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This presentation focused on educating graduate students and post-docs who aspire to academic faculty positions regarding the university promotion and tenure process, and was authored by Jason Hafner (Physics&Astronomy), Kathleen Matthews (Natural Sciences), and Jennifer West (BIOE).

Goals

  • Institution
    • Tenure is a life-long commitment by the university to you
    • Successful faculty – innovators, leaders, producers
    • Research objectives in line with institutional directions
  • You
    • Faculty position that meets your own research and career objectives
    • Member of functional, innovative and forward-looking department and institution
    • Security offered by tenure

What can i do now?

Think about your steps all along the way

  • Consistently evaluate your own progress
    • Goals
    • Mechanisms to get there
    • Ways to learn from others and engage them
  • Keep data on all your activities
  • Ask for feedback
    • Grant writing
    • Papers
    • Teaching
    • Research program organization and development

This process is the accumulation of years of effort! THINK AHEAD!!

Understand the general process

  • Learn about the promotion and tenure process at your institution
    • Ask about the process at every stage if you have questions
  • Request a copy of the policy
    • Be sure when you are interviewing that the policy is consistent with your personal goals
  • Understand the balance of teaching, research, and service that the institution AND the department will expect
  • Understand the audience(s) for the materials

The dossier

  • Summary of your independent career at institution
  • Information on all aspects of your career
    • Research summary (publications, grants, citations, awards)
    • Teaching summary (courses, evaluations, awards)
    • Service summary (activities, awards)
  • Inside reviews/letters
  • Outside letters****
    • Writers identified by department
    • Also usually writers identified by individual

Dossier components

  • Summary of career
    • Education
    • Honors
    • Teaching/advising/mentoring
    • Citations
    • Grants
    • Publications
    • Research/teaching summary written by candidate
  • Outside letters

What happens after dossier is prepared?

  1. Department review
    • Tenured faculty generally involved in decision to recommend or deny tenure
    • Department chair writes letter
      • Some schools have subcommittee
  2. School review
    • Often school-level committee reviews and makes recommendation to dean
    • Dean makes recommendation
  3. Promotion/Tenure Committee (Provost)
    • Makes recommendation to President
  4. President sometimes makes final decision

Multiple levels of review — no one person makes the decision! Many voices are part of the process.

General process

  • Understand the timing of preparing the dossier, what you should submit and when
    • Think carefully about names for Outside Letters
  • Understand the process completely
  • Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare your materials
    • Think about your research/teaching summary
    • Ensure that your papers are submitted in a timely way
  • Ask QUESTIONS if you do not understand

Outside letters

  • Highly influential in decision process
  • May have opportunity to suggest names
    • Develop relationships - create a network
    • MARKET yourself!
  • Post-decision: Ask about possibility for feedback from the letters (can be useful)

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Source:  OpenStax, 2008 nsf advance workshop: negotiating the ideal faculty position. OpenStax CNX. Feb 24, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10628/1.3
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