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The Chemical and Materials Engineering Department is dedicated to reflecting the values of the University of Nevada, Reno. We are committed to creating a campus community that is diverse, inclusive and equitable for all our community members, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, origin, citizenship status, sexual orientation, gender identity, political affiliation, economic status, veteran status, neurodiversity or physical ability. We are further committed to embracing and modeling these values not only among our department and its immediate constituencies, but in the broader professional world and the “pipelines” from our surrounding community that provides the engineers of the future.

The base pool of Eligible Voters includes all faculty on a regular contract (except temporary faculty) who hold 0.5 FTE or greater appointments in continuing or annually renewing positions, wholly or primarily in the Department, and (unless specified otherwise) are one of the following:
         A. Tenure-Track Faculty at Ranks I through IV.

         B. Non-Tenure-Track Faculty (including research, instructional, and administrative faculty) at Ranks 0(III) and 0(IV).

These members shall be eligible to vote, subject to the below situation-dependent constraints. Each Eligible Voter (with a minimum of 0.5 FTE) will have a vote weighted in proportion to their appointment FTE in the Department (example: 0.51 FTE will get 0.51 vote).

1. Hiring, Promotion and Tenure Issues: On issues related to hiring, promotion or tenure of faculty, voters are restricted as described in Section 4. Note that filling positions of Department Chair, Directors, and other administrative roles are not considered “personnel matters” for voting purposes.
2. Individual Program Issues: On voting issues related (and limited) to specific programs in the department and their associated curricula (i.e., CHE and MSE), voters are restricted to those Eligible Voters (broadly defined above) with appointments affiliated with the specific program involved.
3. Instructional and Academic Program Issues: Only faculty with instructional responsibilities may vote on curricular or instructional matters and only graduate faculty may vote on graduate program matters.
4. Chair Selection & Removal: All academic and administrative faculty in the Department, except faculty on temporary contracts, adjunct, and those on letters of appointment, shall have the right to a full vote on recommendations regarding the Department Chair.
5. Bylaws Revisions: On issues related to revision of these bylaws, all Department faculty, except faculty on temporary contracts, adjunct, and those on letters of appointment, shall have the right to a full vote.

The Department Chair is considered an Eligible Voter but shall not vote on issues that are considered advisory to the Chair (such as personnel committee recommendations) and excepting votes on Bylaws, shall not otherwise cast a vote unless it is necessary to break a tie.  On issues related to the interpretation or revision of Bylaws (which require 2/3 majority) the Chair shall vote as a regular Eligible Voter.

Members who are deemed to have a conflict of interest (COI) in a given voting issue or motion are not considered Eligible Voters in votes related to that issue and are not included in quorum determination.

Members who have a conflict of interest on a voting issue will be provided (on request) an opportunity to provide input and disclosure to the department in an open forum. After this openly provided input, the member with the conflict of interest shall not participate or engage in further discussion with other voters and shall not vote on the issue or be present during an open vote.

Conflicts of interest are described in the University Administrative Manual relating to financial, consanguinity, and affinity related conflicts (among other forms). Additionally, on issues related to hiring, a conflict of interest exists when the otherwise-eligible voter has served in a close capacity as the prospective hire’s current or former advisor (as student or postdoc), supervisor, or business partner. Additionally, prospective voters who have previously collaborated with individuals at issue are required to disclose this information to the Department faculty.

If a member of the department who has a conflict of interest has critical or sensitive information to provide to colleagues prior to a vote but is prevented due to COI rules, they should confidentially discuss the issue with the Chair, and the Chair will determine how to proceed. If the Chair is an inappropriate person to disclose this information to, then the Dean should be approached instead.

All votes require a quorum to be considered valid. A quorum consists of a minimum of 2/3 of the Eligible Voters, minus those who are not participating due to a conflict of interest.

Unless otherwise indicated herein, all votes require a quorum as defined above. A motion requires a simple majority of eligible votes for passage (unless otherwise indicated herein). 

A motion for a vote can be made by any Eligible Voter at any Department meeting. The Chair may initiate a vote outside of a meeting (for example, electronically). However, a vote on a motion that has not been discussed at a prior meeting or which was not on the pre-distributed agenda (Section 5.3), may be blocked or deferred by a majority vote. At the request of any Eligible Voter, a vote on any motion shall be conducted anonymously. 

A proxy vote may be assigned to another Eligible Voter, provided that this is documented to the Department Chair prior to the motion being called to vote. Votes of departmental committees must be conducted using these same bylaws, with a quorum derived from the committee’s membership rather than the entire department.

