Tenure- Promotion 3rd Year Review - Colorado College

Third-Year Review, Tenure and Promotion Files and Portfolios
Suggested Composition

Taken directly from the Faculty Handbook, Section C.10
March 8, 2006

Although no file or portfolio can ever show the whole person, the following items have been found to be useful for tenure and promotion reviews. Consultation with the chair, the Divisional Executive Committee, the Personnel Subcommittee, and the Dean of the Faculty should provide further discipline-specific information that might be useful for the candidate to provide in a given year. A meeting of the candidate, the chair, and the Dean takes place in the spring before the review is conducted and should provide basic information and serve as an occasion for the conversation about the review process. The master schedule for college decisions made by various committees affecting tenure and promotion will be provided to all faculty at the start of each year. Faculty should also consult the faculty handbook for information concerning the reviews.

By early September, the candidate should provide the chair with materials for the review file. This should include a current vita with updated descriptions of professional activity and any community involvement, and the materials described below. (Third-year review and promotion-to-full files will usually lag a month behind the construction of tenure/promotion-to-associate files in the timing indicated in these recommendations.) See the Master Schedule for further information on timing.

Note: Excellence in teaching is central to the College’s mission. A statement of teaching philosophy including an explanation of how the syllabi, teaching strategies, and resource materials of representative courses exemplify that teaching philosophy is very useful for helping to understand how the candidate approaches this primary area. Candidates may also include a statement of what they have learned from TLC presentations and other meetings devoted to the scholarship of teaching and learning. Candidates should be encouraged to realize that lessons learned from classroom failures can be as valuable as notable successes and that an explanation of "lessons learned" can illustrate growth as a teacher-scholar.

During the summer or at the latest in block 1 (for tenure review) or block 2 (for third-year and promotion-to-full reviews), the chair of the department or program (or a designated substitute) sends a standard letter to all students and alumni taught prior to the third year review or tenure (in the case of tenure/promotion-to-associate and promotion-to-full reviews, the period since the previous review). [Previous sentence modified from the faculty handbook to improve access to letters.] The Dean’s Office prepares the letters and gives the template to the chair to send out or sends them out on behalf of the chair. To assess a faculty member’s effectiveness as an advisor, chairs distribute a standard letter to the candidate’s academic advisees. All letters and email responses should be included in the file. The candidate may also provide the names of students to be contacted by the chair who can provide additional insights because of special mentoring relationships, research projects, or significant committee work they have conducted with the candidate, but who would be otherwise missed by the regular solicitation.

Chairs may summarize course evaluations that they have read and may discuss these evaluations with the candidate.

In May, the College also asks four peers from outside the College to evaluate the candidate’s scholarly or creative work. Candidates choose two of these external evaluators, and the chair selects the other two evaluators in consultation with the Dean.

The candidate should provide evidence of scholarly activity such as books, copies of professional papers, photographs of sculptures, tapes of music, or other discipline-specific materials produced during the period under review. A statement explaining the candidate’s approach to scholarship is always useful in the review, as is a statement on college service.

Early in the fall semester, the chair should solicit letters from Colorado College colleagues outside the department or program, including those faculty from cognate disciplines and those who have served with the candidate on committees or projects. The candidate should provide a list of a ten or so faculty that the chair will use as a starting point when soliciting input. Typically, complete files will have a half-dozen or so letters in this folder.

Early in the fall semester, the division executive committee will also solicit letters from the College faculty. The division committee’s announcement of the review-in-progress comes in the form of a memo to all faculty with a request for letters for the file. The letters from these faculty go to the department chair. See the Master Calendar for further information on timing.

The department members (or cross-disciplinary colleagues in the case of interdisciplinary programs) will read the file before writing their individual letters. Only tenured members are expected to contribute a formal letter. Although untenured members may also submit a letter, they may not read the file. The file available for faculty review will include everything except letters from Colorado College colleagues, departmental colleagues, and the chair. Faculty members may voluntarily share their letters among themselves prior to submittal to the chair, but they are not to read colleagues' letters from the file. After assembling the file for review by the Divisional Executive Committee, the Faculty Executive Committee and the Dean, the chair may call a meeting of the department to discuss the case and to invite further comment. Aspects of this discussion may be included in the chair's recommendation letter for the file.
The chair's letter should summarize the file and provide the departmental recommendation. At this point the chair sends the file to the Dean's Office and informs the division executive committee and the FEC that the file is ready for review. The FEC Personnel Subcommittee reviews the file after the division executive committee has added its recommendation. See the Master Calendar for further information on timing.

