Criteria for Tenure & Promotion or Appointment

The qualifications of candidates for appointments or promotions to professor are reviewed by the Executive Committee of the Division of Social Sciences primarily in terms of the following areas:

Demonstrated past and probable future accomplishments in academic research and creative or scholarly productions;
Demonstrated teaching ability;
Service to the community, university, and the faculty member’s profession.

Achievements in each of these areas should significantly exceed the performances demonstrated by most of the department’s successful candidates for promotion to associate professor, and surpass the candidate’s own performance at the time of promotion to associate professor.

The following are guidelines for use by departments in preparing promotion recommendations within the Division of Social Sciences. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide departments with a simple and lucid format for presenting a candidate’s qualifications, and to facilitate fair and thorough review by the Divisional Executive Committee. If the committee judges that documentation is inadequate, the Committee may request additional information. Please note that these criteria apply equally to external hires as well as internal candidates.

The committee provides the candidate an opportunity to make a presentation during the evidentiary phase of the meeting. It is not necessary that the candidate do so. If the candidate is present, no confidential materials may be discussed.

A member(s) of the candidate’s department, chosen by the department’s executive committee, will be provided the opportunity to present the candidate’s case and to respond to questions from members of the Divisional Executive Committee during the evidentiary phase of the Divisional Committee’s meeting. This opportunity will be provided whether the candidate has selected an open or closed meeting.

The Divisional Executive Committee will invite the executive committee of the candidate’s department to designate one of its members who is not currently serving on the Divisional Executive Committee to observe the deliberation and voting on the committee’s recommendation. The departmental observer may not contribute to the committee’s deliberation.

The candidate’s department must prepare one digital version of the file for the Divisional Executive Committee. The digital file should be transmitted via a flash drive or SharePoint link with individual documents in pdf format, with a usable file structure. (Please note that the entire path, including the file name and folder names, must contain fewer than 200 characters.) Books need not be digitized, but one copy of each book should be submitted.

1. Index:

An index referencing all materials being submitted. The successful index will present the candidate’s information organized in clear relation to the subheadings listed below.

2. Letter from the Candidate:

A letter from the candidate stating his/her desire for either an open or closed meeting as stated in UWM Policies and Procedures Chapter 3.14(3).

3. Cover Letter by Departmental Executive Committee

The use of superlatives without analysis of the work is not helpful, since the committee is ready to grant that departments have high regard for all their promotion candidates. The departmental executive committee’s letter should also report the exact vote (positive, negative and abstentions) in the departmental executive committee on the motion to recommend promotion. The departmental executive committee’s letter should also name the designated observer from the departmental executive committee who will observe the deliberation and voting by the Division of the Social Sciences Executive Committee.

The letter must also include clear and explicit statements that

the departmental executive committee has evaluated co- or multiple author scholarly works and the temporal context of the works, as described in Section 5 below, with respect to the candidate’s independent past and probable independent future contributions.
the candidate’s achievements in each of the areas of scholarship, teaching, and service significantly exceed the performances demonstrated by most of the successful candidates for promotion to associate professor, and surpass the candidate’s own performance at the time of promotion to associate professor.
describe what materials were provided.
delineate the procedure used in selecting outside reviewers.

The departmental executive committee should also attach a statement of its criteria for promotion, as well as an explicit statement on the importance accorded various types of publications (i.e. books, journal articles, book chapters) in the evaluation of the candidate.

4. Curriculum Vita:

The curriculum vitae as well as all other documentation should be organized so as to emphasize the accomplishments in the rank of associate professor.

Example:

Name
Formal education
Title of doctoral dissertation
Positions held (list chronologically with no unaccounted gaps)
Special honors or awards
Publications. Peer reviewed publications should be presented separately from non-peer reviewed publications. Consistent and proper bibliographic form must be adhered to; co-authored works must indicate the candidate’s place in the sequence of authors; full and accurate information must be provided on journals or book publishers; book reviews, presentations at meetings.
Unpublished materials must be identified and listed separately.
Research work completed and in progress
Teaching experience and graduate research directed
Other important experiences such as committee responsibilities, administration, state or national leadership in the profession, participation in scientific and professional societies, professional editorial activities, etc. Project proposals prepared by the candidate may also be included, as may research grant applications awarded or pending.