Vote tallies shall be recorded to include the votes in favor of the motion, against, the number abstaining, the total number of Eligible Voters for the motion, and whether a tie breaking vote was necessary. When proxy votes are cast, these should be identified in the vote tally (names of those involved).

In the normal course of administration in the Department, Advisory Votes are taken to provide input to the Chair, Dean and others on campus (for example, hiring or promotion and tenure processes). For such Advisory Votes, if the Chair’s subsequent recommendation or action differs from the Department’s advisory vote, the Chair should provide the voters with written explanation of the reasoning behind the recommendation before the recommendation is acted on or passed onward.

At least 12 weeks prior to the end of the Chair’s term, the department faculty will select a Tenured faculty member to oversee a process, starting with a call for nominations for a new Department Chair. The Chair completing their term may be one of these nominees. Any Eligible Voter may nominate an eligible person for Chair. To qualify, a candidate must be nominated by at least two Eligible Voters. If there is a single qualified nominee who meets this threshold, they will then be requested to either accept or decline their nomination to the Dean. If there are multiple qualified nominees, a selection process (outlined below) shall be followed.

If there are multiple nominees for the Chair position, the Dean’s appointee shall initiate a process for Chair nominee selection that includes a presentation (to all Eligible Voters and Dean and/or Deans representative) followed by a forum for discussion with each nominee. Then an anonymous vote shall be taken, the winner of which will be the Department’s recommendation to the Dean. Eligible voters for the Chair position are described in Section 3.1. The Dean shall then make a recommendation of a prospective Department Chair through the Provost to the University President who makes the appointment.

If there are no accepted nominees for the Chair position, the Eligible Voters of the Department shall select a representative to coordinate with the Dean and/or the Dean’s appointee on a process by which to proceed with an external Chair search or another mechanism for filling the position.

At any time, the Department Chair may be removed at the discretion of the Dean. This may be initiated through a vote of Recommendation for Removal requiring a majority of at least two-thirds of votes cast by Eligible Voters in the Department defined in Section 3.1. Following the removal of a Chair, a new selection process will commence immediately with a call for new nominations.

The Chair, in general, shall be responsible (by direct action or delegation) for day-to-day and long-range planning and activities of the department. This shall include planning, allocation, administration, and expenditure of resources, such as space, funds, faculty positions, scholarships, etc. It shall include faculty and staff hiring, development, evaluation and promotion of faculty and staff. It shall include scheduling, teaching assignments, committee assignments, curriculum development, and accreditation activities. It shall include promotion of student welfare, and the advancement of the general welfare of the Department. Finally, the Department Chair shall serve as an ad-hoc member of all Department committees and shall report on the status of the Department and its activities annually.

The Department shall encompass two academic programs, namely (a) Chemical Engineering, and (b) Materials Science and Engineering. Each Faculty shall normally be a member of one of these programs. The faculty within each academic program have primary control, subject to higher level oversight, over curricular and student issues. The administration of program-specific tasks of the program which the Department Chair is not a member will normally be delegated to a Program Director or to a similarly titled individual. This person should be appointed by the Department Chair from within that program’s faculty with their agreement. Responsibilities for the position may include oversight and management of curriculum updates, course scheduling, accreditation, undergraduate advising, program resource management, and other tasks.

The Department shall offer B.S, M.S, and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering and in Materials Science and Engineering. Each academic program shall work as a committee, coordinated with the Chair or their designee to organize their curricular matters including curriculum design and changes, new courses, electives, accreditation activities, instruction, assessment, and evaluation. Changes to the curricula shall be approved by the respective program’s faculty (which may be organized into curriculum committees), the Department Chair, and any additional due process as required by the College of Engineering and the University.

The Department shall have basic standing committees and ad-hoc committees that are important for the operation and execution of Department functions. The committees should report to the Chair, and when appropriate, to the Department faculty. Standing committees include Curriculum, Personnel, and Differential Fees. Ad-hoc committees will be created as needed for tasks such as faculty and staff search committees and promotion & tenure committees. These committees may operate with input from faculty and other sources, as needed, such as Advisory Boards. All the Department’s standing and ad hoc committees should normally consist of equal representation from the CHE and MSE programs.

The Chair shall hold Department meetings at least once per semester to conduct Department business. Meetings should be announced at least 5 days in advance and any voting items that will be addressed at the meeting should normally be provided on an agenda at least two days prior. Any member may place items on the agenda, provided the information on the item is provided to the Chair prior to 2 days before the meeting.

In the event that the normal scheduling and notification process cannot be followed, such as the need for an “urgent” or immediate meeting or vote, a Department meeting or vote may also be called with less than the normal 5-day notice at the request of the Chair or at least 25% of the Eligible Voters in the Department. However, any vote will require a normal quorum. An agenda should be distributed as soon as possible in such occasions.

