The following Mission, Goals, Mission Assessment Procedures, Governance Structure, and Policies of the new Department of Marketing and Real Estate were adopted by the departmental faculty on April 15, 1998.

PART 1

STATEMENT OF PROPOSED DEPARTMENT MISSION AND GOALS

I. Mission

The Department of Marketing and Real Estate provides excellent professional education in a personal environment to prepare students for positions of leadership in the fields of marketing or real estate.

In addition to the primary mission of quality education, we are committed to:

1. providing exemplary service to business, government and the University with respect to consulting, employee training, and management development; and
2. encouraging professional development through workshops, consulting, research, and scholarship.

Short-Term Goals

Prepare majors to achieve an above average success rate for the graduates on professional certification examinations (where appropriate) and place graduates in jobs with average starting salaries.

Long-Term Goal s:

Educate and train majors to develop high demand job skills.

II. Objectives.

In order to achieve its goals and fulfill its mission, the Department has established short- and long-term objectives. Accomplishing these objectives will ensure that:

1. Our programs have an excellent reputation among employers;
2. We provide the best possible undergraduate and graduate education to our students;
3. Ample institutional and external support for professional development activities and needs exists;
4. Instruction, scholarship, and service activities are goal directed, conducted efficiently and effectively, and rewarded based on the value of these contributions to the achievement of goals;

5. The prospects for attracting and retaining quality students and faculty are high; and
6. The relations between the Department and various publics are excellent.

1. Short-Term/Ongoing Objectives

1. Faculty Development:

1. Involve all faculty in research activities.
2. Provide current computers and network access, hardware, and software for research and teaching.
3. Involve faculty in memberships in professional organizations and urge them to attend meetings and other activities.
4. Update library holdings to fit the Marketing and Real Estate programs.

1. Bring innovative teaching methods into the classroom (i.e., team teaching, case presentations, real life problems and solutions, methods designed to improve written and oral communications, active learning, and ethics and multicultural content).
2. Provide increased opportunities for cooperative programs.

1. Attract business firms and governmental agencies to campus interviews.
2. Establish contracts with firms and individuals in order to obtain funds and grants for students and faculty.
3. Involve faculty in instructing continuing professional education seminars.

1. Faculty Development:

1. Produce one research article per faculty per year.
2. Involve the faculty in external professional experiences.
3. Ensure that salary compression is not severe.
4. Maintain faculty lines in step with student growth and additional requirements from professional and accrediting organizations.

1. Curriculum:

1. Integrate instructional tools that promote critical thinking in all levels of course instruction (e.g., cases).
2. Establish student internship programs, where appropriate.

1. Other:

1. Attract quality liberal arts students to the programs.
2. Attract quality high school graduates to our programs.
3. Maintain AACSB accreditation for all programs.
4. Make sure that course contents reflect the technical and theoretical changes in Marketing and Real Estate environments.

2. Justification.

A.1.a.: Self–Explanatory

A.1. b.: Computer networks provide for access to data bases that are available only on the campuses of major Universities. The lack of such access would hamper research activities.

A.1.c.: Necessary for cultivating contacts with the employers of our students and the supporters of our Department

A.2.a.: Self-Explanatory.

A.2.b.: In order to fulfill the teaching mission, the teaching process must be improved. During the past decade, many research studies examined the complaints employers have about business degree programs. Survey results indicate that employers find Business School graduates deficient in communication skills, critical thinking, and real world experiences.

Most frequently cited solutions suggest that business school instruction must include:

1. written assignments that are graded for proper composition and grammar as well as for the accuracy of technical content;
2. oral presentations that are graded for delivery and style, as well as for the propriety of the solution;
3. researching and solving problems that are based on actual experiences and data;
4. discussions of ethics;
5. the proper amount of courses in a given subject to acquire an in-depth knowledge; and
6. a multicultural perspective.
7. Using the experiential learning model more often in classrooms.

A.2.b.: Internships and cooperative programs will be used to attract high quality students to help expose students to more real business experience.