5. Evidence of Scholarly Work:

A scholar has a professional obligation to publish and to subject ideas to the critical eyes of fellow scholars and others. Individual scholarship is not inconsistent with co-authorship, but it is the responsibility of the executive committee and the candidate to demonstrate the individual contributions of the candidate.

Quantity of publication by itself is no sure index of quality. Indicators of quality should include the following: refereed journal articles, published quality rankings of the journals, the acceptance rates and prestige of the journals, authored books, and a list of citations of the candidate’s works. Other indicators of quality may include invited articles, articles in books, monographs, edited volumes, published reviews of candidate’s scholarly contributions, etc.

Other indicators of scholarship may also involve research grants and awards. While not a substitute for publications, such grants do indicate recognition of the individual’s scholarly recognition by the profession.

In the documentation of creative or scholarly work (e.g., papers, chapters, reports, monographs, books, edited volumes, grants, awards), the following must be provided:

in the case of co- or multiple authorship, a clear and explicit description indicating the candidate’s contribution to the work, and the rationale for the candidate’s place in the sequence of authors. Departments are encouraged to obtain statements from co- authors explaining the candidate’s contributions.
a clear and explicit description of when the candidate’s creative or scholarly work was actually conducted (not when it was published) with respect to the candidate’s most recent appointment, regardless of whether that appointment was at UWM or elsewhere. Other details of the nature of the temporal context of the work may be provided as further clarification (e.g., whether the work was conducted while the candidate was an assistant or associate professor; while the candidate was enjoying a fellowship, or visiting appointment);

One digital copy of all items is required. Works accepted for publication, but not published (whether identified as “in press” or “forthcoming”) must be accompanied by documentation of their status (e.g., a letter of acceptance from the editor or publisher). Works submitted for publication, but not yet accepted may be included.

6. Evidence of Teaching:

How teaching is to be assessed, and what is to be admitted as reasonable evidence of excellence, are matters that are responsibilities of the departments.

The department must submit a list of the courses taught by the candidate during the previous five years and the enrollments in those courses. In compliance with the Board of Regents policy document 74-13, resolution #868 (UW System Policy on Student Evaluation of Instruction), the department must also submit students’ evaluations of the candidate’s teaching in all courses taught during all the years since the promotion to associate professor and all available peer evaluations. Candidates with teaching experience at other institutions than UWM are expected to provide all available evidence of teaching performance from those institutions since the last promotion. The committee would also like to see an interpretation of the students’ evaluations including, if possible, a comparison with departmental averages and a report of the average grade for each course subject to student evaluations. We are aware, of course, that students’ evaluations are only partially relevant. Nonetheless, in assessing teaching effectiveness, student evaluations are an important and useful source of evidence which will be explicitly considered in reaching judgements. In addition to student evaluations, direct peer judgement of teaching effectiveness through a variety of means such as observation of teaching, assessment of syllabi, examinations, and other course materials, and evaluation of contributions to development and strengthening of departmental curriculum are also necessary. Moreover, effective peer judgement of teaching effectiveness necessarily includes both examination of the faculty member’s current level of performance, and also his or her potential for growth. Other evidence could include teaching awards, the candidate’s contributions to the development of new courses or of new methods and materials of instruction, the achievements of graduates for whom the candidate served as major professor, and the opinions of faculty colleagues, especially if based on first-hand observation.

7. Evidence of Service:

Public service and service to the university count toward meeting this standard. The faculty member may show contributions to work of public bodies, professional organizations and civic groups, and disseminate research findings and scholarly insights beyond the academic community. Faculty may also serve the university itself through program development, participation in governance, administration, or obtaining grants for research or training. However, services that reflect the special skills, expertise and intellectual standards of university professors are especially desirable.

