BY DAVID MAMARIL HOROWITZ

david.horowitz@bgdailynews.com

 

 

Kentucky Senate committee members are looking at House Bill 424 — legislation that, if passed, would require evaluations for faculty and presidents at state universities and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System.

The legislation would require that the higher education institutions’ respective boards establish evaluations at least every four years measuring performance and productivity for faculty and presidents. Failure to meet those requirements may result in faculty member or president’s removal “regardless of status,” the bill read as of Thursday morning.

It would mandate that these evaluations be established Jan. 1 and become effective July 1, 2026.

“This legislation allows universities to incentivize successful work practices and hold their staff to a high standard to foster student achievement,” bill sponsor, Rep. James Tipton, R-Taylorsville, said in a statement after it passed the House late last month.

Tipton additionally introduced a similar bill last legislative session, but its progress had been halted in the House.

Faculty across the state have reportedly expressed concern that the bill can weaken tenure and that evaluations are already implemented across higher education institutions.

“All the things that are articulated in the bill are already being done at (Western Kentucky University) and throughout the state,” said Gordon “Mac” McKerral, the WKU Faculty Senate chair, speaking as a concerned faculty member. “So, I just don’t understand why lawmakers want to spend their time trying to micromanage higher education when our state has a lot more issues that need to be addressed.”

Travis Powell, senior vice president and General Counsel for the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, said he’s fairly confident that higher education institutions have some sort of evaluation for their faculty.

Evaluations are already conducted more frequently than every four years at WKU.

The university’s faculty, tenured or not, undergo an annual evaluation, according to the WKU faculty handbook; the WKU Handbook Committee is proposing to reduce the frequency of post-tenure evaluations to once every three years due to the annual frequency being unnecessary, McKerral added.

The handbook also lays out processes for removing tenured and untenured faculty.

“When you’re talking about removing a tenured faculty member, I would guess the people making the decisions are going to want to look at all the information they can get their hands on,” Mac said.

He added that he would assume the periodic annual evaluation is one of the factors that would be looked at when considering a tenured faculty member’s removal.

Powell spoke about potential benefits and consequences of the bill.

“I think continual review processes provide for continuous improvement and allow for faculty to get feedback and staff to get feedback on different things … so, generally speaking, I think evaluation processes can be useful,” Powell said. “But … as with anything, a lot of times, uncertainty can bring forth some trepidation. And it currently reads, ‘performance and productivity requirements’ … Until professors really see what that is, you know, that’s going to cause heartburn, and rightfully so.”

WKU declined to comment, citing its institutional practice of not commenting on proposed legislation. KCTCS stated it couldn’t provide opinions on a bill in progress due to the possibility that changes can still be made.