Faculty Affairs

Office of the Provost

Charge to the P&T Task Force

Term Faculty

The P&T task force for term faculty will consider the following clusters of questions. 

Clusters of Questions - Specific points to consider:

Categorization of non-tenure track faculty 

  • What are the types of non-tenure track positions and workloads we have at VCU? 
  • Should term faculty positions be renamed and classified to better reflect the expectations of the position and best set up these faculty for success?

Process

  • Process at each level – department, college/school/university. If needed, distinguish between tenure track/tenured versus term faculty

Structure

  • Size and composition of committee at each level being attentive to tenure track/tenured versus term faculty

Do you need a committee at each level – department, school/college, university? Department chair serves as the chair of the dept committee– need to make additional provisions if the department chair is not a full professor. Alternatively, to be more inclusive, do we want faculty “as a whole” voting on dossiers? “As a whole” means all tenured associates and fulls vote on the tenure and promotion of all tenure eligible assistant professors; and all tenured fulls will vote on promotion of tenured associates to full at the department level. A minimum of five faculty members must be eligible to serve on each of these committees. If that is not possible, the dean should appoint one or more faculty members from related disciplines. At the School or College level, the dean chairs the committee – and this committee will comprise all department chairs and at least three to five additional full professors from the College appointed by the Provost. The Dean of the College/School will send names to the Provost. Also, have a committee at the university level to incorporate more voices? At the university level, the committee will comprise the deans of the Colleges/Schools and six to eight full professors at large from across colleges/schools. No school/college will have more than one representative on the university committee. 

What would a structure for term faculty look like? Perhaps having a mix of tenured and term full professors can be considered at each level (department, college, university)? This is the structure emerging in other institutions.

Credentials

  • For non-tenure track faculty – specify terminal degree?

Criteria for promotion

  • Focus on ‘scholarship of...' research, teaching & learning; community engagement and how this should align with workload responsibilities (and effort) for tenure track/tenured faculty versus term faculty. Innovation in teaching is also an item for tenure and/or promotion. All faculty members should contribute to service and be rated satisfactory as is in the current policy. But service is not a criterion for tenure and/or promotion.
  • Candidate should also have demonstrated excellence and scholarly productivity in at least one of these areas – research, teaching & learning with the understanding that, ordinarily, strength would be apparent in more than one. Use workload assigned to specify?
  • Commitment to active and responsive mentorship, as well as an active role in mentoring, advising and supporting the academic success of students and postdoctoral scientists, will also be documented as part of the process that defines tenure and promotion.
  • What should each department and school/college incorporate in their tenure and promotion guidelines? Develop guidelines on key aspects which the school/college can use to revise/modify. Define a process by which (a) a department and (b) a school will revise/modify P&T guidelines to align with the university guidelines. 

Dossier

  • Cover sheet (see Appendix A)
  • Candidate’s dossier (see Appendix B). 
    • Content? Develop a form with three key parts: (1) Scholarship: Scholarship on Research, Scholarship on Teaching; Scholarship on Community Engagement (2) Teaching & Learning, (3) Service – department, college/school, university, professional, community. What are the items to be included in each part.
    • Should annual evaluations be included? What are the pitfalls of doing this? Candidate dossiers should be evaluated as whether they are ‘ready’ at the given point in time and not what they did each year. Scholars discourage use of annual review/evaluation letters in P&T dossiers as they are most likely to introduce bias into discussions.
    • Should the dossier be updated by the candidate each year?

Rubric

  • Rubric for evaluation of dossier at each level
    • Scale or simply vote as yes/no.
    • If scale is recommended: each non-excellent vote must be explained or the vote will be invalid. If vote of yes/no, each ‘no’ vote must be explained or the vote will be invalid.

External Letters

  • How many letters?
  • How will the slate of letter writers be decided – at least two from candidate’s list and three from department faculty. But do NOT distinguish this in the dossier?
  • R-1 institutions? Provision for letters from scholars in non-R-1s. Seek approval of the dean.
  • Who solicits letters?
  • Need template letters to be created within each College/School for soliciting external letters.
  • What materials need to be shared with external letter writers? A two-page statement that summarizes research contributions, teaching contributions, and a paragraph on service, the candidate’s CV, five published (or accepted) articles and/or teaching portfolio and/or a book manuscript (publisher contract should be attached if book is still not out). May use unpublished articles or articles under review.  Should be consistent within a unit
  • Template letter to be used for soliciting external letters, materials shared with external letter writers, and the external letters must be part of the candidate’s P&T dossier. Any change in template letter must be justified in the candidate’s dossier. Focus on the value of the work (research and teaching) and how do they compare to other faculty members you know in the same stage of the career. Do not seek recommendation of letter write
  • Tracking the number of solicited external referees who decline or fail to provide letters and/or recording their stated reasons for not writing does not provide relevant, useful information about the quality of the candidate’s case. Thus, this practice should be strongly discouraged. 

Making additions through the process

  • Candidate shall have the opportunity to attach an addendum one week before the committee meets at each level – department, college, university. That is the candidate may submit an addendum note to indicate an article has been accepted (attached editor’s note of acceptance), or an in-press article is out; or a grant has come through, or approval has been obtained for a new patent and so on.

Moving candidate forward or not

  • Decision to move candidate forward if negative vote
    • At Department level: Chair of department
    • At College/School level: Dean

Appealing a denial

  • Appeal Process
    • Appeal process at university level, include basis for appeal
    • Appeals Committee
    • Appeal for extension of a year to go up for promotion?