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THIRD YEAR REVIEW PROCEDURES

Summary of the general ground rules under which we should operate (with exceptions if needed to fit special circumstances).

1. The purpose of the third year review is primarily diagnostic, i.e., it is intended to identify any weaknesses in the work of the professor under review, mainly in teaching, but also regarding scholarship, College service, and general effectiveness as a member of the faculty.

2. The Department Chair should discuss the purpose and proce¬dures of the review with the professor, emphasizing that teaching is the principal focus of the review, but noting that criteria are as for tenure and promotion and are stated in the faculty handbook pp. C 5 7. The person reviewed should be kept fully informed of the review as it proceeds and have the opportunity to make suggestions at any time.

3. In September a request for an evaluation will be mailed to graduates who have had courses with the professor. The Dean shall provide a list of those names for your information and ask the professor to suggest any others which may not be on the list but which might be helpful in evaluating his or her teaching or other activities at the College.

4. The Department Chair sends a letter to all on campus students, or the Department Chair may prefer to conduct interviews in person. Questions should be pertinent to the professor's teaching performance, and should be explicit. A list of students who have taken courses with the professor may be obtained, together with address labels, from the Registrar in the early fall.

5. The Department Chair contacts all tenured faculty members in the department, faculty members suggested by the profes¬sor, and other faculty members who may be able to comment on the work of the professors.

6. The Department Chair should also gather documentation materials pertinent to the review, such as a vita, course syllabi, and reading lists for students.

7. The faculty member should have the opportunity to submit any material he or she desires to have made a part of the review file.

8. The Department Chair gathers together all pertinent informa¬tion, prepares a summary report and evaluation, and submits the file to the Executive Committee of the Division.

9. The Executive Committee of the professor's division contacts all regular full-time faculty members of the College for opinions they may wish to register about the teaching, scholarship, and general faculty activity of the professor.

10. The Executive Committee should meet and consult with the Department Chair, especially if any questions of disagreement arise. The Executive Committee may meet also with the professor to clarify any points of uncertainty before submitting the file together with its own evaluation to the Dean. The Executive Committee should also comment on the procedural adequacy of the review by the Department.

11. In the spring the Dean, Department Chair and the professor whose work has been reviewed meet to discuss the nature of the findings. After the meeting with the Dean the reports become a part of the faculty member's file.

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TENURE REVIEW CHECKLIST

April 24, 2006

Taken directly from the Faculty Handbook:
At the end of the first year as well as in the spring of the academic year preceding the year in which a review or decision is to be made, the Dean of the College consults with the department chair and the tenure candidate to discuss the tenure process, and to make sure that all aspects of the process (criteria, procedures, timetables) are clear. At these times any departmental and cross-disciplinary interpretations of the process should be reviewed as well as any unusual agreements in the original contract. The Dean’s written summary of these meetings should be included in the candidate’s file and a copy given to the candidate.
During the summer preceding the tenure decision (or early fall at the latest), the department chair begins to assemble a file that reviews the candidate’s work, focusing upon the material since the third-year review (see Section C.II.A.10). At this time, the chair solicits the written recommendations of tenured faculty members and seeks the evaluations of non-tenured members of the department regarding the tenure candidate. Committee chairs and colleagues outside the department contribute letters evaluating the impact of the candidate’s service to the department, the College, and, when relevant, the professional and wider communities. To assess a faculty member’s effectiveness as an advisor, chairs distribute a standard letter to the candidate’s academic advisees.
The chair also sends a standard letter to all students (including alumni) taught during the period under review (in the case of tenure/promotion-to-associate and promotion-to-full reviews, the period since the previous review). The Dean’s Office prepares the letters that will be sent to students and alumni and gives the template to the chair to send out or sends them out on behalf of the chair. The use of a standard letter helps ensure that all students assess faculty according to similar criteria. The chair should make every effort (including interviewing students if necessary) to ensure that the file contains a minimum of 25 responses.
Chairs do not include a candidate’s course evaluations in the file, but in the case of third year and tenure reviews they may summarize evaluations that they have read and may discuss these evaluations with the candidate. Chairs will organize periodic visits of tenured colleagues to classes for diagnostic as well as evaluative purposes. Reports from these visits should be included in the candidate’s file.
Tenured members of the department or regular tenured paraticipants in interdisciplinary programs (usually members of an interdisciplinary program Steering Committee) provide a careful review of the candidate’s scholarly activity. In May, the College also asks four peers from outside the College to evaluate the candidate’s scholarly or creative work. Candidates choose two of these external evaluators, and the chair selects the other two evaluators in consultation with the Dean. These evaluators should include some mixture of people at research universities and liberal arts colleges who are at the same rank as the candidate or higher. Letters requesting their assistance will explain the College’s expectations for teaching, work with students, and service and will ask them to evaluate the quality of the candidate’s scholarship.
The candidate should be invited to suggest ten to twenty names of faculty colleagues, graduates, and returning students who must be solicited for their input by the chair. In addition, the candidate submits a vita and a statement about his or her work and role in the College that bears upon qualifications for tenure. The completed tenure file will usually contain the same kind of information as the third-year review (see Section C.II.A.10), but it will include alumni responses.
By the deadline indicated in the master schedule for that year, the department chair will confer with the tenured members of the department, and after recording a vote, the chair will submit to the Dean of the College a specific recommendation based on the criteria stated in Section C.II.A.6 of this handbook with all supporting documents. The candidate or department may make no further additions, either positive or negative after the specified deadline. This file will be kept in the Dean's office and it will not be available to the chair or any member of the department after its submission except for an enumeration of the contents, which will be provided by the Personnel Subcommittee to the chair and the candidate. Members of the tenure candidate’s department may not vote at any level above the departmental level on a tenure recommendation for the candidate, nor may anyone participate who has a conflict of interest as defined by the Legal Counsel.

