Each year the University advisory committees on promotion and tenure/continuing status (P&T/CS) submit reports with general recommendations for improvement of the process. These recommendations come from the committees’ overall impressions of the dossiers and problems that occur in the preparation and presentation of the files, or simply in failure to follow the prescribed procedures. The recommendations of both committees apply well to both tenure and continuing status.

Once more I am passing these recommendations along to you, with additional notes from the Provost’s Office. Please make them available to those faculty who will be undergoing review next year, and to those personnel involved in the preparation of dossiers. We will also post this memo on our website at (http://w3.arizona.edu/~vprovacf) under the "tenure/promotion" and "continuing status" buttons.

Recommendations from the 2003 University Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure, Ron Oaxaca, Chair

1. The workload statement should refrain from judgmental or praiseworthy comments and clearly state the percentage within each category for teaching, research/scholarship, and service. The workload distribution should be presented in a manner to reflect a 100% total across the areas of responsibilities and should reflect the previous six years or relevant period for the promotion or tenure decision.
   Provost’s Office note: the workload statement must be signed by both the candidate and department head. Several files had only one or the other.

2. In co-authored publications, student advisee co-authors should be identified or highlighted in some manner.

3. Grants should be numbered and the amount of each award that can be imputed to the candidate should be identified. These amounts should also be totaled. It is also helpful to know the percentage contribution in the event of multiple principal investigators or co-principal investigators. Some candidates provided this information while others did not. In addition it would be useful to know a) the grant reference numbers provided by the funding agency, b) whether the funding amounts are direct costs or total costs, and c) whether funding listed is annual or the total amount awarded over the entire grant period.

4. A candidate’s former dissertation advisor should not vote on the case.

5. A committee or administrator report should include some narrative on which the recommendation is based.

6. Peer review of teaching needs to be done more consistently and identified more clearly.

7. External and internal letters of reference need to be more clearly separated. Most dossiers did this, but there were some in which this was not done. The result led to some confusion.
   Provost’s Office note: solicited external letters should always be located in a clearly marked and separate section containing only those letters. Other letters (solicited internal, unsolicited external or internal) should be placed in separate and clearly marked sections following the external letters. In addition, the biographies of the external referees should not exceed one page and half a page would be better. This year, some of the external referees’ biographies were longer than those of the candidate. Please request short biographies when you mail out materials to the external referees.

1. Prepare dossiers with care.
   
   Ensure that all relevant documents-including departmental and college criteria or guidelines for continuing status and promotion-are included in the dossier.
   
   Have the candidate indicate percent of effort on grants and contracts.
   
   Identify, by name, the members of the review committees. Usually this is done by having the members of the departmental-level and college-level review committees sign their reviews.
   
   Identify which external referees were suggested by the candidate. This is especially helpful in those cases where the referee does not explain his or her prior knowledge of the candidate in his or her letter (even though requested to do so).

2. Explain irregularities.
   If, with respect to requirements for continuing status and promotion, the philosophy of the unit varies significantly from the traditional University emphasis on teaching or outreach, scholarship or creative activity, and service, then briefly explain this. The committee wants to and needs to understand and appreciate ways departmental cultures can and do vary with regard to established practices. Be sure that the departmental continuing status and promotion policies conform to the department’s culture and that there are not internal inconsistencies between departmental expectations and departmental policies.

3. Strive for as strong a roster of external referees as possible.
   
   The assessments of independent, external referees are a critical part of the evaluation process. This is especially the case when the committee is looking for evidence relating to a candidate’s national or international recognition or stature. To the extent that there are questions about the strength or objectivity of a referee (e.g., referee has a close association with the candidate, the referee’s credentials are not particularly impressive), the strength of the appraisal may be diminished.

4. Units need "self-standing" criteria for continuing status.
   Occasionally continuing-eligible candidates are individuals who hold the associate rank. If the departmental criteria for continuing status are defined only in terms of a person with assistant rank advancing to the associate rank, review committees are left with very little to go on when evaluating these continuing-eligible candidates who already hold the associate rank.

5. Mentor and coach upcoming faculty.
   Perhaps this recommendation is not, strictly speaking, the business of this committee to make. Nevertheless we offer it in a collegial spirit. In some cases it appears that a candidate could have benefited from additional mentoring or coaching from within his or her department in order to be better prepared for obtaining continuing status or a promotion. We are referring not simply to the preparation of the dossier, but even more importantly to the ongoing guidance and development of a junior faculty member during the formative stages of his or her career. Junior faculty represent significant departmental investments in the success and reputation of the home department and program(s). Mentoring and coaching can improve the "rate of return" on those investments.
   Provost’s Office note: this is an important point for both tenure-track and continuing-track faculty, as we transition to a 3/6 year review cycle. Many of the weaknesses seen in dossiers could have easily been avoid by good mentoring. Also, mentoring is especially important in cases where a candidate’s unit may have had a high turnover of department heads -the mentoring of junior faculty is often a casualty in such cases.

Promotion and Tenure Process
Continuing Status and Promotion Process
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs
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