MSTA and HPTH Standards

At the end of each year’s evaluation process, the Evaluation Committees will submit a list of adjunct faculty to the department Chair to be considered for HTPH status. From those, the Chair will work with the committee chairs to assign MSTA status from the pool of HPTH adjuncts, and to make sure that existing MSTA's still satisfy requirements for HPTH. This is something we should be doing every year, and we will be doing so in the future.

We wish that we could give everyone HTPH and MSTA status, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of those designations: to encourage and sustain the best of our already excellent adjunct faculty. We’d like about half of our adjuncts in each discipline to be HPTH. The number of MSTA appointments is something I will have to negotiate with the Dean every year, so it is up in the air right now.  If I think that more MSTA “slots” are merited, I will certainly ask the Dean for them.

To Qualify for HPTH status, an adjunct faculty member must have:

• An Overall Rating of “Very Good” or “Excellent” on the last three departmental evaluations

• A Student Evaluations rating of “Very Good” or “Excellent” on the latest evaluation

• An Instructional Performance rating of “Very Good” or “Excellent” on the latest evaluation

• A Professional Development rating of “Complete” on the latest evaluation

• An Administrative Performance rating of “Acceptable” on the latest evaluation.

• Additionally, the candidate must have turned in results for all required departmental assessments from the past calendar year.  Note that the results themselves will have no bearing, only that the required data are turned in.

Since you must have three annual evaluations to be considered for HPTH, this naturally means that you have to teach at least three years to be considered. Assignment of MSTA status from the pool of HPTH adjuncts will proceed as follows:

·       Instructors receiving Overall Evaluation Ratings of “Excellent” will be assigned first

·       Remaining slots will be filled in order of number of semesters taught within the Department.

Both HPTH and MSTA are positions that are re-evaluated every evaluation cycle.  If an adjunct with existing HPTH status does not meet the qualifications above in a given evaluation cycle, he or she will no longer be HPTH.  If an adjunct holding an MSTA no longer qualifies as HPTH, he or she can no longer hold the MSTA.