. ACGME’s evaluation covers “scholarly activities”. |
| Patient care | Tulane covers patient care, where it applies. ACGME’s evaluation covers “clinical performance”. |
| Service | Tulane covers service and administration. UCSF covers university and public service. |
| Professionalism | Tulane covers professionalism and citizenship. UCSF covers professional competence. ACGME’s evaluation covers professionalism. |
| Progress toward promotion | The LCME asks for feedback on “progress toward promotion”. Northwestern’s reviews give feedback on “eligibility for promotion and/or reappointment”. |
How schools collect it
- Tulane asks each faculty member for a self-evaluation of the prior academic year, July 1 to June 30, “including an updated curriculum vitae”. Faculty aim to finish it by August 15, and supervisors aim to give feedback by September 15. Faculty can respond to that feedback in writing.
- At Northwestern, each faculty member writes a self-evaluation and meets the chair or a designee. The chair or designee writes a summary of the discussion and feedback. “All regular full-time faculty participate in annual performance reviews”.
- For the annual academic review, HMS offers departments a best practice form for Annual Career Conferences. A department may adapt it. The faculty member and the reviewer sign it, and the department keeps it.
Run it from your faculty’s own CVs
In ScienceDex, faculty keep their own CVs, so you open the latest one whenever a review comes up. Reports read each CV as it stands.
We set up your department. The ScienceDex team opens an account for your department and invites your first admin.
Bring in your faculty. Invite them by email, up to 500 at a time, or upload Word CVs that each person accepts or discards.
Keep CVs current. Each CV shows its last update, and the dashboard shows how many days since each person last updated theirs. Remind those not updated in 90 days, with an update by date and a short note.
Run the year’s reports. Start from a built-in report: publications, promotion, teaching, lectures, a contact list, or what is new in the last 12 months. Run it for all faculty or by division, rank or track, over the years you need.
Read the department summaries. Get totals by person and academic year for ACGME scholarly activity and teaching hours, and promotion counts by rank.
Download or connect. Download Excel or CSV. Your own systems can read the roster, CVs and reports with read-only tokens your admins make.
The promotion pipeline shows who has reached a review point, by the years in rank your department sets. Chairs and vice chairs for faculty affairs choose who sees names. Other admins see counts only, and a count of 1 to 4 shows as fewer than 5.
Faculty privacy sets out what departments see, what they never see, and the log of each time someone opens a CV.
What the department sees, and what it never sees
These limits hold on every plan.
Never shown to the department
- Home addresses and personal phone numbers.
- Private notes (the CV’s note pad).
- Any entry its owner marks private.
- The raw text and the evidence kept from importing a Word CV.
- Other versions of a CV and saved NIH biosketches. The department sees only the owner’s main CV.
These are left out before anything reaches a department page, a Word file, a zip, a CSV or a report.
Logged, and faculty can see it
- Every time someone in the department opens a faculty member’s CV, and each section they read.
- Every Word download of a CV, alone or in a zip of several.
- Every report download that includes them.
- Every read by a department system through an API token, naming the token and who made it.
Faculty see each of these on their account page, with who did it and when. The full list is on the data limits page.
Questions
What is faculty activity reporting?
It is the yearly record of what each faculty member did, which a department reads for annual reviews and promotion. At Tulane, the annual evaluation covers teaching, research, service, professionalism, citizenship and progress toward promotion, plus patient care, administration and tenure where they apply. It looks at the previous academic year.
Do faculty have to send an updated CV for each report?
No. Reports read each faculty member’s CV in ScienceDex as it stands. The dashboard shows how many days since each person last updated theirs, and you can remind those not updated in 90 days.
Can faculty see when the department opens their CV?
Yes. ScienceDex logs every open, each section read, every Word download, every report download that includes them and every read through an API token. Faculty see each of these on their account page, with who did it and when.
Does it work for a residency or fellowship program?
Yes. A program invites its faculty and fellows or imports their Word CVs, sees the program’s papers, grants and teaching on its dashboard, and runs, saves and downloads reports. See ScienceDex for programs.
Can our own systems read the data?
Yes. Your admins make read-only tokens that read the roster, CVs or reports, each set to end between 7 days and 1 year. Each CV read shows in that person’s activity, with the token’s name and its maker.
Sources
- Functions and Structure of a Medical School: Standards for Accreditation of Medical Education Programs Leading to the MD Degree Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME). Read .
- 4.2.3. Expectations of the Appointing Department for Annual Reviews Harvard Medical School, Faculty of Medicine Handbook. Read .
- Annual Faculty Evaluations and Feedback to Faculty Tulane University School of Medicine. Read .
- Faculty Performance Reviews Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Read .
- ACGME Common Program Requirements (Residency) including FAQs Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Read .
- 2026-2027 Accreditation Data System (ADS) Annual Update for Programs: What You Need to Know Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). Read .
- Ladder Rank, In Residence, Clinical X [for packets effective on/after 7/1/27] UCSF Office of Faculty and Academic Affairs. Read .