Service activities should be documented objectively. The departmental executive committee may solicit, from impartial evaluators, letters which attest to the significance of service activities.

8. Extension/Outreach Activities:

It is recognized that faculty with extension/outreach obligations have teaching, research and service responsibilities.

Recommendations from departments, schools and colleges pertaining to such faculty should, therefore, indicate the percentage of a candidate’s total effort which involves extension/outreach activity. Evidence must be presented to show that the candidate is highly regarded in his or her field. The candidate must show the utilization of scholarship in his or her programmatic activities. The documentation must clearly demonstrate the ways in which the candidate is meeting the continuing educational needs of the public. The performance of the candidate in extension activities should be fully documented.

Evaluations should be provided by recognized outreach/extension specialists in the candidate’s field.

9. Letters of Evaluation:

The departmental executive committee must obtain a minimum of three letters from impartial experts and must include all letters received with the materials sent to the dean and the Divisional Executive Committee. These letters should be substantially predicated on the documentation submitted to this Divisional Executive Committee, and should give detailed assessments of the candidate’s scholarship and professional contributions in the rank of associate professor, including the candidate’s visibility and recognition in the field. It is important that the outside reviewers and the Divisional Executive Committee are basing their decisions on the same corpus of scholarly work. It is important that the department (a) state that the chosen experts have no relationships to the candidate which would raise questions of conflict of interest, and (b) summarize the experts’ credentials and professional standings. Copies of both departmental and Divisional Executive Committee criteria should be provided to outside reviewers. The Divisional Executive Committee should be provided with copies of the curriculum vitae or equivalent information about the outside reviewers’ professional credentials for serving in this capacity.

10. Selection and Confidentiality of External Reviewers

The department should clearly state the procedure used in selecting the outside reviewers. Although these procedures vary across the departments, members of the Divisional Executive Committee accord the greatest weight to letters from experts not recommended exclusively by the candidate. Although reviewers identified only by the candidate may still contribute valuable evaluations, the number of such reviewers should be kept to a minimum. To preserve confidentiality of external reviewers, at no time should the candidate view any list of potential or final reviewers generated by the department. Because confidentiality must be respected (when the candidate waives his/her right to an open meeting), the candidate must not know the names on the final list of reviewers. The responsibility of determining and implementing this procedure should rest with the department, not with the candidate.

The department may also submit additional letters of evaluation, including letters from persons having past personal relationships to the candidate or letters solicited by the candidate. The department must describe these relationships.

The department is required to submit a separate index of confidential materials. This should include a list of names and addresses (that is, university or other affiliation, city and state) of letter writers, and the date of correspondence. This index, together with the letters of evaluation and other supporting materials from outside reviewers, is to be submitted, clearly marked as confidential, and will be accessible only to authorized personnel. In addition, all enclosed items must also be clearly marked or stamped confidential.

11. Criteria of Excellence:

Manifestly, the best-qualified candidates for promotion are those who have made significant contributions to scholarship and research and give promise of continued scholarly accomplishments, whose teaching abilities are demonstrably superior, and who have visible records of service. At the same time, it is recognized that while a department must lean toward a program of excellence in all major areas (research, teaching and service), not all individuals within a department will achieve equally in all three. However, a candidate must make contributions in each area. The same criteria apply regardless of length of service at UWM. The burden of proving the claim that a particular individual should be promoted to professor rests on the department.

Members of the Divisional Executive Committee vote as individuals, and may not agree totally about the relative weights that should be given to research, scholarship, teaching, and various forms of service. However, in the final analysis, there is strong consensus that scholarship and research are most important, and that promotion to professor should be recognition of excellence rather than an automatic step in one’s career.

