No employee who consistently meets expectations should face the risk of being fired. But high-performing faculty at the University of North Florida (UNF) may lose their jobs under a proposed policy from the UNF Board of Trustees (UNF-BOT).

Tenured faculty at UNF undergo a comprehensive annual evaluation of three areas: teaching, research/scholarship/creative activity, and service. A new regulation from the Florida Board of Governors (BOG) requires university boards of trustees to develop Post-Tenure Review (PTR) policies and procedures, whereby tenured faculty will be evaluated every five years.

The United Faculty of Florida at the University of North Florida (UFF-UNF) has been negotiating the implementation of PTR with the UNF-BOT over the past several months.

While both teams have nearly reached agreement, a final sticking point is extremely disturbing: the UNF-BOT continues to advance language that would jeopardize the jobs of tenured faculty who consistently meet, exceed, or far exceed expectations in their annual reviews. UFF-UNF maintains that faculty members who are officially notified in their comprehensive annual evaluations that they are meeting their job expectations – and have no record of egregious or repeated conduct violations – should not face a surprise "does not meet expectations" PTR outcome and find themselves placed on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), with the risk of losing their jobs one year later.

Under the UNF-BOT's current proposal, a faculty member could receive ratings of "far exceeds expectations" on 14 out of 15 areas in a five-year period and "exceeds expectations" in one area, only to be rated as "does not meet expectations" for PTR.

We must not allow administrators to arbitrarily assign faculty "does not meet expectations" ratings, putting their livelihoods and the well-being of UNF students at risk.

Please sign this petition to demand that the UNF Board of Trustees protects their faculty.