• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

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

• 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

• 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)

• Research
• Teaching
• Service

Publications

• Used to assess your productivity
  • Numbers vary widely among disciplines
  • Type of publications expected also vary widely
  • Different expectations at different promotion points
• Used to assess the quality of work produced
  • Citations, H-factor, Impact on the field
• Demonstrate your contributions
• Provide evidence of your unique contributions, particularly in collaborative/cross-disciplinary activities
  • Issues of collaborators: How many? How much of your time?
  • Issues of cross-disciplinarity: Why did this matter? What did you and your discipline contribute?

Grants

• Important national review of work
• Demonstrate ability to secure funding for research

Presentations

• Invitations reflect status in the field

Visibility/Engagement/Focus

• Present at multiple conferences
• Engage the leaders at those conferences
• Invite leaders to your institution via department events
• Reflect on level of focus in work and, if broad, engage multiple communities

• Effectiveness
  • Often evaluated by students
  • Ask assigned or selected mentor to provide review
• Innovation
  • Think about ways to do it better/more effectively
  • Engage students
• Range/breadth
  • Assignments may be focused or broad
  • Be prepared to teach beyond your comfort zone
• Enthusiasm
  • Convey why you love what you do
  • Occasionally volunteer for something extra
• Develop a portfolio of your teaching
  • Syllabi
  • Handouts, other notes on courses developed
  • Problem sets
  • Other written materials
  • Computer-based materials, notes on courseware
  • Copies of software developed for courses
  • Examinations
  • Copies of graded papers where there is a significant writing component
  • Evaluation by a colleague
  • Student evaluations

• Department
  • Help your department accomplish the faculty’s goals University
• University
  • Engage in the broad community, but wisely — most P/T committees are broad
• National Organizations
  • Choose wisely for visibility with minimum time
• Civic/K12/Outreach Opportunities
  • Choose wisely, but make a difference

• Include students mentored at all levels (primary and secondary mentoring)
  • Undergraduates
  • Graduate Students
  • Post-doctoral Associates
• Include advising responsibilities at all levels
• Refereed publications
  • Some institutions request an evaluation of % effort on each
  • Citations — check your “h-factor”
• Abstracts / Conference Proceedings / Presentations
  • Seminars/Workshops/Panels/etc.
  • Posters
  • Invited talks at meetings
• Service within university, in community, at (inter)national level

• Can be very helpful in guiding activities
• Opportunity for mid-term feedback
• Provide an internal view of accomplishments
  • Some may have external letters
  • Dossier can be similar to promotion dossier

• How many publications do I need?
• How much grant funding?
• How many graduate students? Postdocs?
• How many committees? Which ones?
• How good must my teaching be? Does it matter?
• How do I know if I’m doing enough?