Faculty and staff hiring processes shall comply with established UNR policies. The Department Chair shall make all faculty hiring and appointment recommendations to the Dean, after consulting with the Department’s Eligible Voters, organized through search committees defined below. Votes of said committees shall be taken with the purpose of advising the Chair. To better inform the decision and recommendation, at the Chair’s discretion, additional advisory votes may be requested, such as a vote of program faculty.

A. Tenure Track Hiring: In cases of hiring tenure-track faculty, an ad-hoc search committee shall be convened, consisting of voting members who are tenure track faculty, which may include faculty from outside the CME Department.

B. Non-Tenure-Track Hiring: In cases of hiring non-tenure-track faculty to positions up to Rank 0(II), such as in the case of hiring grant-sponsored research faculty, the search process may involve convening a search committee. However, this is not explicitly required and will be at the discretion of the Department Chair and the direct supervising faculty overseeing the position.

In cases of hiring non-tenure-track faculty to positions at Rank 0(III) or above, including both instructional and research faculty, an ad-hoc search committee shall be convened. The committee will consist of voting members who are either tenure track faculty at any rank, or non-tenure track faculty at Rank 0(III) or above and may include faculty from outside the CME Department.

When search committees are convened, they are expected to select their own Committee Chair who will coordinate their activities and communications with the Department Chair and others.

For each calendar year, a role statement for each faculty member shall be developed by the faculty member with consultation and approval from the Chair. For administrative faculty, the Role Statement is replaced with Individual Performance Objectives, IPOs. The role statement shall address the effort to be spent in the areas of teaching, research, service, and administration for the year and shall be consistent with the mission and priorities of the University, the College of Engineering, the Department, and the specific academic program of the faculty. Analogous topics should be covered in IPOs for administrative faculty (per campus policies). The role statement and IPO development shall account for both the needs of the Department and the professional development of the faculty member, and should be a significant component of the annual faculty evaluation process.

Faculty shall be objectively evaluated annually in the context of their role statement or IPOs. The evaluation must be consistent with the faculty role statement or IPOs and should use appropriate metrics and principles that promote professional development, and support the mission of the Department, College, and University. Evaluation metrics are developed by the Chair with input from Department, College and University committees and authorities.

All performance evaluations shall be conducted in a holistic manner, taking into account individualized elements in the faculty role statement (IPOs). These factors should include standards and expectations set by the Department and College and may factor in both quantitative and qualitative elements. Each faculty member’s role statement and performance evaluation should reflect their individualized role statement expectations and their performance for the period under evaluation.

Evaluations shall be conducted each year by a department personnel committee consisting of equal participation from Chemical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. They shall evaluate faculty members and make recommendations to the Chair on performance evaluations. The department personnel committee is a standing committee. No faculty member, including the department Chair, may take part in committee deliberations or votes relating to the faculty member’s own evaluation, or the evaluation of anyone with whom they have a conflict of interest, as defined by the University Administrative Manual.

Faculty members may not vote on their own appointment, tenure or promotion, or in cases in which a conflict of interest exists.

A. Tenure-Track Faculty Promotion and Tenure: In cases of promotion of tenure-track faculty, an ad-hoc committee shall be convened, consisting of voting members who are faculty with rank greater than or equal to that of the promotion being sought. The voting members of this committee will include all such faculty of sufficient rank within the Department. The Dean may appoint similarly qualified additional or external voting members to this committee.

In cases of votes on tenure of faculty, an ad-hoc committee shall be convened, consisting of voting members who are tenured faculty. Normally the voting members of this committee will include all such tenured faculty within the Department. The Dean may appoint similarly qualified additional or external voting members to this committee in accordance with UNR bylaws.

B. Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Promotion: In cases of promoting non-tenure-track faculty to positions up to Rank 0(II), at the discretion of the Department Chair and the direct supervising faculty overseeing the position, the review process may involve convening a promotion committee.

In cases of promoting non-tenure-track faculty to positions to Rank 0(III) or higher, including both instructional and research faculty, an ad-hoc promotion committee shall be convened, consisting of voting members who are either tenure track faculty at any rank, or non-tenure track faculty at higher rank than the rank being sought. The Chair and/or the Dean may appoint similarly qualified additional or external voting members to this committee.

In all promotion and/or tenure cases, any convened committees shall select their own Committee Chair, who will coordinate the committee’s activity. The Committee shall provide the Department Chair with written documentation of the review and shall include the results of all required recorded votes. These shall be provided in the format specified by the Department Chair and other campus authorities.