Note: This page is organized by Promotion Record (PR) sections.

Promotion Records will be transmitted from the Department to the College via a College-established email (clas-pt@iuowa.edu). The College will transmit Promotion Records via a secure website to the Office of the Provost.

In addition to the single bookmarked pdf, please send to the College: one set of publications/artistic productions.

Direct questions to Tiffany Schier or Rachel Spengler.

Contacts

General
  • The candidates' personal statements do not have a page limit, but normally they would be no longer than three pages each, single spaced.
  • A dissertation advisor must refrain from participating in any kind of performance review of their PhD advisee. This is most relevant when the candidate has taken the degree at The University of Iowa and now is a tenure and promotion candidate in the same department that granted the PhD.
  • When a candidate is appointed in two colleges, with CLAS as primary, the CLAS department should transmit the Promotion Record (PR) to CLAS without waiting for the secondary college. The secondary college should submit its report to the CLAS department, who in turn will forward it to CLAS. The CLAS College Consulting Group (CCG) will defer its discussion until the secondary report reaches CLAS.
  • If factual errors in any of the reports are identified by the candidate, they should append a response to that report. If faculty members find factual errors introduced into the PR by other faculty members, a list of those errors should be entered into the PR as an Appendix, signed and dated by the DEO.

  • If a tenure candidate received an extension of the probationary period, the DCG meeting must begin with the reading of this policy:

    The extension granted is a University policy-based adjustment owing to a specific career-development impediment and the extension neither changes the normal criteria for a tenurable record nor implies that the candidate should be held to a standard higher than the one they would have had to meet if the reappointment or tenure decisions had been made when they were scheduled originally.

  • The candidate has the opportunity to withdraw from the review process at any point before the Provost's decision (Other Considerations).
  • If materials from probationary reviews are used to support a recommendation against tenure, they will be included in the Promotion Record (Other Considerations).

DEO recommendation
  • The candidate must have the opportunity to correct errors in the DCG report before the DEO submits their letter of recommendation to the Dean (CLAS/UI Procedures for Tenure and Promotion Decision-Making, I.H.6 and 7).
  • If the DEO is a candidate for promotion, the College will assign a full professor in the department, usually a former DEO, to be Acting DEO for the promotion and tenure process. In some cases the College will look to another department for the Acting DEO.
  • Similarly, if the DEO is not a full professor, they are ineligible to participate in the review of a candidate seeking that rank, and the College will name an Acting DEO and, if necessary, committee members from outside the department.
  • The written evaluations of classroom observations must be discussed in both the DCG Report and the DEO recommendation. 

Departmental Consulting Group (DCG) report
  • In the case of a negative DCG report that is transmitted to the candidate, the candidate may write a response, but without seeing the redacted external letters. The candidate submits their response to the DCG report, and the DEO recommendation may or may not comment on that response. If the DEO recommendation is negative, then the candidate writes to the Dean to request a redaction of the external letters and of any “Confidential Evaluation by DCG Members of Candidate for Promotion and/or Tenure” that may have been submitted by individual faculty members. BUT if the DEO recommendation is positive, the candidate is not given the redactions. The next opportunity the candidate has to request redactions is if the Dean's recommendation to the Provost is negative.
  • Confidential evaluations submitted by DCG members will be made available to the candidate in a redacted form, if the candidate requests access to the Promotion Record following a negative recommendation by the DEO or at the collegiate or university level.
  • After the discussion, the draft report is circulated to all DCG members and each DCG member will approve the final report. Should there still be a dissenting DCG member at the point of transmission to the Dean, that faculty member should write an explanatory statement that is appended to the DCG Report.
  • An eligible faculty member is required to participate in all aspects of the promotion process unless there is good cause (e.g., conflict of interest, leave with/without pay) for their withdrawal. The DCG cover sheet (distributed from the College to each candidate’s DEO) is an attendance report that allows for explanation of absences. If an eligible faculty member is unable to attend the meeting, mark the absence on the DCG cover sheet.
  • A faculty member on leave with pay retains the right though not the duty to participate in the process; they must be present at the DCG meeting in order to formally vote. An exception to this rule: The DCG vote is by secret ballot, and normally proxy voting is prohibited. However, if an eligible faculty member has been present for the discussion, but cannot attend when the vote is taken, they may submit a proxy vote to the DCG chair if a method is devised to keep that proxy vote secret.

CV section
  • In the list of publications, it is acceptable for the candidate to list themself as senior author for a publication that lists their graduate student as first author.
  • Changes to the CV that occur during the process can be accommodated: keep the original CV in the PR with the original date on it, to show the exact CV that the external reviewers were given. Add a cover page that states the new information and date entered into the Promotion Record. The new information would be sent to external reviewers only by request of the candidate, and only if none of them had yet submitted their letter.
  • The CV must include those applications to external funding agencies which were not funded. Consult the College if circumstances warrant a compromise on this principle (e.g., list enough unfunded grants to demonstrate the candidate is consistently applying for external funding, or do not list unfunded grants from small, lesser agencies). In any case, do not list unfunded internal grants.

Teaching section
  • Any individual designated by the Departmental Promotion Committee may perform the required classroom observation(s), including any faculty member regardless of rank.
  • The required observation(s) must occur in the calendar year preceding the December submission of the PR to the college. If the candidate is on leave, with or without pay, during that calendar period, the department must obtain collegiate and Provost permission to schedule the observations(s) before the leave.
  • Multiple observations to a candidate’s classroom (if the department’s policies required multiple observations) are defined as one individual attending one class. Two faculty members visiting the same classroom session are counted as two observations.
  • For a class observation to count as a promotion class observation:
    1. the observation must occur in the spring semester or fall semester of the calendar year in which the promotion case is conducted
    2. the candidate is told, before the class observation, that it is part of the promotion case
  • The Promotion Records of candidates for promotion to full professor should include all those student evaluations obtained since tenure was granted, usually a timespan of five or six years. If the timespan between the tenure review and the promotion review is longer than that, consult the area associate dean to request permission to limit the number of years to be accounted for. For instance, a timespan of 10-12 years is too long to provide all student evaluations, and might be reduced to the most recent 5-6 years.

External reviewers and scholarship/artistic production section
  • CLAS prefers that proposed external reviewers be full professors from our peer institutions. However, there may be special cases in which the best expertise is at the associate professor level, or in institutions not on our peer list, and the DEO should make the case when submitting the proposed names early in the process.
  • Normally no proposed external evaluator may be one who provided references during the candidate's hiring decision, or served as an external evaluator in any earlier review for promotion and/or tenure. The DEO, however, may request a waiver of the guideline, explaining the circumstances justifying the waiver. Use the External Reviewers Approval Form to present the proposed list and confirm one of the above two options.
  • For a clinical-track promotion, reviewers can be from organizations or professional bodies; for instance, the external reviewer could be a director of a research lab at a major hospital, or a program director at a federal funding agency.
  • If an external reviewer agrees to write, and then withdraws late in the process, notify the College.
  • The approved list may contain two reviewers from the same institution, but they should be invited only one at a time.
  • In the case of a candidate for promotion to full professor, samples of work sent to external reviewers should include only work accomplished after tenure was granted.
  • Typically the package of materials sent to the external reviewers contains the full CV, the candidate’s Research Statement, and a sample of publications or artistry. All external reviewers receive identical packages. The department should pay any expenses, including purchasing multiple copies of books if necessary. The letter to the external reviewer must state explicitly what portion of the candidate’s work is to be assessed.