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

  • 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 her/his 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.
  • The candidate's optional response to any of the recommendations (DEO recommendation, DCG report, Promotion and Tenure Committee report) cannot be used to request an extension of the probationary period. In rare circumstances the DEO and DCG may recommend an extension in lieu of a negative recommendation, but those issues should be raised with the Dean prior to transmission of the PR.
  • 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.
  • Once the Dean has received the PR, no document may be removed but documents may be added. DEOs should forward to the Dean recently received information that is important to the PR: conference invitations, publication acceptances, etc.
  • The DCG may begin its deliberations when the DEO receives the report of the departmental promotion and tenure committee and enters it into the Promotion Record. The candidate has 5 working days from the date of receipt of the report to submit in writing any corrections to errors in the report. If this response is submitted, the DCG must take it into account but may begin deliberations before the 5 working days have expired.

  • 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).

  • 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 and only if the DEO’s recommendation is negative, the candidate receives a copy of the DEO letter (I.J.1). The candidate must receive not an edited version, but a duplicate of the report submitted with the Promotion Record (indicate c: [name] at bottom of last page).
  • All DEO letters must be prepared in a way that protects the confidentiality of external reviewers and faculty members. The letter must not attribute comments to identifiable members of the faculty or external evaluators (I.I.3).
  • 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. This requirement for the DEO Recommendation may be fulfilled by the DEO indicating agreement with the DCG's conclusions regarding teaching competence.

  • The ballots from the DCG meeting should be retained until the process has completely ended, i.e., a decision by the Provost is announced. In the meantime place them in a sealed envelope, held by the DEO if voting in person. If voting via anonymous Qualtrics, save a copy of the electronic vote results.
  • The DCG Report must explicitly state the voting tally for the candidate's knowledge.
  • 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.
  • The written evaluations of classroom observations must be discussed in both the DCG Report and the DEO Recommendation. This requirement for the DEO Recommendation may be fulfilled by the DEO indicating agreement with the DCG's conclusions regarding teaching competence.
  • The DCG Report must contain a recommendation for or against the granting of promotion and/or tenure, based on the University's criterion that a 60% majority of those present for the DCG discussion and vote defines a positive recommendation for promotion (CLAS/UI Procedures for Tenure and Promotion Decision-Making, I.H.4).
  • DCG members have the option of submitting individual confidential evaluations, either writing a letter addressed to the Dean, or using the CLAS form. However, they are not and cannot be required.
  • DCG members who prepare confidential evaluations submit them to the DEO (open, not sealed), who appends them (with the pages open) to the DCG Report. The DEO must see the individual evaluations but need not consider them in making their own recommendation. The confidential evaluations are transmitted to the Dean’s Office as part of the Promotion Record.
  • 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.
  • The candidate must receive not an edited version, but a duplicate of the DCG Report submitted to the DEO for the PR. (Indicate c: [name] at bottom of last page.) The report must be prepared in a way that protects the confidentiality of any individual contributions, whether from external reviewers or faculty members. The DCG Report must not attribute comments to identifiable members of the faculty or external evaluators (I.H.5).
  • After the discussion, the draft report is circulated to all DCG members and each DCG member will approve the final report, preferably signing their approval. 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.
  • The DCG Report Cover Sheet registers the official vote, positive vs. negative. There is no place on the Cover Sheet to register abstentions.
  • Once the secret ballots are opened and revealed, a re-vote is not permitted for any reason. In the (hopefully very unlikely) event that abstentions are present, please contact the area associate dean for instructions.
  • A faculty member on leave with/without 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.
  • The DEO is to preside over the DCG meeting, but is not to participate in the discussion and is not to contribute to the written report. The function of the DEO is to ensure compliance to proper procedure.

