Professional Activity Report (PAR)

Instructions for 2024 Professional Activity Report

The 2024 PAR will consist of a CV and a statement outlining your major activities/accomplishments in research, teaching and service over the last three years. You will save your PAR as a PDF in a Google Drive folder that was created specifically for you. Your department Chair will have access to that folder. Lyterati will not be used for the 2024 PAR. 

Instructions for preparing and submitting your PAR are given below.

Note: These guidelines are applicable to the PAR to be submitted in January 2024 only. 

Department chairs: For information about processing PARs for your department, see 2024 PAR: Instructions for Department Chairs.

 

In a Nutshell

Prepare your PAR: Your PAR consists of your CV (using the Lehigh CV Template) and a 2-page statement (which is optional at the university level but may be required by your college or department). Save your CV and statement as a single PDF with the filename userid_PAR.pdf, where userid is your Lehigh user ID (e.g., abc123). 

Submit your PAR: A Google Drive folder that is unique to you will be shared with you by December 23, 2023. Save the PDF containing your PAR in that folder by Friday, January 19, 2024. Your chair will take it from there.

Please see the sections below for more details.

 

Preparing Your PAR

Your PAR will consist of the following two documents:

1. Curriculum vitae (CV): The CV should follow the Lehigh CV Template found on the Provost’s website. You have two options:

Option 1: Provide a complete CV that includes activities dating as far back as you wish, with activities from the past three years highlighted using color, boldface, or another style convenient for you.

Option 2: Provide a CV that only includes activities from the past three years.

The first option may be more convenient for faculty who already maintain an up-to-date CV, while the second may be more convenient for those who do not. The goal is to minimize any additional work for faculty, while also making it easy for chairs and deans to quickly identify activities that took place during the reporting period. Under either option, “the past three years” refers to calendar years, i.e., the January 2024 PAR should consist of activities in calendar years 2021–2023.

Note that the Lehigh CV Template has changed recently. Most of the changes are minor, with the exception of one significant change, the inclusion of a new section on Current and Pending Support. All forms of support must be listed, foreign or domestic, whether or not remuneration is received. This section is important for maintaining compliance with federal rules regarding conflict of interest and disclosure. 

2. Statement: The statement is an opportunity to discuss your major activities and accomplishments in research, teaching, and service over the last three years. General guidelines for your statement are given below. If your college or department has provided additional instructions, those supersede the guidelines that follow.

You have flexibility in how you choose to structure your statement. You may choose to write a narrative summarizing your overall accomplishments and goals in the three areas (research, teaching, service), or use it as a way to highlight accomplishments that may not be obvious from your CV, or use another approach that you feel will be most informative to the review process. Your statement should be grounded in the information contained in the CV.

Your statement can discuss public-facing scholarship, community-engaged work, translational research (patents, startups, etc.), software development, performances, teaching innovations, and other aspects of your work that you wish to highlight. We also encourage you to describe diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility activities in the domains of teaching, research, and/or service.

We suggest including an opening paragraph that can be understood by an interested non-expert. The Provost encourages Assistant and Associate Professors to use the process of writing the statement as a way to develop and refine some of the ideas they will eventually discuss in the statements that they submit as part of their applications for promotion and/or tenure.

The combined statement (including research, teaching, and service) should be no more than 2 pages, single-spaced. The use of bullet points, rather than paragraphs, is acceptable.

The statement is not required at the University level. However, some colleges, departments, and programs have made the statement required, and have provided further guidance about what to include in the statement. Check with your department chair about whether the statement is required or optional for you.

 

Submitting Your PAR

A Google Drive folder will be shared with you by December 23, 2023. The folder will be unique to you and will be accessible by you, your department chair, your dean, and the provost (and deputy provosts). The folder will be titled with your name, in the form [Last, First].

You will receive an email from Google when the folder is shared with you. The email will contain the link to your individual folder. If you lose track of that email, you can always find the folder by logging into your Google Drive and searching for your name [Last, First] or browsing under “Shared with me”.

Save your CV and statement as a single PDF with the filename userid_PAR.pdf, where userid is your Lehigh user ID (e.g., abc123). This naming convention is important to enable your PAR to be archived correctly at the end of the PAR cycle.

Copy it to your individual Google Drive folder by the deadline, Friday, January 19, 2024.

Note: Do not save anything in your individual folder that you do not want others to see.

 

Important Dates

• Saturday, December 23, 2023: Google Drive folders shared with faculty and chairs by this date. You may save your PAR in your folder starting on this date.

• Friday, January 19, 2024: Deadline to save your PAR in your Google Drive folder.

• Friday, June 14, 2024: Deadline for your department chair to save your merit raise letter to your Google Drive folder. (Department chairs cannot finalize merit raises until after the Board of Trustees has approved the budget at their May meeting).

 

Additional Documents that Might Help You Prepare Your PAR

In the past, some documents were pre-loaded into the PAR module in Lyterati and could then be used by faculty members as they prepared their PARs. (These documents are not required as part of the PAR but might be useful to you as you prepare your CV or statement.) These documents are still accessible following the instructions below.

Course Evaluations: You can access your course evaluations as usual via go.lehigh.edu/evalkit. 