The Divisional Executive Committee reviews the candidate's whole file and prepares its own written recommendation to the Dean and the Faculty Executive Committee. Divisional Executive Committees should keep foremost in mind the opinions of a person's scholarship and teaching held by colleagues within the division. Careful attention should be paid to a person's contribution to the division and the College beyond specific departmental obligations. Such things as interest in the relation among various fields, interest in the work of colleagues, and contributions to interdisciplinary discussion, scholarship and teaching should be taken into account. The Divisional Executive Committee may elect to have a conference with the tenure candidate to make a fuller evaluation.
The Personnel Subcommittee of the Faculty Executive Committee reviews all file materials and makes a recommendation to the entire Faculty Executive Committee. The Faculty Executive Committee, in turn, after reviewing the file, makes a recommendation to the Dean. The President and the Dean attend the Faculty Executive Committee's deliberations. The Dean, the President or the Faculty Executive Committee may elect to have a conference with the candidate. The tenure candidate may also request such a conference. Upon receiving the Faculty Executive Committee's recommendation, the Dean advises the President of his/her recommendation and so informs the candidate. Summaries of the Dean's and the Faculty Executive Committee's recommendations should be provided to the candidate in the follow-up meeting with the chair and the candidate. (In cases of a negative recommendation by the Faculty Executive Committee, the vote should be recorded as well.)
Upon receiving a tenure recommendation from the Dean, the President makes a final recommendation to the Board of Trustees at its next regularly scheduled meeting.
In the event the Dean makes a negative tenure recommendation to the President, the Dean orally informs the candidate, the department chair, the appropriate Divisional Executive Committee, and the Faculty Executive Committee. The candidate has the right to appeal the Dean’s recommendation in accordance with Section C.II.A.9 of this Handbook. If the candidate appeals, the decision of the President is not made until the appeal process is complete. Upon receiving both the Dean’s recommendation and the appeal board’s recommendation, the President makes a final recommendation to the Board of Trustees.
The timetable for all tenure procedures is described in the annual master schedule distributed each year to all faculty members.
In the case of a department chair, the Dean of the College designates a faculty member to conduct the tenure review on behalf of the department, but the tenure review otherwise proceeds in the same manner and with the same timetable as outlined above.

Promotion Procedures
Faculty Handbook, Section C
In making recommendations on promotion, department chairs consult the Dean of the College in the spring before the year in which such a recommendation may be made in order to review procedures and timetables. The Dean may not veto a plan to recommend a person for promotion but may point out problems and circumstances that have some bearing on the promotion decision. All faculty who have not already been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor will automatically be considered for promotion from the Assistant to the Associate Professor rank in the year of their tenure review. The material in the tenure file will serve as the basis for the promotion decision. Consideration for promotion to Associate Professor during the tenure review year will not require separate bodies of evidence or files. Departments and divisions should make recommendations for or against promotion at the same time they make recommendations concerning tenure. However, the decisions of tenure and promotion are independent of each other, and a positive tenure decision does not automatically carry with it a positive promotion decision.