A.2.c.: Self-explanatory

A.3.c.: Instructing professional development seminars and workshops helps in:

1. providing community service.
2. keeping up with new marketing and real estate concepts, theories, and research methodologies;
3. obtaining new ideas for research and real life experiences for classroom instruction; and
4. developing contacts with potential supporters of the Department.

B.1.b.: This is an accreditation criteria. In addition, it provides the Department contacts with potential supporters.

B.1.c.: Self-explanatory

B.1.d.: The Department must be ready to provide the quality and content of education demanded by professionals and potential employers (e.g. appraisal certification).

B.2.a.: In the long-run, all appropriate courses, must have ethics and multicultural content and case assignments that are based on real life experiences and data.

B.2.b.: Internships must be a part of our degree programs because they provide real life, hands on experience to students.

B.3.a.: We need to recruit high quality high school graduates and liberal arts students for our undergraduate and MBA degree programs because:

1. Current number of marketing and real estate majors is not sufficient;
2. A significant current supply of liberal arts students exists; and
3. Of the recognition that a basic education in liberal arts is a desirable basis for an MBA degree.

B.3.c.: Self-explanatory

PART 2

PROCEDURES FOR ASSESSING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DEPARTMENTAL GOALS IN THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE DEPARTMENTAL MISSION

The Departmental mission is to provide quality Marketing and Real Estate education to students and to develop professionally accomplished faculty. Institutional and professional service activities are expected to occur as the mission is accomplished..

Two goals and numerous underlying objectives are set by the Department. The procedures for assessing the effectiveness of the objectives in achieving the goals and accomplishing the mission rely on output measures (e.g., academic and job performance of students and publications by faculty).

I. The Short-Term Goal:

Our students must either be able to obtain gainful employment,, or be successful in graduate studies. In addition, they should perform better than average on professional examinations. A department with a reputation for teaching excellence provides its students with an opportunity of obtaining gainful employment and/or entering advanced degree programs. The success of students on professional certification examinations and in graduate programs promotes the Department’s reputation.

Information on average salaries by location and employment category, and success rates in professional certification examinations are available from various organizations. Verification of the data is accomplished by providing the graduating students a survey form that can be returned to the Department at no cost. Using the same form, the Department tracks the salary levels and employment and education status of its graduates as indicators of mission success inn the long-run.. (See the attached survey instrument and cover letter).

While the procedures above examine measures of long-term effectiveness, short-term measures are also available. Marketing and Real Estate programs utilize senior projects to assess their instructional quality. The assessment results are used to eliminate weaknesses in specific areas of instruction, with the purpose of achieving the stated goals within the (1998 – 1999 period). While the senior project in REA 405 constitutes a comprehensive evaluation of course work in the real estate area, the projects in MKT 470 assesses learning outcomes inn the Marketing area. Further, annual CBK examinations given all business majors in their senior year assess students’ knowledge of basic marketing principles.

Professional certification exam reports contain comparisons of the performance of SUWG students to national, state, and regional averages and the performance of the graduates of other state universities and colleges. Salary surveys contain national and regional averages by job categories.

These assessment procedures can be useful in detecting weaknesses in instruction and job placement. Once the areas that are in need of improvement are identified, additional efforts and attention may be devoted to these objectives. Using placement and salary data, the faculty can increase its efforts in networking with professionals in the Marketing and Real Estate fields. Finally, the Department can enhance the amount of time and effort devoted to recruit and retain bright students through study labs, school visits, and cooperative placement.

II. The Long-Term Goal:

Departmental faculty must be active in research, publication, development of computerized or manual cases and other study aids, instructing and attending professional development workshops, presenting papers at professional meetings, serving on committees and task forces, and other research and service endeavors. Products of these activities coupled with the accomplishment of the educational goal will lead to the accreditation of the academic programs and help in securing continued accreditation for the Marketing and Real Estate programs and School of Business.