  • The members of the Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee may not read previous classroom observation reports from the candidate's earlier reviews. Only the classroom observations defined as part of the current promotion/tenure review may be used.
  • Primary responsibility for evaluating teaching is held by the Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee, who have the option of asking another individual, to visit a class of the candidate’s and write an evaluative report. But only the committee may write the official report included in the PR.
  • The Promotion Record available to the departmental committee must include, in the appendix containing all teaching evaluations, either a version of the College’s Chart for Summarizing Teaching Assignments with selected ACE summary scores OR a summary of non-ACE teaching evaluations that follows the College’s model. The table/summary may be prepared by the candidate or by the Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee, whichever is the department’s standard practice. If the summary is prepared by the candidate, the Committee validates the summary. This appendix is used at the department level and is not forwarded to the College or Provost except upon their request (I.B.3.c.vi).The Committee must take the student evaluations into account as part of its evaluation of teaching.
  • The Report of the Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee Report must be given to the candidate as an intact document, with no redactions. Be sure at the bottom of the report to indicate a copy went to the candidate (c:[candidate]).

  • 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.
  • While all published work or artistry could be taken into account for promotion to full professor, in practice the emphasis on the part of external reviewers and the College Consulting Group (CCG) is on what has been done since the tenure review.
  • 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.
  • The list of funding must identify any awards that were not competitive, e.g., “starter grants.”

  • Any individual designated by the Promotion and Tenure Committee may perform the required classroom observation(s), including any faculty member regardless of rank, or even an individual who is not on the faculty.
  • The required observation(s) must occur in the calendar year preceding the December submission of the PR, i.e., spring 2024 and/or fall 2024 for a December 2024 deadline. If the candidate is on leave, with or without pay, during that calendar period, the department must have obtained collegiate and Provost permission to schedule the observations(s) during fall 2023.
  • 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 P&T class observation: (i) the observation must occur in the spring semester or fall semester of the calendar year in which the P&T case is conducted; and (ii) the candidate is told, before the class observation, that it is part of the P&T case.
  • Teaching observations from previous reviews may not be part of the Promotion Record. However, the P&T committee may consider prior summaries that are based on raw data from actual student evaluations.
  • Some departments use "non-ACE" student evaluations that are not scored. In those non-ACE cases, two different versions of the teaching chart should be drawn up, one with the comments and one without the comments. The former is to be shared with the P&T Committee, DCG and DEO; that is, it's for consideration of the case at the departmental level. The chart without the comments should be submitted to CLAS with the Promotion Record, where it will be examined in conjunction with the P&T Committee report, the DCG report and the DEO recommendation.
  • 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.
  • When a candidate is up for tenure-at-rank, usually to tenure an individual originally appointed as associate professor, the dossier and PR should emphasize teaching.
  • To consider a candidate for promotion to full professor, the College does not consider it essential that the candidate have a record of mentoring graduate students through to the doctoral degree. Other activities may substitute, for instance, supervision and mentoring of postdocs.
  • The appendix to the Promotion Record that contains student teaching evaluations must contain a version of the College's Chart for Summarizing Teaching Assignments that includes ACE scores, or a summary of non-ACE scores that follows the College's model. The table/summary may be prepared by the candidate or by the Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee, whichever is the department’s standard practice. If the summary is prepared by the candidate, the Committee validates the summary. This appendix is used at the department level and is not forwarded to the College or Provost except upon their request (I.B.3.c.vi).
  • Any Spring 2020 ACE evaluations that are included in teaching dossiers will not be under consideration for promotion evaluation by the DCG and CCG. The faculty may choose to include or not include their Spring 2020 ACE evaluations. If they are not included, the faculty should include a sheet indicating such to explain the gap in evaluations.
  • If faculty and the candidate cannot agree on a definition of team-teaching (a clear 50/50 split? different contributions entirely?) consult the College.
  • A colleague with whom the candidate has team-taught, but who has left the University, may be asked to contribute a letter to the PR, but such an invitation is not required.
  • Letters from faculty members who may share interdisciplinary interests with the candidate, but who have not team-taught with the candidate nor have been invited to observe a class, may not be placed in the PR.
  • Letters may not be solicited from graduate students or undergraduate students for the Promotion Record. No unsolicited letters from any source may be included. Thus the only option for gathering student comments is through student evaluation of teaching, using either ACE forms or similar forms/questionnaires.