12. Transmittal Procedures:

Materials should first be sent to the appropriate dean according to the procedures of the school or college within which the department is located. The Divisional Executive Committee receives and reviews the material only after the dean requests the committee’s advice in a letter of transmittal. The file must be submitted in digital form (single CD or thumb drive).

The qualifications of candidates for appointments or promotions to tenure are reviewed by the Executive Committee of the Division of Social Sciences primarily in terms of the following areas:

Demonstrated past and probable future accomplishments in academic research and creative or scholarly production;
Demonstrated teaching ability;
Service to the community, university, and the faculty member’s profession.

The following are guidelines for the use of departments in preparing tenure recommendations within the Division of Social Sciences. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide departments with a simple and lucid format for presenting a candidate’s qualifications, and to facilitate fair and thorough review by the Divisional Executive Committee. If the committee judges that documentation is inadequate, the committee may request additional information. Please note that these criteria apply equally to external hires as well as internal candidates.

A member(s) of the candidate’s department, chosen by the department’s executive committee, will be provided the opportunity to present the candidate’s case and to respond to questions from members of the Divisional Executive Committee during the evidentiary phase of the Divisional Executive Committee’s meeting. This opportunity will be provided whether the candidate has selected an open or closed meeting.

The Divisional Executive Committee will invite the executive committee of the candidate’s department to designate one of its members who is not currently serving on the Divisional Executive Committee to observe the deliberation and voting on the Committee’s recommendation. The departmental observer may not contribute to the committee’s deliberation.

The candidate’s department must prepare one digital version of the file for the Divisional Executive Committee. The digital file should be transmitted via a flash drive or OneDrive/SharePoint link with individual documents in pdf format, with a usable file structure. (Please note that the entire path, including the file name and folder names, must contain fewer than 200 characters.) Books need not be digitized, but one copy of each book should be submitted.

1. Index:

An index referencing all materials being submitted. The successful index will present the candidate’s information organized in clear relation to the subheadings listed below.

2. Letter from the Candidate:

A letter from the candidate stating their desire for either an open or closed meeting as stated in Wis. Stats. 19.85 (1) (b).

3. Cover Letter by Departmental Executive Committee

A cover letter from the departmental executive committee is required. This letter should provide the department’s evaluation of the candidate’s capabilities, including assessment of the candidate’s research and related scholarly activities, teaching, and other professional and service contributions. The evaluation should include factual and judgmental statements specifying why the candidate’s past and probable future accomplishments as an individual scholar (whether in sole or multi-scholar activities) are regarded as superior, supported by confirming evidence wherever possible. The use of superlatives without analysis of the work is not helpful, since the committee is ready to grant that departments have high regard for all their tenure candidates. The departmental executive committee’s letter should also report the exact vote (positive, negative and abstentions) in the departmental executive committee on the motion to request tenure. The departmental executive committee’s letter should also name the designated observer from the departmental executive committee who will observe the deliberation and voting by the Division of the Social Sciences Executive Committee.

The letter must also include clear and explicit statements that

the departmental executive committee has evaluated co- or multiple author scholarly works and the temporal context of the works, as described in Section 5 below, with respect to the candidate’s independent past and probable independent future contributions.
the candidate’s achievements in each of the areas of scholarship, teaching, and service meet or exceed the performances demonstrated by successful candidates for promotion to associate professor.
describe what materials were provided.
delineate the procedure used in selecting outside reviewers.

The departmental executive committee should also attach a statement of its criteria for promotion to tenure, as well as an explicit statement on the importance accorded various types of publications (i.e. books, journal articles, book chapters) in the evaluation of the candidate.

4. Curriculum Vita:

Name
Formal education
Title of doctoral dissertation
Positions held (listed chronologically with no unaccounted gaps)
Special honors or awards
Publications. Peer reviewed publications should be presented separately from non-peer reviewed publications. Consistent and proper bibliographic form must be adhered to; co- authored works must indicate the candidate’s place in the sequence of authors; full and accurate information must be provided on journals or book publishers; book reviews, presentations at meetings.
Unpublished and published materials must be identified and listed separately.
Research work completed and in progress
Teaching experience and graduate research directed
Other important experiences such as committee responsibilities, administration, state or national leadership in the profession, editorial activities, etc. Project proposals prepared by the candidate may also be included, as may research grant applications awarded or pending.