Obtaining accreditation for the departmental programs attracts quality faculty and students. Skilled educators and dedicated students, in turn, facilitate the achievement of the mission and goals. Obtaining accreditation is synonymous to having professionally accomplished faculty.

Since the long-term goal and its underlying objectives are stated in the form of specific actions, periodic observations and the annual personnel evaluation process are sufficient to assess their success or failure.

AACSB accreditation criteria states that all faculty must engage in research and professional development activities. A reliable rule is for a faculty to have, on the average, one research activity per member per year. The Department is committed to achieve this level of research productivity annually. All research and professional development activities, as well as institutional and other service activities, will be documented and evaluated annually.

PART 3

DEPARTMENTAL GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

I. The Chairperson of the Department shall be selected by a majority of the Departmental faculty every three years beginning in June, 1998 to serve one three-year term; however, the Chairperson may serve one additional three-year term by receiving a majority vote of the faculty. This chairperson election shall be subject to the approvals of the College Dean, the Academic Vice-President and the President; however, any disapproval of said election will be communicated in writing to the departmental faculty, citing specific and reasonable courses why the elected chairperson should not serve.

II. Management by Objectives (MBO)

The Department of Marketing and Real Estate will be governed by the MBO approach. This form of Departmental governance allows each faculty member to excel in one or more areas of academic activity while contributing to the other areas in a satisfactory manner as well.

Thus, a faculty member with excellent teaching skills and contacts with the professional community can be instrumental in the achievement of the short-term goal while contributing to the achievement of the long-term goal in a satisfactory manner. The MBO approach can be implemented as follows (see the forms attached).

1. Every March, each faculty member prepares an Annual Plan, detailing his objectives and goals for the next academic year in the areas of teaching, research, and service.
2. A meeting is held with the academic administrator in which the goals and objectives are discussed and a percentage weight is assigned to each area (weights vary between 20 to 50 percent for research, 40 to 55 for teaching, and 10 to 25 percent for service).
3. The academic administrator and the faculty member jointly assign expected evaluation levels to each area. There are three major evaluation levels: Above expected; Expected; and Below expected, with two additional sub-categories of "slightly" and "moderately." The quality and quantity of the goals and objectives listed in each area and the percentages assigned to each area interact and jointly determine the expected level of evaluation. This is a contract between the academic administrator and the individual faculty member whereby the administrator states that if the faculty member accomplishes all of the goals stated in each area, the administrator will evaluate the faculty member at the predetermined level during the annual evaluation process.
4. Individual Annual Plans are evaluated by the Departmental MBO Committee to ensure that they are consistent with one another and that the goals and objectives for each area justify the percentages assigned to each area. The Committee meets with the academic administrator and resolves any problems indicated by the evaluation.
5. The Annual Plans are signed by the administrator, chairman of the Committee, and individual faculty member.
6. At the close of the academic year (3/31), the faculty members prepare an Annual Report and meet with the academic administrator for their annual evaluations. Based on the comparison of Annual Plans and Annual Reports, the administrator prepares Evaluation Reports. These reports indicate the research, teaching, service, and overall performance of faculty members.

 

 
 
 

6. The MBO Committee examines the Evaluation Reports to determine their consistency with the related

Annual Plans, Annual Reports, and with each other. Any problems indicated by this examination are resolved with the administrator and the faculty member involved.
 

7. The academic administrator makes average and merit raise recommendations to the Dean based on the Evaluation Reports and the MBO Committee recommendations.

1. Teaching

1. planning and organization; 2) content; 3) delivery; 4) standards; 5) workload; and 6) overall teaching quality and skills.

1. student evaluations will be conducted by a colleague in order to assure fairness in the administrative process;
2. the results will be summarized and key statistics tabulated for each question on the survey. Data on the level of difficulty and type of courses taught by an instructor will be considered in the interpretation and comparison of statistics;
3. a copy of each course syllabus will be provided for review;
4. on an invitation basis, the academic administrator will visit the classes of individual faculty members;
5. the academic administrator will solicit opinions from graduating seniors during the course of exit interviews when such interviews are part of routine Departmental procedure; and
6. faculty members will complete the forms provided on the pages 22 and 23 of the Faculty Handbook.

