Promotion and Tenure

All campus and system guidelines and procedures must be followed. See the campus P&T information here:

Campus P&T Guidelines for AY 2023-24

Policies and Procedures Heading link

What follows should only be considered as a helpful LAS supplement to the link above, and is not a substitute for consulting the campus P&T guidelines.  Contact Faculty Affairs or the Dean’s Office if you have further questions.

  • The University sponsors workshops to facilitate discussion of the issues that affect faculty development. All probationary faculty and others who will seek promotion are strongly advised to attend these events.
  • In addition, the College offers Drop-In Hours to assist with questions as people prepare the papers. New executive officers should meet with Associate Dean Anne Eaton to clarify issues of content and procedure.
  • University Policies, Procedures, and Forms for promotion and tenure can be found on the website of the Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
  • Requests for information about college policies should be directed to Associate Dean Anne Eaton,  or to Assistant Dean Beth Allen.

Schedule Heading link

The link below provides the schedule for all Promotion and Tenure cases, Mid-Probationary Reviews, and Lecturer Promotions for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

LAS P&T Calendar for 2023-24

Years 1-3 Heading link

All new faculty need support and guidance as they acclimate to UIC and the College. Both campus and college orientations are available, but much of the support for the professional development of junior faculty will come most appropriately from the department.

Each new faculty member should be assigned a mentor in accordance with Campus, College, and Departmental policy.

It is entirely appropriate for units to monitor the service obligations and commitments of junior faculty in order to ensure that junior faculty are not over burdened as they begin their research program. Executive officers should be especially attentive to departmental obligations of junior faculty with joint appointments and should ensure that the service required is proportional to the percentage of appointment.

Throughout the probationary period, executive officers should provide junior faculty with feedback on their performance.  It is also important to be cognizant of life events or circumstances for which a request a tenure hold or rollback would be appropriate. Requests for tenure holds and rollbacks can take some time to process. It is therefore crucial that the process is started promptly and as close as possible to the time of the event for which the hold or rollback is requested.

Mid-Probationary Review Heading link

The mid-probationary review is a mandatory component of the promotion and tenure process. It provides tenure-track faculty members with an assessment of their progress toward tenure at the mid-point of their probationary period and provides a record of the departmental mentoring that they received. The assessment becomes part of the faculty member’s official promotion and tenure packet. This review should give the faculty member an appraisal of their current standing relative to the benchmarks for promotion to associate professor with tenure, as well as concrete suggestions for the remainder of the probationary period. It is important that the review be as specific as possible about the kinds of activities and accomplishments that are likely to lead to a positive outcome, taking care not to imply any guarantees. The review must be conducted no later than the middle of the probationary period, typically in the spring of tenure year three (T3) but may vary with individual circumstances. It is important that the review is undertaken at a point late enough to permit reasonable review of a faculty member’s progress toward tenure since the initial appointment and early enough to provide useful guidance in preparing for any subsequent review.

LAS requires that departments complete Mid-Probationary forms, which are similar to campus promotion and tenure forms and are organized around the assessment of: teaching, research and creative activity, service, and efforts relevant to the institutional commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The College requires this so that the department and the candidate are aware of, and can systematically organize, the types of records and information that will be needed as faculty progress toward tenure. The mid-probationary review also helps executive officers make informed recommendations about areas of strength and/or concern based on trajectories revealed by a systematic examination of collected records, such as student teaching evaluations, research activities, and service contributions. Much of the information on the LAS Mid-Probationary form is used for departmental and College purposes only. The Executive Officer Statement at the end of the packet is the formal record which, along with the candidate’s acknowledgement of having seen the review, is forwarded to the Office of Faculty Affairs to be used both at the time of the review and as part of the future promotion case.

If, in the estimation of the College, there is insufficient information at the time of the mid-probationary review to adequately assess a candidate’s progress toward tenure, or the report reveals areas of concern, a second review in the following year may be requested. This is not uncommon and serves only to provide more information where it is useful. If a second review is requested, the second Executive Officer Statement replaces the first EO statement in campus records and in the promotion and tenure packet.

Please review links to LAS Mid-Probationary Review forms and Campus Mid-Probationary Review Information. If you have any questions about the timing of a review or the process, please contact Associate Dean Anne Eaton, eaton@uic.edu, or Assistant Dean Beth Allen, betha@uic.edu.