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CRITERIA FOR TENURE AND PROMOTION

Faculty Handbook, Section C
6. Criteria for Tenure and Promotion

A long-standing tradition in higher education is the reliance on peer review in making decisions for tenure and promotion. Although the President and the Trustees must take responsibility for the fiscal health of the institution, the faculty must ultimately bear the burden of deciding what the criteria are for tenure and promotion, and who has fulfilled these criteria. At Colorado College the quality of teaching, scholarship, and participation in the life of the College are the major determinants in decisions to grant tenure to or promote faculty members. Institutional considerations such as budgetary constraints, programmatic changes, the need to provide a balance among departments, course offerings, or faculty ranks will also be weighed in such decisions, but insofar as possible, the merits of the individual professor in these three areas are the principal factors. As an institution that places particular emphasis on the quality of teaching, Colorado College gives special weight to this area. In promotion and tenure decisions, no fixed number of years is required for or assures promotion or tenure. Further detail on promotion timing may be found in Section C.II.A.8, APromotion Procedures.

After seven years of service at Colorado College in any one of the professorial grades, an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, or Professor may be retained only upon the award of tenure. In a faculty member's sixth year at the College in one of the professorial grades or at a time otherwise specified in the faculty member's initial contract, the College will decide whether to grant the professor tenure or issue a terminal contract for the following academic year. The President may extend the probationary period under extraordinary circumstances, upon written request of the faculty member. The College reserves the right to grant tenure before the end of the sixth year under extraordinary circumstances.

Teaching with a focus on student learning and realization of the student's potential is the principal business of the College. Excellence in teaching depends on conveying course material clearly and effectively, actively engaging students in learning, and providing careful and useful evaluation of their work. We will ask faculty members to describe their efforts in these areas and will give weight to the comments of alumni and current students on the effectiveness of class sessions, the nature and usefulness of assignments, the amount and helpfulness of critical feedback, and the teacher's ability to promote critical and creative thinking and inquiry. Excellence in all four areas is the minimum standard for teaching at Colorado College. The kind, rather than the number of students a faculty member attracts and benefits also counts in the assessment of a faculty member's teaching.

Quality teaching necessarily involves scholarship in the faculty member's field and in related fields as a source of vitality and depth that cannot otherwise be attained. Active scholarship means contributions to the broader scholarly or artistic community. The basis of judging the quality of a faculty member's scholarship will be a body of scholarly work-publication, performance, or exhibition-that has been reviewed by professional peers outside the College. This scholarly work can reflect the development of the faculty member's research in new directions, or it can build on or extend previous work. Peer-reviewed conference papers/presentations, work in progress, and other professional activities (including supervision of publishable student research) shall be recognized in the overall assessment of scholarly achievement, but in themselves they will not compensate for an absence of publications or the equivalent in the visual and performance arts; nor will strong teaching or service to the community compensate for an absence of scholarly productivity.

Since the College is more than an assemblage of courses, participation in the broader life of the College is a factor that must be considered in evaluating faculty. Service to the college community involves advising students, aiding students in pursuits outside the classroom, fulfilling departmental responsibilities, working on college committees, and engaging in special projects and initiatives. It can also take the form of participating in alumni and admissions activities, assuming leadership roles in interdisciplinary programs, and taking active roles in the collegial, intellectual, and artistic life of the College. The measure of effective participation is not the number of activities but the significance of the contribution. We also highly value a faculty member's contributions to professional organizations in his or her discipline and to the wider community, but these contributions cannot replace service to the College itself.

While a good faculty is inevitably a collection of individuals, an effective member of such a faculty is sincerely concerned, in a personal way, with the problems of the College as a whole and with the solutions for those problems. Therefore, the appraisal of a faculty member's qualities also includes a sense of the individual's presence in college life and the difference that presence makes. Among other things, a person's character is part of that presence, because of the impact that the individual has on students, colleagues, and people outside the College.

Although the balance among teaching, scholarship, and service to the department and college may vary according to individuals and to the stage in their careers, excellence in teaching is paramount. The faculty member's aim should be to earn the respect of students and colleagues by excellence as a teacher and scholar--as a professional person strongly grounded in a chosen field, and concerned to provoke a desire for knowledge in others.