1. Teaching Duties (30%)

Assessed by item number 6 above.
 
2. Teaching Evaluations by students/graduates/peers (30%)

Assessed by items numbered 1, 2, 4,, and 5 above.
 
3. Items a - e below (40%)

1. Currency of Instruction – Assessed by item number 3 above.
2. Course/Curriculum Development – Assessed by item number 3 above and the statement of objectives and implementation prepared by the faculty member.
3. Innovations in Teaching an Existing Course – Assessed by item number 3 above and the statement of objectives and implementation prepared by the faculty member.
4. Professional Development Activities to Improve Teaching Skills and Content- Assessed by reviewing the statement prepared by the faculty member describing the activity and the manner in which the activity improved teaching effectively and/or effectiveness.
5. Availability to Students – Assessed by observing the amount and distribution of office hours (7 to 10 hours per week is suggested), conducting labs & review sessions, freshmen core advising , and participation in student recruitment activities.

1. Research and Service

1. copies of articles, cases, and other materials published.
2. copies of research output submitted for review;
3. copies of handouts used in Continuing Professional Education (CPE) instruction;
4. copies of presentations made to academic and professional groups;
5. chronological and other information concerning institutional, professional, academic, civic, and other meetings, seminars, and workshops attended; and
6. copies of any other materials pertaining to research and service activities.

2. The Relationship of Annual Evaluations to Promotion and Tenure.

1. consistently rate "above expected" in two of the three MBO evaluation criteria;
2. consistently rate "expected" in the remaining one; and
3. are favorably evaluated using the form provided on the page 24 of the Faculty Handbook.

1. Tenure

1. consistently rate "expected" in all three MBO criteria;
2. occasionally rate "above expected" in either the research or teaching categories; and
3. are favorably evaluated using the form provided on page 24 of the Faculty Handbook.

1. Three-year Tenure Review

DEPARTMENTAL POLICIES AND PROCEDURES

I. Travel.

The travel budget will be used according to the following order of priorities:

1. Peer-reviewed paper presentations at national meetings (full reimbursement)
2. Peer-reviewed paper presentations at regional meetings (substantial reimbursement).
3. Participation at meetings for purposes other than peer reviewed paper presentations (e.g., seminars, workshops, and participation at meetings as discussant, moderator, and officer of an organization, and presentations of papers not peer-reviewed). (Reimbursement based upon remaining availability of travel funds).

II. Continuing Professional Education

(CPE) Seminars.

Department members are encouraged to instruct CPE seminars, with the understanding that such activities do not conflict with the goals of teaching and research excellence. Remuneration for a four-hour seminar is $100 per hour (single instructor earns $400) or $240 per instructor for two hours of instruction (team teaching). Profits derived from CPE seminars (i.e., revenues in excess of remuneration, postage, refreshments, and promotion) are shared equally by the Department of Continuing Education. The above dollar amounts apply if the program is at or above breakeven.

Our share will supplement the travel and supply budgets. Initially, those faculty members who instruct the seminars will reap the benefits. For example, priority 3 travel of seminar instructors may be fully reimbursed. In the long run, assuming that we build adequate funds, all faculty members may similarly benefit.

III. Reserve Policy.

Solution manuals for the upper division (300+) courses may be placed on reserve at the Library.

IV. Student and Graduate Assistants.

The Department will try to provide one student assistant (SA) during the academic year. The availability of SA’s during the Summer quarter cannot be guaranteed. SA’s work 10 to 20 hours per week and are principally used for grading homework. The SA will be assigned to all faculty members, with the understanding that the instructors teaching multiple sections of principle courses be given priority. In addition, SA’s can be used for clerical and research activities. However, SA’s should never assist faculty members in the preparation, administration, and/or grading of quizzes, exams, and other test materials.

