Third-Year Review Procedure for Tenure-Track Faculty

Third-Year Review Procedure for Tenure-Track Faculty

Department of English

North DakotaStateUniversity

The third-year review is a process in which . . .

Early in the fifth semester (usually the Fall semester*) of a tenure-track Assistant Professor’s appointment, the head of the English department requests the departmental Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation (PTE), Committee to undertake a review of the candidate’s dossier and all supplementary materials.

At the same time, the head of English will notify the faculty member coming up for review that she or he needs to put together a dossier for the PTE committee to review. This dossier should be thought of as an early attempt to create a promotion and tenure dossier; therefore, the faculty member should consult the English Department’s Standards and Proceduresfor Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation, available at

The faculty member being reviewed submits the dossier and the supplemental materials to the PTE committee by the end of the Fall semester. The PTE committee passes it on to the head of the department by the middle of the January. If the PTE committee, the head, and the senior faculty determine in consultation that the person being reviewed has not performed adequately, the head of the department must notify the faculty member that his or her contract will not be renewed. This means that the faculty member will not be hired back in the Fall semester as a tenure-track faculty member.

If the faculty member’s performance is good enough not to require dismissal, members of the PTE Committee write a letterreviewing the faculty member’s progress in the research, teaching, and service. This letter is forwarded to the Dean of the College of AHSS in the faculty member’s in March, and a copy is placed in the faculty member’s file in the English department. The department head does not write a separate review, but may widen the scope of the yearly performance letter for the third year to include progress over the first three years.

*This document will assume that review begins in the Fall. For those who began their tenure-track appointments in the Spring or who had their clock stopped for one semester, the due dates should be pushed back one semester.