PBIS: Performance Based Instruction System

The Performance Based Instruction System (PBIS) was started in 1996 and is currently managed by the deans and monitored by the Provost through Compact meetings. PBIS is a framework in which departments and schools plan their instructional offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate level in an integrated fashion and on an annual basis. Performance is evaluated on a departmental rather than an individual basis. The performance being evaluated is a department's efforts in meeting the instructional needs and demands of its students. The goals of the program are to produce, University-wide, increased student access to tenured and tenure-track faculty, increased availability and selection of substantial writing component courses, and increased availability of faculty development opportunities.

• Units with approved plans will be offered new flexibility in meeting faculty teaching loads. This flexibility is realized by permitting individual faculty members to teach "unbalanced loads"- concentrating teaching in one semester to consolidate time for scholarship in another semester. This is in contrast to the current policy that requires each faculty member to generate nine TLCs (teaching load credits) in each semester. Faculty members in departments with approved plans will be required to generate 18 TLCs during the academic year with the TLC accounting being done on an annual rather than on a semester by semester basis.

• Programs with approved plans will also be offered the opportunity to nominate Dean's Fellows. These fellowships can be thought of as faculty development appointments or assignments. Faculty members holding these fellowships remain on the department's instructional budget but may devote their full energies to research, curriculum development or other pressing areas of scholarship.

• There is a recognition that there has been insufficient acknowledgement and credit for faculty efforts in undergraduate instruction. We have been authorized to assign 4.5 TLCs for substantial writing component (SWC) courses with enrollment of over 18 students that are taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty. This puts these undergraduate courses on equal footing with graduate courses for production of TLCs.

• Departments will not be penalized if they do not submit an approvable plan. Departments without approved plans will continue to operate under the rules of the past- each faculty member will be responsible for nine TLCs per semester.

• Bottom-line: There are no new resources in this program. PBIS does offer, however, our best effort at making flexible and responsible use of our assets while attending to the needs of both today's students and future students (through the investment in the faculty via Dean's Fellows).