When signed by Governor DeSantis in April, Florida Senate Bill 7044 established a new post-tenure, five-year review cycle for professors at the state’s public institutions. It should be noted that the USF Collective Bargaining Agreement already stipulates in Article 10 that faculty are evaluated annually "to assess and communicate the nature and extent of an employee's performance of assigned duties" and that "[t]enured faculty members shall receive a sustained performance evaluation once every seven years... to document sustained performance during the previous six years of assigned duties and to encourage continued professional growth and development."
Since April, the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) developed a regulation to enforce the new law and a Notice of Intent to Adopt was distributed to universities on September 12, 2022. Universities were given nine calendar days to respond.
Faculty Senate President Jenifer Jasinski Schneider collected and compiled faculty comments, which . University administration also composed its response to the new regulation, which is . Both documents were forwarded to the BOG for review.
The Faculty Senate Council on Racial Justice also prepared a statement in oppositon of the proposed regulation, .
Should this process continue for this regulation, there will be a public comment period.