 

Preparation of the Tenure Case

Typically, papers are prepared by the executive officer. However, under certain circumstances, the executive officer may request an alternate paper preparer in accordance with departmental bylaws and college and campus guidelines. If the executive officer has a conflict of interest, an alternate paper preparer must be appointed. If a unit is considering someone other than the EO, for any reason, to prepare the papers, you must consult with the Dean’s Office.

At the beginning of the spring term, the executive officer or paper preparer should select and contact potential external reviewers. Referees should be full professors from Research I institutions with scholarly accomplishments in the candidate’s field.  Deviation from these requirements should occur only when absolutely necessary, and the reasons for such deviation should be fully explained and justified in the Referee’s Information and Letter form (commonly know as the biographical sketch).  The candidate may provide a non-binding list of potential reviewers and a non-binding list of individuals, who are, in their opinion, not suitable reviewers. It is extremely important that the names of those solicited and of those who wrote letters should be treated with the strictest confidentiality and never shared with the candidate or with anyone outside of the unit P&T Committee.

It is important to request reviews early in the paper preparation process. A total of 5-8 letters is required; however, in most cases, it is prudent to solicit more reviewers than required on the assumption that some will be unable to provide a letter. If more than eight external reviewers respond in the affirmative, all letters received must be included in the dossier.

In the case of joint appointments, the two units should collaborate on identifying potential external reviewers and finalizing the list of referees. Moving forward, however, each step of review for the candidate should be conducted independently by each unit.

The solicitation of letters is a two-step process.  It is very important that before sending any candidate materials you ascertain the willingness of the referee to supply a letter and determine whether there is a conflict of interest that would make the potential referee inappropriate.  Obvious conflicts of interest include a close personal relationship, serving as the candidate’s mentor or trainee, or substantial collaboration.  Other cases can be trickier.  When in doubt about whether a disclosed relationship constitutes a conflict of interest, please consult the College. The two stages of Campus template letters for the solicitation of a review can be found in the P&T Guidelines.  All correspondence with potential referees must be included in the dossier; so it is crucial to retain all letters or emails involved in the solicitation process.

After an external reviewer has agreed to provide a letter, the candidate’s materials should be sent as quickly as possible.  These should include a CV, current research statement, and a sample of recent publications and other scholarly works, as well a copy of the Statement of LAS Norms, Expectations, and Standards of Excellence and the unit/department norms and standards as appropriate for the individual candidate. It is very important that the executive officer or paper preparer  review materials being sent to ensure that they are complete and accurate.  Missing or misleading items can complicate and/or compromise a tenure case.  As mentioned above, the template letter to accompany materials can be found in the campus P&T Guidelines.

If the candidate has substantial collaborations, it is importance to consider soliciting collaborator attestation forms.  The purpose of these attestations is to inform subsequent review committees of the nature and quantity of the contribution the candidate made to the collaborative enterprise.  These are not additional letters of recommendation; and if the form template is not complete, college and campus committees with be left with unanswered questions about the research profile of the candidate. Every effort should be made to impress upon collaborators that their attestations should speak directly and only to the question of the candidate’s role in the collaboration. If the paper preparer is considering requesting a collaborator attestation, please refer to Part III, Section 8.C of the P&T Guidelines for information and sample request letters and forms. Note that the requirement for collaborator attestation applies to tenure system assistant professors and to associate professors seeking tenure. It is optional for non tenure system faculty or those seeking promotion to full professor. If unsure whether or not a collaborator attestation is required, contact the College.

Department Review and Vote

In fall term of the academic year during which the university review will take place, the candidate must be reviewed by a promotion and tenure committee comprised of all eligible faculty or as otherwise allowed according to the campus guidelines (see Part 1 of the Guidelines, pages 13 & 14). The committee must have at least three members eligible to vote by campus, college, and departmental bylaws. The executive officer /paper preparer for the case is not eligible to vote and faculty with conflicts of interest in the case must be listed as ineligible for the purposes of the unit vote. If a unit does not have three eligible voters, the executive officer should inform the College, and the Dean will assist the unit in forming a committee that includes members from other UIC units with the relevant expertise.  After review of the case, the committee should hold a confidential vote on whether to promote the candidate and grant indefinite tenure.  It is very important that the discussion and vote be scheduled in such a way that all, or at least most, eligible voters can attend.  Committees do not always know how to interpret a large number of “absent” votes, and this can complicate review.  The votes of the review committee must be communicated promptly and in writing to the candidate.