The Department will try to provide two graduate assistants (GA’s). These assistants are assigned to faculty based upon demonstrated productivity in course innovations and research. GA’s may help in administering and grading tests and quizzes as well as in faculty resaerch activities. Additional assistance can be obtained if the faculty member can justify the need.

A supervisor from the department will meet with the SA's and GA's and review their duties before the quarter begins or before there is any change in assigned duties. The supervisor will also meet with them periodically to ensure that assignments are being completed in a satisfactory manner. At the end of each term the department chairman, in consultation with faculty members, will fill out the Graduate Reasearch Assistant Supervisor Rating Form. A copy of this evaluation will be given to the GA.

V. Advising, Registration, Campus Visitation Days, and Summer Orientation.

Advising for preregistration is conducted over 20 days. The Department will assign three to four 2-hour sessions to each faculty member in coordination with their office hours. The sessions are scheduled in the mornings and afternoons.

Campus Visitation Days will be attended by the Chairman and another faculty member on a voluntary or rotation basis.

Summer Orientation sessions are attended by the Chairman and a member of the Summer Faculty as needed. Assignments will be made by rotation and as teaching schedules permit.

VI. Departmental Committees.

There will be five Departmental committees:

1. Curriculum Review – three members elected by the faculty
2. Student Awards –
3. MBO Task Force –
4. Policy Assessment
5. Members as described above

VII. Assignment of Summer Courses.

Summer courses are assigned as follows:

1. All tenure-track positions receive one section; and
2. The remaining sections and the sections not used by tenure-track faculty are assigned according to the following system:

The "priority list" so established is to be "fixed" from year to year unless an existing faculty member leaves the faculty and/or a new faculty member joins the faculty - then the priority list is to be revised as per rank and years in rank. Faculty members are to be assigned summer school courses as per their position on the priority list.

Highest Priority- A full professor with the most years of experience at this rank in the Department of Marketing and Real Estate at the State Univ. of West Georgia.

Lowest Priority- An assistant professor with the least years of experience at this rank in the Department of Marketing and Real Estate at the State Univ. of West Georgia – and so forth.

Other considerations are as follows:

Each faculty member is to be assigned one summer school course before any faculty member is assigned a second course. Should additional courses be available, each faculty member is to be assigned a second course before any faculty member is assigned a third course. A course offered to a faculty member, but declined, "counts" as an assigned course for purposes of proceeding through the priority list. Assignment of courses each summer (after the initial summer of 1998) begins the position on the priority list where assignment ceased the previous summer.

The current priority list would be:

Burton

Haynes

Talpade

McIntyre

Webb
 
 

VIII. Leaves of Absence and Faculty

Internships.

Leaves of Absence are available to full-time members of the Departmental Faculty. Each request will be evaluated by the Chairman based on projected contributions to Departmental goals.

Internships are available to Departmental Faculty meeting internship requirements. Chair’s nomination for internships will be based on the projected contributions to Departmental goals.

These faculty development projects can be designed to last for six months if the nine-month course load can be distributed over six months. Requests from faculty with high research productivity as well as course loads with advanced and current topics will receive priority.

Faculty internships are ideal for acquainting employers with our quality programs and updating course content.

IX. Post Tenure Review

Post tenure review shall be conducted within the Department based on the post-tenure review guidelines in faculty handbooks, essentially for each tenured faculty member will be reviewed every five years after receiving tenure. The department faculty shall elect its representative to serve on the College Post-tenure Committee each year.

X.  New Faculty Orientation

The Department will supplement the University wide orientation program with a general orientation to the College of Business and to the Marketing and Real Estate Department.  New faculty will be assisted by faculty and staff in the use of College of Business computer and classroom facilities.  New faculty will also be given a copy of the Marketing and Real Estate Department Policies and Procedures and the Richards College of Business Faculty Development Policies Document for their review.   New faculty are also encouraged to attend training sessions offered on campus on topics such as advising and the use of technology/software.