Promotion to full professor is not automatic. It recognizes a high level of achievement in teaching, scholarship, and service and expresses confidence in a faculty member’s ability to continue to provide leadership in the classroom, college, and professional community.
The standards for excellence in teaching used to grant tenure also apply to promotion to full professor. We expect evidence that candidates continue to incorporate new work in the field in their classes and use their experience to enrich the academic program by, for example, experimenting with new teaching techniques, mentoring new faculty, or participating in interdisciplinary or team teaching initiatives.
At this level the candidate needs to show sustained involvement in scholarship, demonstrated by several pieces of peer-reviewed published work or the equivalent and by involvement in new projects.
To achieve promotion to full professor, candidates also need to show that they have made significant contributions to their departments, committees, programs or special projects important to the academic program. Chairing a department or directing a program is an example of such leadership and will be weighed heavily in the review process. Involvement in the professional and wider communities which demonstrate continuing engagement in a person’s field also strengthen the case for promotion.

___________________________________
This concludes the excerpting of Faculty Handbook materials.

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Suggested Calendar of Procedures

(drawn from the Master Calendar for the appropriate year):
Note: There may be some variation of these steps among the departments and programs.

Chair’s Calendar
Spring Semester preceding the tenure review year
• Talk with your candidate about the process of building the file and contacting colleagues and students.
• Accompany your candidate to the meeting of chairs and candidates with the Dean of the college to review procedures, and talk with your candidate after the meeting about review-year processes.
Fall Semester
Block 1 (or earlier in the summer)
• Request from College Records the names and addresses of alumni whom the candidate has taught during the period under review (the period since any previous review).
• Solicit written recommendations of tenured departmental faculty members and colleagues at other institutions who have been identified as potential recommenders by the candidate.
• Solicit written recommendations from all current students , all alumni who have completed the candidate’s classes, and current advisees.
• Solicit the evaluations of non-tenured members of the department or steering committee.
Block 2
• Keep tabs on the construction and development of the candidate’s review file.
• Talk with the Dean and FEC about potential procedural difficulties as they emerge: for example, too few letters coming in and the possible need for follow-up letters and/or telephone interviews.

• Send email reminders to the students that letters have been requested of them; mention the acceptability of email response.
• At your discretion, meet with the tenured faculty members of your department to discuss the candidate’s file before composing the chair’s letter of recommendation to the Dean.
• On behalf of the department, prepare your written summary, evaluation and recommendation for the Dean of the College.
Block 3
• Submit the candidate’s file with all relevant documents to the Dean of the College (the tenure review file should be ready for the Divisional Executive Committee’s review by the start of block 3; see the Master Calendar for the exact date).

Candidate’s Calendar
Fall Semester
Summer
• Update your vita and, if you wish (most do), prepare a teaching, research and service statement; assemble your offprints and single copies of your books and other research and/or creative materials for the file. The usual practice is to allow candidates to include any and all materials they offer to complete their review file.
• Organize your syllabi, handouts, exams, and other course materials for inclusion in the review file (either all or a selection of each).

Block 1
• Begin the compilation of your review file. Check with your chair/program director about the compilation procedure followed within your department or program.
• Identify colleagues across the College for your chair/program director to contact (this occurs in addition to the general memo to all faculty sent out by your divisional executive committee).

Dean’s Office, Divisional Executive Committee, and FEC Responsibilities
Fall Semester
Block 2
• Divisional Executive committees distribute campus-wide memos requesting letters to be sent to the department chair (this occurs in conjunction with the chairs’ letters to the faculty colleagues named by the candidates). The Divisional Executive committee should discuss the deadline for letters it puts on its memo with the department chair of the review candidate.
Block 3
• The Divisional Executive committee reviews the candidate’s file and prepares a written recommendation for the file (the exact deadline for this letter appears in the Master Calendar); the files will be available in the Dean’s Office for two weeks for the divisional committee’s review.
Blocks 3 and 4
• The Personnel Subcommittee of the FEC reviews the completed file and makes a recommendation to the entire FEC; the Personnel Subcommittee has two weeks in which to complete its review of the file.
• FEC discussions follow the Personnel Subcommittee’s report. The entire FEC may wish to review the file.
Block 4 (and sometimes 5)
• Following discussions with the FEC, the Dean advises the President of his/her recommendation.
• Dean and President notify the candidate of the results of the review.

Spring Semester
• The President makes a final tenure recommendation to the Board of Trustees at the spring Board of Trustees meeting.

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