Last year's goal sounded good: improve teaching, publish more, and contribute to the department. Now you're writing the next annual review and trying to decide whether you achieved it. You did a lot. But the goal doesn't give you much to compare the year against.
A useful goal leaves a trail you can follow later. The book's sample next-year statement separates broad goals from objectives and planned activities across teaching, research, service, and development. You can use that distinction without copying the sample's targets or assuming they fit your workload.
Choose a priority that follows from the record.
Start with something your review actually revealed. Maybe students need more practice using evidence, a manuscript needs a focused revision period, or a committee project has reached the point where implementation matters more than another planning meeting.
The next goal should explain what you're responding to. “Improve the course” gives you almost no direction. A goal focused on helping students connect claims with evidence tells you which part of the course to examine and why the change is worth making.
You don't need a new goal for every possible weakness. Choose priorities that fit your assigned responsibilities, the applicable expectations, and the time you can reasonably protect.
Name an action you can influence.
Some outcomes depend on other people. You can prepare and submit a manuscript, but you can't control the journal's decision. You can develop a proposal, but you can't promise a funding agency will award it. Make your planned contribution explicit and distinguish it from the outcome you hope it will support.
For a hypothetical research goal, you might plan a defined revision, seek appropriate feedback, and submit by a realistic date. The eventual editorial decision belongs in the later review as an outcome, not as something you could guarantee in advance.
This isn't about setting easy targets. It's about writing a goal that lets you take responsibility for your work without claiming control you don't have.
Decide what evidence you'll revisit.
If you plan a teaching change, identify how you'll examine it. Perhaps you'll review students' work on a specific assessment criterion and gather feedback about the revised activity. The evidence should fit the learning question. End-of-course ratings alone won't establish every claim about improvement.
For service, a completed draft, approved process, or implemented resource may be a useful milestone. For professional learning, the meaningful step might be applying a method to a project rather than only attending a workshop.
Write down what you'll retain and when you'll check progress. Otherwise, you may reach the next review with a vague memory that things seemed better.
Leave room for a changed year.
Assignments, access to resources, and project conditions can change. Revisit goals at reasonable points and use the institution's process to clarify significant adjustments. Keep the original intention and the reason for a revision visible rather than rewriting history at the end.
You can also break a larger goal into a next milestone. That makes it easier to notice a delay while there's still time to respond.
Choose one goal today and write four sentences: the need, your planned action, the evidence you'll review, and the date you'll revisit it. If you can read those sentences next year and understand what happened, you've written something far more useful than another promise to strive for excellence.
Adapted from The New Faculty Handbook by Zafer Unal, chapter 15, pp. 259–260.
