Building a consistent system for award attribution to academic faculty at SQU

Two awards are yearly awarded to the andldquo;Best teacherandrdquo; and the andldquo;Best researcherandrdquo; in each college at Sultan Qaboos University. However, a lot of reluctance can be perceived among the faculty staff as regards applying to either of these rewards. What are the reasons of such feeling? What tools can be used to dissipate such negative feeling? To answer these questions, the proposed project sets the following objectives: A field assessment of the consistency of the existing procedures with respect to the international standards, the expectations of the academic community as well as the SQU s vision. Developing new tools to handle decision processes involving performance evaluation of academic staff for rating and ranking purposes. Investigating possible introduction of the andldquo;Best faculty awardandrdquo;; a prize that would acknowledge faculty s combined contribution to both research and teaching.