Executive Officer Statement

After the departmental vote, the executive officer/paper preparer must draft a recommendation for or against promotion with tenure, along with a justification for the decision. The forms for this statement are found in the P&T packet, and it is important to follow the format laid out there. This statement is one of the most crucial elements of the packet, and it is considered very carefully by subsequent review committees, who depend upon this statement to help them interpret the information provided.  It is therefore crucial to provide a statement that makes a clear case for the recommendation, explaining in detail how the result was reached. In particular, it is necessary to speak directly to aspects of the packet that are likely to raise questions.  If there are any negative votes, or if the Paper Preparer/ EO does not support the case, consult the campus guidelines and be sure to address this in the statement. Ineligible votes must also be explained on the vote justification page.  If there are statements in the referee letters that suggest a different assessment (e.g., negative statements in the letters but the executive officer recommendation is for promotion or positive statements but the executive officer recommendation is against), the statement should explain why those statements do not provide sufficient reason to alter the recommendation.  If there are problematic teaching evaluations, the executive officer statement should explain how they are to be interpreted and what steps are being taken to improve teaching.  More generally, the statement should make clear and explicit reference to the benchmarks for teaching, research, and service found in the department norms and in the profession, as well as (where applicable) efforts relevant to the institutional commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and should make the case in each domain that the candidate has or has not met those benchmarks.  Where appropriate, reference to the mid-probationary review should also be included (e.g., if the candidate has been successfully following recommendations made there or, alternatively, has failed to follow such recommendations).

It is customary in these statements to refer to or quote from external review letters. The campus has instituted a policy that prohibits the inclusion of the names and institutions of the referees when quoting from review letters. This is to protect the confidentiality of referees’ identities. The letters are numbered; therefore, a convenient alternative is to use these numbers should you wish to refer to the content of the letters.

In the case of joint appointments, the executive officer of the non-primary unit should also write a statement, which should be sent to the home department for inclusion in the packet.

If the executive officer’s recommendation disagrees with the majority vote of the promotion and tenure committee, the departmental committee should provide a separate letter that explains the basis of its vote. The department committee’s letter is to be included in the packet, along with the executive officer statement.

The candidate must be informed promptly in writing, following campus guidelines of the executive officer’s recommendation but must not be shown the confidential Executive Officer  Statement, referee names or letters, or any other confidential materials related to the case.

LAS Executive Committee Review

During finals week of the fall term, the LAS Executive Committee meets to review and vote on all promotion and tenure cases in the College.  The exact dates are provided at the beginning of the academic year.  Executive officers will be asked to give a presentation of their cases and must arrange to be available during those days. When preparing for the presentation, executive officers should please keep in mind that the Executive Committee has read the packet carefully.  If questions arise as the committee reads the cases, those questions will be sent to the executive officer to be answered in advance of the presentation. The initial presentation should therefore be very brief (approximately 5 minutes). It is not necessary to detail all the information in the packet; presenters are asked to give only the highlights of the case, for or against.  The committee will then have the opportunity to ask questions. Often, the questions are very detailed; therefore, as executive officer, you should be thoroughly familiar with the details of the case and prepared to answer questions.

After all executive officer presentations have been heard, the committee will vote on whether or not to recommend promotion and tenure; and the Dean, advised by the vote, will provide their own  recommendation and supporting statement. The candidate will be informed promptly in writing of the Executive Committee vote and the Dean’s recommendation. The packet containing the vote and recommendation will then be forwarded to the campus for the next stage of review.

A list of all mid-probationary reviews and promotion and tenure (P&T) cases to be considered in the current academic year, including any that may lead to nonretention, must be submitted to the College. All units must:

  1. Notify the College of promotion and tenure cases and mid-probationary reviews in their unit or confirm that no cases are pending. Submit the (1)Tenure-Track and Non-Tenure Track Expected Promotion and Tenure Cases Form form along with the Expected Mid-Probationary  Cases Form, electronically as a PDF to Beth Allen. NOTE: For faculty holding joint appointments, both departments must submit the candidate’s name on the form; however, the home department is responsible for coordinating the P&T process
  2. Submit at the same time as the above a copy of the the current unit Bylaws as well as departmental procedures and Norms for promotion and tenure and for mid-probationary reviews. Please highlight any changes implemented since the previous year. If a special committee oversees the process, please indicate how its members are selected and provide the names of the current year’s members.