The Promotion and Tenure Process

I.Always have a plan and be patient

  1. You have won the battle by getting the tenure-track position – now you must have a Phase IV plan to consolidate your victory and win the ultimate goal of promotion and tenure.

b. Listen to colleagues when they offer advise on how to refine your plan. Go to promotion and tenure workshops.

  1. Be patient – your parents, spouse or others may think that a handful of years is a long time to wait for promotion and tenure, but it is not. Don’t let their impatience spread to you. Your first years here will pass quickly and when you must apply for promotion and tenure, you will be glad you had the time to make as strong case as possible for a successful application.

d. Being patient also means that you sometimes must try to do the same thing over again. If that paper is not accepted for publication by journal X, quickly reformat it for submission to journal Y. If your grant application is rejected, find out why and revise it for resubmission to the same agency in its next round of competition.

  1. Know the documents that govern promotion and tenure
  1. Gather the documents in your academic unit and at the campus level that govern promotion and tenure. Peruse them and learn what key words and phrases are used with respect to evaluations of teaching, research, and service. Heed unwritten rules and traditions.
  1. Be aware that these documents will likely change between now and when you go up for promotion and tenure. You should ask your Chair or Dean to explain to you whether you will need to abide by the changes or not.
  1. If there is a discrepancy between your academic unit’s documents and the campus level documents, always follow the stricter requirements. In some schools the academic unit will be much more demanding and in other schools the campus guidelines will be more difficult to satisfy.

III.Collect and Document all the time

  1. Collect the following
  1. All mission statements – the campus’, your school’s, your department’s, and your discipline’s. You will use these to explain and to highlight the significance of your own work.
  1. Baseline data that can demonstrate the value of your work and your personal growth.
  1. Names, contact information , and brief professional descriptions of individuals that may serve as external referees for your promotion and tenure application. Most of these persons should be employed at research universities.
  1. Citations, reviews, correspondence, and other instances in which your publications have been used by others.
  1. Do not throw out anything that might prove useful someday to justifying your position here, at least until you are tenured. Some of those documents will become part of your promotion and tenure portfolio.
  1. Document everything that you do professionally on a frequent basis. Do not rely on your long-term memory.
  1. Most of this documentation should be recorded in standard form in your vitae. Do not rely only on the Faculty Activity Report.

IV.Remember the human element trumps technical proficiency

  1. You cannot exist in isolation and you cannot succeed that way either – get help from others.
  1. Have a trusted colleague review drafts of your papers and suggest improvements.
  1. Insist that you be able to select a faculty mentor in your academic unit who can watch out for your best interests and offer you timely and unvarnished advice.
  1. Respect all of your colleagues, try to work with some of them when possible, and do not argue with any of them, at least until you get tenure. No matter how great you may be, if you are deemed uncooperative or too independent, you may lose the support of professors who will sit on the promotion and tenure committee!

SLD 8/12/07