Promotion and Tenure - guidelines and requirements

Usual practice in many units is that the candidate for Promotion and/or Tenure must announce at a spring meeting of their unit – this gets the process started. 

The candidate will determine what area he/she is declaring as an area of Excellence – Teaching, Research or Service and must make the case for that claim.  Normal university policy requires that a candidate must find an area of Excellence with Satisfactory in the other two – with the exception of a balance case (in which case the candidate is Very Good in all three).   

External Letters are the next step in the timeline and are primarily focused on research – should be sent out early May (before the semester ends) – in order to give time for external faculty to read the papers and compose their letters:

1.      Need at least four letters (the form actually has space for six – with names and titles to be listed. 

2.      Dean/Chair must keep a master list of to whom the letters requests were sent – this list goes into the Executive Summary dossier (discussed below).  The dean/chair should also keep a list of who said “no” and why – this is included in the Executive Summary Dossier

3.      From University Faculty Council (UFC) Circular U8- 2009  – external reviewers must not have “a significant relationship with the candidate” – the circular goes on to define significant as “thesis advisor, post-doctoral mentor, co-author, or former colleague or personal relationship.” Reviewers should also disclose what the natures of their relationships with the candidate are.

4.      In the IU Kokomo P and T document, they further state that any external letters must come from faculty at the rank of a position comparable (or higher) to the desired candidate.

5.      If there are not four letters, Dean or Chair must send additional requests until at least four are received – often must send 12 – 15 letters to get the 4 required.

6.      Sample letters are available at the VCAA office.  Request for external reviews should include a copy of all the published papers, the candidate’s CV, and a copy of the unit’s P and T criteria.  Additional information about teaching and service may be included in the letter to the external reviewers and comments can be solicited about two areas. 

7.      External reviewers should be asked to comment specifically on the area that the candidate has identified as Excellent as well as the candidate’s overall impact of the candidate’s work in the discipline or profession.

8.      These letters are returned to the dean/chair and are added to the dossier after it has been turned in by the candidate

Dossier preparation:

1.      The following must be in the dossier (as they go into the Executive Summary dossier) – see attached for the guidelines for preparation of the Executive Summary dossier.  These do NOT have to be in this order. 

a.       Signature Sheet (see attached). This should be typed so I will send the master to the dean/chair – once the external reviewers have responded, the dean/chair can type their names/titles to the signature sheet. Once this is typed, then the various signatures are collected as the dossier goes through the process.  Exact votes (not by name but number voting which way) are also recorded on this sheet

b.      All external review letters – these should be added by the Dean/Chair after the candidate submits their dossier for consideration

c.       The candidate’s CV

d.      Copies of the unit and IU Kokomo criteria for evaluation of the candidate.

e.       The department/school evaluation of the candidate in the three areas (teaching, research, service) including rationale(s) for the decision

f.       The candidates own statements on teaching, research and service

g.      The Dean/chair is responsible for adding his/her evaluation of the candidate in the three areas once the dossier leaves the unit committee including rationale(s) for the decision

h.      All Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee’s decision and rationale for the decision

i.        REMEMBER:  All committee reports and administrator evaluations must state the basis for promotion and/or tenure  

2.      Other dossier components (in no specific order and not all candidates will have all of these):

a.       Teaching

i.      Grade distributions (required by some units)

ii.      Student evaluations

iii.      List of all courses taught, enrollments, graduate or undergraduate, etc.

iv.      Evidence of the quantity and quality of the candidate’s teaching – e.g., selected syllabi, transcribed student comments, course portfolios, evidence of student learning outcomes, teaching awards, etc. 

v.      Evidence of curriculum development

vi.      Pedagogical papers

vii.      Other evidence of teaching effectiveness

b.      Research/Scholarly Activity. 

 i.      Copies of all published papers, book chapters, etc.  The status of each of these should be noted (published, under review, revised and resubmit, etc.) – may also include works-in-progress if it is clearly labeled as such. 

 ii.      Reviews of the candidate’s work in research/scholarly activities

iii.      List of grants

iv.      Evidence of research leadership such as awards and honors

 v.      FYI - The Chancellor will be evaluating the quality of the journals in which the articles appear for his letter.

 vi.      Other evidence of research effectiveness and impact

c.       Service. 

i.      A list of the candidate’s service activities at each level – unit, campus, IU, profession, etc.

ii.      A list of service related publications

iii.      Evaluation of the service activities by the dean/chair

 iv.      Copies of service related committee reports

v.      Other evidence of service related activities

 

Deadlines

October 1^st – dossier due to the unit’s P and T committee

Mid October – Arts and Sciences only – Chair makes his/her recommendation on P and/or T

November 15^th – Dean’s recommendation due

November 16^th – dossiers go to all-campus P and T committee

January 15^th - all-campus P and T decisions are due