Tenure and Promotion Information

Due to concerns about ensuring accuracy of information about this highly sensitive issue, only information that's gathered from official UBC sources (e.g., the Faculty Association, or Faculty Relations), or approved by the head should be posted here. Some of this external information has been cached in the Faculty Affairs Committee web space to ensure that it will not inadvertantly be lost, and also that it can be read by people not using Windows. If you know of other good sources of information, please add them.

Promotion & Tenure (P&T) Timeline (25 August 2015 Proposal):

June/July:

• MC composition finalized

• candidate sends draft materials to MC (CV, research statement, teaching statement, selected pubs list)
• candidate receives feedback on draft materials from MC
• candidate sends 7 letter writer names to head (MC does not see these names yet!)
• MC proposes letter writers, independent of candidate's list

• materials with corrections due; we can encourage earlier submission, but not require it

• head sends candidate's list to MC
• MC produces merged list of referee names
• MC produces first slide deck summarizing case including merged referee names proposal
• headsec sends MC slides and candidate materials to standing committee (SC)
• SC members discuss with suggestions/concerns/feedback on materials and referees by email
• MC collates materials suggestions after email discussion concludes and sends along to candidate
• optional: candidate revises materials based on feedback from SC
• sometimes: MC revises referee selection if serious concerns raised by SC
• head initiates letter requests after names list finalized

• after all letters received, MC produces second slide deck summarizing case and letters
• MC presents P&T case using slide deck to standing committee

Mini Committees

The candidate provides the head with 2--4 names of faculty they wish to see on their mini-committee, as well as any names they would prefer to avoid. These will be used by the head in selecting the mini committee, with the help of the associate head for faculty affairs. The provided names are guidelines rather than hard constraints because faculty leaves-of-absence, multiple promotion cases, and other constraints may also exist.

All mini-committees should strive to help each candidate prepare the best possible case. In that way, no one candidate is disadvantaged.

1. Provide guidance and feedback to the candidate on their materials:
   • CV
   • Teaching statement
     See also Professor of Teaching guidelines.
   • Research statement (except for instructor track)
   • Selected papers (selected teaching materials for instructor track)
2. Develop a proposal for the external letter writers for discussion and approval by the standing committee.
   See the following for the detailed requirements: MiniCommitteeDuties.pdf
3. Digest and summarize the external letters, the teaching committee report and the candidates’ materials for the standing committee.

Faculty of Science: various documents

• Guidelines for Peer Review of Teaching and Summative Assesment
• Summative Review for Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure: Guidelines
• Summative Review for Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure: Timeline
• ExampleFileforDACOPAT1_Redacted.pdf: Example DACOPAT case (redacted)
• DACOPAT-checklist.pdf: DACOPAT documentation checklist

CV preparation update (Feb 27 2012)

Susan Boyd, Chair of the Senior Appointments Committee (SAC), has asked that the following information be passed on to Deans and Department Heads. Please note for future promotion/tenure cases.

1. According to the CV preparation guidelines in the SAC Guide, candidates are to keep their narrative comments regarding their "Special Interests and Accomplishments" in the areas of "Teaching" and "Scholarly and Professional Activities" to a maximum of 150 words. However, in several recent cases, candidates are including in their CV's several pages of narrative on their special accomplishments in teaching, research and scholarly and professional activities. Please caution candidates to restrict their narrative. In addition, copies of course outlines are not required.
2. The SAC committee has requested the below in regards to what they require for a tenure case for Senior Instructors:
   
   ‘With both Senior Instructor files that SAC voted on last meeting, the “teaching dossier” was too long. It included 100-200 pages of more or less raw information on what is taught, detailed student comments, etc. Much of this would presumably be valuable for the departmental review and for the referees, but SAC does not require all the raw data. [The analogy is that for files in the scholarship stream, SAC does not see publications or syllabi, and instead only relies on the referee letters as well as the Head and Dean letters to review the merits of the contributions].
   
   Instead, SAC prefers to see summaries provided of student evaluations, with sufficient detail to compare to departmental norms etc. SAC does want to see the peer reviews of teaching, however. And if the candidate provides a narrative of their teaching contributions and contributions to educational leadership, that too would be useful.’ [Update: SAC does not want to see reports from individual classroom visits or the full set of comments from student evaluations any more, these should be summarized in the teaching report. -Tamara, 21 Sep 2012]

UBC documents

• Tenure, Promotion, and Reappointment for Faculty Members web page, with a number of other useful links

Joint Appointment information

• Faculty Relations best practices