You look at your year and remember the work clearly: a new course preparation, a major research deadline, and a program responsibility that grew well beyond what you expected. Then you open the assignment record and see a distribution that doesn't seem to describe that year at all.
That's worth sorting out before you write the review narrative. The book emphasizes accurate workload documentation because an evaluation needs context about what you were assigned to do. Your reader shouldn't have to guess why one part of the record looks different from the year before.
Start with the official record.
Locate the assignment documents for the relevant period. Depending on your institution, the categories may include teaching, scholarship, service, administration, or other responsibilities. Use the categories and terms that actually apply to you rather than forcing your work into a familiar percentage split from another university.
Where assignments change by semester, preserve that detail. A single annual number may not explain a midyear shift unless the institution's reporting method accounts for it. Check the applicable process before calculating your own replacement figure.
Check changes against the approval process.
A grant, leave, administrative role, or new departmental need may affect an assignment. But spending more time on an activity doesn't necessarily mean your formal assignment changed. Distinguish an approved adjustment from work that expanded informally.
If a record appears wrong or incomplete, contact the appropriate chair or administrator with the relevant documentation. Ask how corrections are made and keep the response. Don't simply alter the percentages in your narrative and assume that resolves the official record.
This is also a chance to clarify future expectations. If an informal responsibility has become a substantial part of your job, a workload conversation may be more useful than another year of trying to explain the mismatch afterward.
Explain the change without making the whole narrative about it.
Imagine a hypothetical faculty member whose approved program leadership assignment increased halfway through the year. A concise explanation can identify the period, the responsibility, and the documented assignment change. Then the narrative can show what the person accomplished within that context.
You don't need to apologize for the work you were assigned. You also shouldn't imply that the assignment alone proves strong performance. The assignment establishes context; the evidence helps readers assess the contribution.
Keep percentages and accomplishments in their proper roles.
A workload percentage isn't a stopwatch reading or an automatic performance rating. Don't turn it into an unsupported formula, such as assuming a particular percentage requires a fixed number of publications. Evaluation standards and the relationship between assignments and ratings depend on the institution and role.
Use the documented assignment to organize a fair account of the year. Explain relevant responsibilities, identify your contributions, and support them with appropriate evidence. If you're unsure how a changed assignment affects review expectations, ask that question directly instead of trying to infer the answer from a colleague's record.
For a practical first step, place your assignment record beside your draft overview. Check the dates, categories, and any approved changes. Write down each discrepancy as a specific question. Resolving those few questions now will make the narrative clearer and give you a better starting point for the next assignment conversation.
Adapted from The New Faculty Handbook by Zafer Unal, chapter 14, pp. 232–233.
