At the end of this year’s deliberations, the University Advisory Committee on Continuing Status reviewed and summarized some procedural questions and concerns arising out of their review of this year's dossiers. The following document outlines their concerns, together with recommendations from the Office of the Provost, which are indicated in bold type. Please distribute this material to all candidates and committee members who will be taking part in the promotion and continuing status review process in 2001-2002.

• The Committee recommends that deadlines for submission of packets be firmly enforced. If deadlines are not going to be enforced, a protocol needs to be established for handling late submissions. This year some packets arrived in March and April.

• The Committee suggests that clarification regarding policy pertaining to what constitutes appropriate letters of reference would be helpful to departments. Questions that need clarification include: 1) Does requesting input from peers not included in the list of evaluators violate the promotion and continuing status peer review protocol? Optional letters of evaluation by University of Arizona faculty colleagues are limited to no more than two. 2) If additional inputs are allowed, should those letters be included in the packet so that at each step of the evaluation an independent assessment can be made as to their positive or negative position on the candidate's application? 3) Should faculty not on the peer evaluator list who are providing input be provided a copy of the candidate's vita?

  The Committee recommends clarification on these issues; however, the main point is that there needs to be consistency in the promotion and continuing status process across all departments and colleges.

• A question was raised by the Committee of whether tenured faculty are considered peers of continuing status faculty and vice-versa. The faculty status committee for one unit consisted of only tenured faculty as indicated by their professorial titles. The Committee recommends that policy on this issue be clarified.

• The Committee recommends that departments ensure that the title of an applicant’s position correspond to the position description used to evaluate the applicant’s worthiness for promotion and/or continuing status. A candidate for promotion in one unit had the title of Research Scientist while the position description described a full-time service assignment with no research assignment. The candidate’s record contained no research effort. The dilemma for the Committee is whether to evaluate the candidate’s record using criteria for the position title or for the position description.

• The Committee strongly recommends that packets not be accepted for consideration unless accompanied by written criteria for use in evaluating the candidate’s worthiness for promotion and/or continuing status. In one such case, the Committee, in the absence of any criteria, concluded from the candidate’s record that performance was sufficient to warrant promotion. However, the question remains as to whether the Committee, in the absence of the written criteria, should have taken any action in this case.

• The Committee recommends that packets containing unsigned letters of reference not be forwarded to this committee until signatures have been obtained.