  • 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 table provided online 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.
  • Occasionally, for candidates whose work might be published in a language other than English, a book review, or even a letter from an external reviewer, might be written in another language. The department has these options: do a formal translation of the document; or provide a summary interpretation of the review. A summary interpretation is preferable to a literal translation, because it distills the essence of the review for all those who will eventually read the review: in the department, the College, and the Provost's office.
  • It is permissible to choose an external reviewer who was also an anonymous reader of the candidate's submission to a publisher or grant agency. However, usually you would know this only if the individual reveals it, and the candidate's knowledge of the "anonymous" reviewer disqualifies the reviewer.
  • Each department has a stated number of external reviewer letters needed for each candidate; the department submits about twice that number of names to the College for review and approval. If the required number is, for instance, six, the department will submit a superlist of 12 names, and the College might approve eight names from that list. In working to obtain commitments for six, it sometimes occurs by Nov. 1 that the department ends up with fewer or more letters than necessary. As soon as that happens, contact the area associate dean for instructions.
  • If an external reviewer agrees to write, and then withdraws late in the process, notify the College.
  • The candidate’s dissertation advisor may not be nominated as an external reviewer. But a former professor could be proposed, with the expectation that they might decline if there is a conflict of interest.
  • The candidate may contribute names to the superlist, and may see all the names on the superlist. If the candidate has an objection to a name, they should write a one-page explanation and insert it into the PR. Such a reviewer may still be invited, as long as the candidate’s objection is on the record and remains in the PR. If the contested reviewer is not one of the final reviewers, the DEO may remove the candidate’s objection from the PR before submitting it to the Dean.
  • The approved list may contain two reviewers from the same institution, but they should be invited only one at a time.
  • In some circumstances, it becomes necessary to develop additional names of potential external reviewers after the candidate has seen the initial superlist. The new names must be shown to the candidate, too, who can submit an objection if necessary.
  • 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.
  • The candidate in consultation with the DEO and the Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee determines what sample of his or her scholarly or creative work is to be sent to the external evaluators. In cases of disagreement, ultimately it's the candidate who determines the final group of items. Materials in draft form, or under review for publication (but not yet accepted) may be sent to external reviewers as long as they are marked in a way that clearly states the current stage of the publication process.
  • 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.
  • Generally speaking, any CV updates from the candidate are for internal use only. To make sure everyone knows what the external reviewers received, conspicuously date any updates to the CV or any additions to the PR.
  • If a reviewer asks for a specific publication/video/CD, send it to them, but also send it to every other reviewer. The candidate must be notified of this action and may submit a letter for the PR if they object. If an external reviewer has already submitted their evaluation, they must be given the opportunity to revise the letter.
  • The DCG meeting should not be held unless all external reviewer letters are in; consult the College if late submissions are delaying the process. But the burden remains on the DCG to hold off its meeting, as far as is reasonable, until all letters are in.

  • University-wide policy is that "no unsolicited letters evaluating the candidate's service" may be entered into the Promotion Record. If the candidate nonetheless submits letters regarding service that are unsolicited by the department, they may be included in the dossier that is reviewed at the departmental level, as long as the ones that are unsolicited are clearly identified as such. But the letters stay in the department and are not forwarded to CLAS as an element of the Promotion Record.

  • Submit with the PR only one set of publications, the same set that was sent to external reviewers.
  • Submit with the PR only one set of artistic productions (slides, CDs, VHS tapes, etc.), the same set that was sent to external reviewers.
  • All publications and art will be returned to the candidate in late spring, after the Provost’s decisions have been announced.