Current and Pending Support: As noted above, the Lehigh CV Template now contains a section for current and pending support. All forms of support must be listed, foreign or domestic, whether or not remuneration is received. You may include your current and pending support in the body of your CV, or attach it as an appendix.

A self-service tool is available to generate your current and pending support. To use it:

1. If you are off campus, log into Lehigh’s VPN.

2. Go to go.lehigh.edu/cprs.

3. Log in with your Lehigh username and password. (Note: Use your username (e.g., abc123), not your email address (with the @lehigh.edu suffix).) You should now see a table listing your current and pending support.

4. To download the list, click the “Reports” drop-down at the top of the page. Then click “Report 1 - Current & Pending PDF” and then “Run” to download the list in PDF format. (You can also click “Report 2 - Current & Pending CSV” + “Run” to download it in comma-separated values format.)

Important: The tool lists current and pending support based on the LIRA system, which typically only contains information on your Lehigh financial support from sponsored activities. Thus, other forms of support (e.g., foreign or non-financial appointments and activities) will typically not be included; you will have to add these yourself. For more details about current and pending support, visit Lehigh’s Guidelines Regarding NIH Other Support & NSF Current and Pending Support or NSF’s definition of current and pending support.

 

Is My PAR the Same as My Annual Review?

No, they are not the same! If you’re a new faculty member (or even if you’re not) and are confused about these two types of reviews, read on.

The Professional Activity Report (PAR) is Lehigh’s mechanism for annual merit-based salary increases. All faculty at all ranks complete it annually. The PAR always covers a three-year window (assuming you’ve been at Lehigh that long) so that faculty effort is “equalized.” If a faculty member is less productive or effective in one year, it won’t overly affect their merit raise since it considers three years. 

Your department chair and dean evaluate your PAR. Until 2023, Lehigh used a software platform called Lyterati to manage PARs, but starting in 2024, we no longer use Lyterati for PARs. For the 2024 PAR, you’ll submit a CV and/or 2-page statement as described elsewhere on this webpage. 

Your Annual Review is part of the tenure and promotion process. The goal of the Annual Review is to let you know how you’re progressing toward achieving tenure in the three areas of faculty effort (research, teaching, and service). It is separate from your PAR and merit raise review. 

Whereas only your chair and dean evaluate your PAR, the Annual Review is conducted with input from all faculty members in your department of the appropriate rank (typically tenured Associate and Full Professors), led by your chair. Faculty reviewers will evaluate your dossier and write a collective letter in response that summarizes their opinions. Your dossier and your chair’s letter will also be reviewed by your dean and the provost and become part of your file at Lehigh. 

The Annual Review dossier consists of a full CV, course evaluations, a 10-page (max) statement, up to 30 pages of supplementary materials, and an optional COVID-19 impact statement. (See the Provost’s Annual Review Checklist for more information on what’s included.) As of academic year 2023-4, Lyterati is still used for Annual Reviews. The timing of your Annual Review depends on when you were hired; see the Provost’s Annual Review Schedule for more information. Your department chair might ask you to complete your Annual Review in concert with your PAR to save some effort, but remember that they are for separate purposes.

 

PAR Documents That are Used for Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion Dossiers

Previously, two documents were pre-loaded into the Lyterati PAR module that faculty found useful for preparing their dossiers for reappointment, tenure, and promotion. Although the Lyterati PAR module no longer exists, these documents are still easily accessible.

Chronological Course Listing: A self-service tool is available to generate your chronological listing of courses taught. To use it:

1. If you are off campus, log into Lehigh’s VPN.
2. Go to go.lehigh.edu/argos.
3. Click “Click here to access Lehigh's General Argos Instance”.
4. Log in with your Lehigh username and password. (Note: Use your username (e.g., abc123), not your email address (with the @lehigh.edu suffix).)
5. Click “Argos Web Viewer”.
6. Click the “Faculty” folder on the left-hand side, then click “Faculty Members”.
7. Click “Faculty Course Listing”.
8. Choose one or more terms from the “Term” dropdown, then click “Retrieve Data”. You should now see a listing of your courses.
9. If you wish, you can print the page to create a PDF. Or, click “Reports” at the top of the page, then “Faculty Course Listing Report”, then “Run” to download it in comma-separated values (CSV) format.

Number of Advisees by Semester: A self-service tool is available to generate a list of the number of advisees per semester. To use it:

1. Follow instructions 1–6 above to navigate to the “Faculty Members” folder in Argos.
2. Click “Advisees Counts”.
3. Choose one or more terms from the “Term” dropdown, then click “Retrieve Data”. You should now see a listing of the number of advisees you had in each term.
4. If you wish, you can print the page to create a PDF. Or, click “Reports” at the top of the page, then “Advisees Counts Report”, then “Run” to download it in comma-separated values (CSV) format.

 

Questions or Problems?

If you encounter any problems with the tools described above, please try the following first:

• For questions or problems regarding course evaluations, first check the FAQ here; if you still need help, email inevals@lehigh.edu. 

• For questions or problems regarding current and pending support, submit a LIRA help ticket here. 

• For questions regarding your advisee listings, please contact your department coordinator, who may wish to consult this page.

If these resources don’t address your question or problem, please email indpfa@lehigh.edu.