3.9 Post-Tenure Review
3.9.1 Purpose
The six-year cycle of evaluation of tenured faculty members is established as a means of encouraging and assisting faculty members in their professional development. It also presents occasions for evaluating a faculty member for promotion.
3.9.2 Components of Six-Year Review
- Every six years after tenure is awarded, a faculty member shall prepare a written self-evaluation and professional plan. The self-evaluation shall cover the period since receiving tenure or since the previous six-year review, and shall evaluate the work done by the faculty member in the four major areas of responsibility and shall be done in the context of the prior professional plan. The professional plan shall look forward to the next six years and identify directions and goals in each area.
- The chair will discuss the self-evaluation and professional plan with the faculty member and provide an evaluation of it. The chair will submit the plan to the academic dean and discuss it with him or her. The dean will meet with the faculty member to discuss the self-evaluation and professional plan.
- Every three years, tenured faculty members shall be evaluated by students in all courses they teach that year. They shall also be reviewed by their advisees. They shall report to the chair and academic dean on progress on the professional plan as well as update the plan whenever necessary.
- The department chair and dean, in concurrence with each other, retain the option of requesting student evaluations, faculty self-evaluations, and the professional plan at points different from those noted above, if a tenured faculty member is experiencing unusual difficulty.
3.9.3 Promotion to Professor
Departments will be notified one year in advance of a faculty member's upcoming post-tenure review and eligibilty for promotion to professor. Since colleagues are eligible for promotion after five years at rank, the post-tenure review should be conducted at five years post tenure, to coincide with a possible promotion review. Later post-tenure reviews will follow at six-year intervals.
Should a colleague who is eligible for promotion not be recommended, the colleague will remain eligible, and the department may at some later date recommend promotion.
The appeal process will be the same as that articulated in Section 3.7.2.6.3.
If the post-tenure review is being used as an occasion to evaluate the faculty member for promotion to the rank of professor, the following additional components are required.
- All documents normally included in a reappointment dossier.
- The written recommendations of all full professors in the department. If there are fewer than three full professors in the department, including the chair, the dean and the chair may form a special committee on promotion, which may be composed of department members and full professors selected from other departments. Although only full professors will vote on recommendations for promotion to full professor, department chairs should solicit the opinions of all tenured and tenure-track colleagues. Chairs will summarize the gist of those opinions and share that summary with the voting full professors.
3.9.4 Evaluation Guidelines
The evaluation guidelines are the same as those used to evaluate a faculty member for reappointment or tenure