5. Evidence of Scholarly Work

In the documentation of creative or scholarly work (e.g., papers, chapters, reports, monographs, books, edited volumes, grants, awards), the following must be provided:

in the case of co- or multiple authorship, a clear and explicit description indicating the candidate’s contribution to the work, and the rationale for the candidate’s place in the sequence of authors. Departments are encouraged to obtain statements from co- authors explaining the candidate’s contributions.
a clear and explicit description of when the candidate’s creative or scholarly work was actually conducted (not when it was published) with respect to the candidate’s most recent appointment, regardless of whether that appointment was at UWM or elsewhere. This provision includes, but is not limited to, cases in which creative or scholarly work was actually conducted when the candidate was a graduate student or on a post-doctoral appointment. Other details of the nature of the temporal context of the work may be provided as further clarification.

6. Evidence of Teaching:

How teaching is to be assessed, and what is to be admitted as reasonable evidence of excellence, are matters that are responsibilities of the departments.

The department must submit a list of the courses taught by the candidate during the previous five years and the enrollments in those courses. In compliance with the Board of Regents policy document 74-13, resolution #868 (UW System Policy on Student Evaluation of Instruction), the department must also submit students’ evaluations of the candidate’s teaching in all courses taught during all the years since the beginning of the appointment at UWM and all available peer evaluations. Candidates with teaching experience at other institutions than UWM are expected to provide all available evidence of teaching performance from those institutions. The committee would also like to see an interpretation of the students’ evaluations including, if possible, a comparison with departmental averages and a report of the average grade for each course subject to student evaluations. We are aware, of course, that students’ evaluations are only partially relevant. Nonetheless, in assessing teaching effectiveness, student evaluations are an important and useful source of evidence which will be explicitly considered in reaching judgements. In addition to student evaluations, direct peer judgement of teaching effectiveness through a variety of means such as observation of teaching, assessment of syllabi, examinations, and other course materials, and evaluation of contributions to development and strengthening of departmental curriculum are also necessary. Moreover, effective peer judgement of teaching effectiveness necessarily includes both examination of the faculty member’s current level of performance, and also his or her potential for growth. Other evidence could include teaching awards, the candidate’s contributions to the development of new courses or of new methods and materials of instruction, the achievements of graduates for whom the candidate served as major professor, and the opinions of faculty colleagues, especially if based on first-hand observation.

7. Evidence of Service:

Public service and service to the university count toward meeting this standard. The faculty member may show contributions to work of public bodies, professional organizations and civic groups, and disseminate research findings and scholarly insights beyond the academic community. Faculty may also serve the university itself through program development, participation in governance, administration, or obtaining grants for research or training. However, services that reflect the special skills, expertise, and intellectual standards of university professors are especially desirable.

Service activities should be documented objectively. The departmental executive committee may solicit, from impartial evaluators, letters which attest to the significance of service activities.

8. Extension/Outreach Activities:

It is recognized that faculty with extension/outreach obligations have teaching, research and service responsibilities. Recommendations from departments, schools and colleges pertaining to such faculty should, therefore, indicate the percentage of a candidate’s total effort which involves extension/outreach activity. Evidence must be presented to show that the candidate is highly regarded in his or her field. The candidate must show the utilization of scholarship in his or her programmatic activities. The documentation must clearly demonstrate the ways in which the candidate is meeting the continuing educational needs of the public. The performance of the candidate in extension activities should be fully documented. Evaluations should be provided by recognized outreach/extension specialists in the candidate’s field.

