A/P Faculty Career Tracks

Career tracks represent a group of jobs characterized by distinct responsibilities. Virginia Tech’s A/P faculty positions are grouped under five career tracks: academic, clinical, development, general administration, and technical/STEM. Additionally, a manager/leadership track is used to group A/P faculty positions that have people supervisory responsibilities. More information about each track is available by clicking the links below.

What the track levels mean

A scale of 1 to 5 is used within each track, with 1 being entry level individual contributor roles and 5 being expert individual contributor roles in that track. The following details are used to determine where a role falls within that scale:

• Autonomy: The responsibility, power, or obligation to independently make a decision and the accountability for its success or failure.
• Complexity: The extent to which the role’s tasks are multi-faceted, mentally demanding, and challenging to perform. 
  
• Experience: The amount of time, practice, involvement, and understanding an individual must have to perform the key functions of the role.
• Knowledge: The amount of familiarity, awareness, and understanding of impact that an individual must have in order to make effective changes within the scope of responsibility.
• Scope of Impact: For a position to have a scope of impact that is universitywide, the decisions made under the purview of the position’s duties must routinely have direct impact on operations across the university. This goes beyond positions that have responsibilities that cross department, college, or senior management area boundaries.

How supervisory responsibilities are defined

For a position to be considered supervisory, it must have:

• Administrative responsibilities over subordinate positions to include recommendations for hiring and termination, writing evaluations, disciplinary actions, day-to-day oversight as well as long-term goal setting and accountability for the performance and productivity of the employees.
• Oversight of wage employees, students, contractors, graduate assistants, and volunteers is not considered supervision under this leveling methodology. This is consistent with the Department of Labor’s definition of a supervisor. 

For more information

This job architecture definitions document contains additional information on Virginia Tech's career tracks and career track levels.