9. Letters of Evaluation:

The departmental executive committee must obtain a minimum of three letters from impartial experts and must include all letters received with the materials sent to the dean and the Divisional Executive Committee. These letters should be substantially predicated on the documentation submitted to this Divisional Executive Committee, and should give detailed assessments of the candidate’s scholarship and professional contributions in the rank of assistant professor, including the candidate’s visibility and recognition in the field. It is important that the outside reviewers and the Divisional Executive Committee are basing their decisions on the same corpus of scholarly work. It is important that the department (a) state that the chosen experts have minimal present or past personal relationships to the candidate, and (b) summarize the experts’ credentials and professional standings. Copies of both departmental and Divisional Executive Committee criteria should be provided to outside reviewers. The Divisional Executive

Committee should be provided with copies of the curriculum vitae or equivalent information about the outside reviewers’ professional credentials for serving in this capacity.

It should be noted that confidential letters of evaluation may not be used if a candidate elects an open meeting. If an open meeting is elected and confidential letters have been obtained, waivers of confidentiality or non-confidential letters must be obtained before Divisional Executive Committee review will commence.

The department is required to submit a separate index of confidential materials. This should include a list of names and addresses (that is, university or other affiliation, city and state) of letter writers, and the date of correspondence. This index, together with the letters of evaluation and other supporting materials from outside reviewers, is submitted with the file clearly marked as confidential. In addition, all enclosed items must also be clearly marked or stamped confidential.

10. Criteria of Excellence:

Manifestly, the best-qualified candidates for tenure are those who have made significant contributions to scholarship and research and give promise of continued scholarly accomplishments, whose teaching abilities are demonstrably superior, and who have visible records of service. At the same time, it is recognized that while a department must lean toward a program of excellence in all major areas (research, teaching and service), not all individuals within a department will achieve equally in all three. However, a candidate must make contributions in each area. The same criteria apply regardless of length of service at UWM. The burden of proving the claim that a particular individual should be granted tenure rests on the department. Members of the Divisional Executive Committee vote as individuals, and may not agree totally about the relative weights that should be given to research, scholarship, teaching, and various forms of service. However, in the final analysis, there is strong consensus that scholarship and research are most important.

11. Transmittal Procedures:

Material on tenure should first be sent to the appropriate dean according to the procedures of the school or college within which the department is located. The committee receives and reviews the material only after the dean requests the committee’s advice in a letter of transmittal. The file must be submitted in digital form (single CD or thumb drive).

Revision History

Reapproved:

9/88, 9/89, 8/96, 8/97, 8/98, 9/99, 5/01, 5/03, 5/04, 5/05, 5/07, 4/09, 5/10, 5/11, 5/13, 5/14, 4/17, 5/19, 5/20, 5/21, 5/22, 5/23, 5/24

Revised:

10/91, 9/92, 9/93, 9/94, 8/95, 6/97, 5/00, 9/02, 5/06, 5/08, 5/12, 5/15, 5/16, 5/17, 5/18, 5/25 (published 9/25)

Sample Index Sample Letter to External Reviewers

Criteria and Guidelines for Departmental Recommendations for Promotion to Professor in the Social Sciences

1. Index:

2. Letter from the Candidate:

3. Cover Letter by Departmental Executive Committee

4. Curriculum Vita:

Example:

5. Evidence of Scholarly Work:

6. Evidence of Teaching:

7. Evidence of Service:

8. Extension/Outreach Activities:

9. Letters of Evaluation:

10. Selection and Confidentiality of External Reviewers

11. Criteria of Excellence:

12. Transmittal Procedures:

Criteria and Guidelines for Departmental Recommendations for Tenure Appointments in the Social Sciences

1. Index:

2. Letter from the Candidate:

3. Cover Letter by Departmental Executive Committee

4. Curriculum Vita:

5. Evidence of Scholarly Work

6. Evidence of Teaching:

7. Evidence of Service:

8. Extension/Outreach Activities:

9. Letters of Evaluation:

10. Criteria of Excellence:

11. Transmittal Procedures:

Revision History

Reapproved:

Revised: