These are out of date now, but left here for historical purposes. For the current guidelines, see: http://www.seas.virginia.edu/policies/promotionmay2001.php

chieving many of the goals outlined in the SEAS Strategic Plan will require us to realign our rewards and incentives, especially those related to promotion and tenure. A key step in realizing our goals and in developing an academic community built on trust, is to review promotion and tenure policy systematically in light of the goals and aspirations established in our Strategic Plan, some of which are outlined below.

"no secondary character will be received" among the University of Virginia faculty.

he success of our educational mission, as Jefferson realized, depends on distinguished professors. He wrote in 1819 that "no secondary character will be received" among the University of Virginia faculty and insisted that only "the ablest which America or Europe can furnish" would teach here. We are committed to following this prescription. Our objective is recognized excellence. To achieve excellence the Strategic Plan calls for SEAS to:

• Focus on filling faculty positions with scholars of the very highest caliber from the very best programs who clearly demonstrate the ability to become recognized leaders in teaching, research, and public service.

• Place priority on recruiting faculty who can collaborate on school-wide and University-wide research and teaching projects.

• Achieve national leadership in the hiring and retention of female and minority faculty.

The best faculty combines an intense intellectual curiosity with a commitment to improving the lot of humankind through teaching, research, and public service. Accordingly, they deserve to be rewarded for outstanding contributions to the school, to the profession of engineering, and to the community at large. To achieve excellence the Strategic Plan calls for SEAS to:

• Make excellence in teaching a key factor in promotion, tenure, and merit pay decisions.

• Revise promotion, tenure, and merit-based salary policies to include cross-disciplinary work and collaborative efforts in teaching and research.

• Recruit scholars with professional experience to join our faculty and adjust promotion, tenure, and merit pay criteria accordingly.

Charge: To review, revise, clarify, and streamline SEAS policy and procedures concerning promotion and tenure so as to secure the foundation of the School twenty years from now by creating a Faculty of Excellence in teaching, research, and service. The Committee should make every effort to include the SEAS faculty in their discussions and be sensitive to the openness of their review. The Committee will submit its recommendations to the Dean by December 1, 1997 for review and implementation for the 1998 promotion cycle.

Guidelines:

• Guidelines should focus on excellence.
• Guidelines should not address "minimum" standards.
• Advancement must be based on merit.
• Excellence is the expected norm.
• Demonstration of sustained excellence required.
• Performance must be documented - not anecdotal.
• Expectations to match those of the very top engineering schools.

• Promotion should be based on a Critical and Comparative Evaluation of a faculty members scholarly performance

• "Good Enough" is the Enemy of Excellence:
  • Promotion and/or tenure should be based on achieving excellence, and not on meeting "minimum" standards.

• Re-Election:
  • Is not a pro-forma expectation.
  • Should lead to high probability of promotion.

• Associate Professor and Tenure:
  • National stature - in Teaching, Research & Service
  • National stature as a Researcher, or Teacher, or as a Practitioner and Leader in Service to his/her Professional Discipline (alternative criteria)
  • Should only be awarded for demonstrated excellence.

• Full Professor:
  • International stature - in Teaching, Research & Service
  • International stature as a Researcher, or Teacher, or as a Practitioner and Leader in Service to his/her Professional Discipline (alternative criteria)
  • Should be a pillar upon which we can build the School's future.
  • Should be a role model for junior faculty.

• Stress on cumulative productivity and upward trends.
• Early promotion and time in rank expectations.
• How to assess teaching productivity and quality
• How to measure/evaluate service (local/national)
• The role of teaching portfolios.
• Peer evaluation of classroom teaching.
• Revisions to student evaluation forms.
• External reference choice and veracity.
• P&T policy should be in concert with Strategic Plan aspirations.
• Specifically incorporate maternity/tenure clock stopping policy.
• Policy on promotion to Professor Emeritus
• Policy on tenure and promotion for Teaching General Faculty:
  • Criteria for appointment to Teaching General Faculty positions.
  • Criteria for re-appointment to Teaching General Faculty positions.
  • Criteria for promotion in rank for General Faculty.
  • Criteria for establishing national/international stature as a Teaching G.F.
• Policy on tenure and promotion for Research General Faculty:
  • Criteria for appointment to Research General Faculty positions.
  • Criteria for re-appointment to Research General Faculty positions.
  • Criteria for promotion in rank for Research Faculty.
  • Criteria for establishing national/international stature as a Research G.F.
  • Policy on Research Faculty time not counting towards tenure track time.
• Policy on how to count industry/external experience towards tenure or promotion.
• Policy on tenure and promotion for TCC Faculty:
  • By what benchmark standards.
  • How to assess contributions to SEAS/engineering education.
• Promotion and Tenure Package guidelines:
  • Package content, format, evaluation metrics/comparisons, reporting formats for research funding (Indv./CoPI/ Supporting), publication authorship, refereed conferences, key significant journals and conferences, reference letter bios, selection, etc.

• Joanne Bechta Dugan
• Yacov Haimes * , Committee Chair
• Roseanne Ford
• Gabe Robins
• Gary Shiflet *
• Jim Simmonds *
• Steve Wilson *
• Milton Adams

• Gary Shiflet *
• Barry Johnson *
• George Cahen

• Mel Cherno *
• Jim Simmonds *

* Served on SEAS P&T Committees
+ Reports to the P&T Policy Review Committee

• Subcommittee on Teaching Issues: Jim Simmonds, George Cahen, and Gabe Robins
• Subcommittee on Research Issues: Yacov Haimes, Milton Adams, Joanne Bechta Dugan, and Gabe Robins
• Subcommittee on Service Issues: George Cahen, Roseanne Ford, Barry Johnson

Minutes for June 4, 1997 8:30am

• Several handouts were distributed, including:
  • informal minutes for our May 22 meeting
  • agenda for our June 4 meeting
  • memo by Peter Low (effective July 1, 1996)
  • modifications to memo by Peter Low (April 2, 1996)
  • memo to Chairs by Dean Miksad (Oct 17, 1996)
  • P&T guidelines for Duke University
  • P&T guidelines for Cornell University

• We discussed creating various feedback mechanisms whereby individuals can transmit information / concerns to this committee. Such mechanisms would include Email, hardcopies, Web-based anonymous forms, group meetings, individual meetings, etc. A Web site is now being created, which will track the progress of this committee, and be used to disseminate related information to our SEAS colleagues.

• We discussed the relationship between policy and culture, and agreed that this is an important issue.

• We discussed how "complete" the SEAS P&T guidelines should be: while such documents can never be truly "complete" (e.g., the U.S. Constitution), the P&T guidelines could definitely use more fleshing out in certain key areas.

• We discussed the definition of "what is excellence," and agreed that this notion is difficult to define (although it may be much easier to recognize "excellence" than to define it generically).

• We questioned whether the old research/teaching/service "triad" is an appropriate metric (since it creates some artificial walls/demarcations on how faculty spend their time/energy).

• We agreed that teaching evaluation should be taken very seriously in P&T, and that the currently-used SEAS teaching evaluation form is "broken". Marva Barnett (Director of the Teaching Resource Center) has agreed to come in as a guest to talk to the committee about these important issues (during our August 4 meeting).

• The "asset vs. liability" model was suggested in evaluating whether a faculty member should be granted tenure.

• It was mentioned that students who decline SEAS admission offers often give the reason that they think that "SEAS is not as good as other schools". We must work very hard to change such perceptions.

• More P&T guidelines from other universities will be distributed soon (this will enable us to compare with what other schools are doing along these lines).

• We agreed that our subcommittees would meet independently and in parallel.

• Our next few meetings will take place on June 23, July 8, August 4, and August 28, all at 10:00am in the SEAS Rodman Room.

• Copies were distributed of the Stanford document on Professional Appointments and Promotions.

• We will break down our charge into two main categories, one dealing with processes and procedures, the other with criteria to determine merit and quality. With regard to the process category, it was pointed out that we need to consider guidelines for four stages--(1) the preparation of the dossier, (2) departmental deliberations, (3) SEAS committee deliberations, and (4) the Dean's deliberation. For each stage, we need to determine which of our present policies and procedures we wish to keep and which we wish to modify; we also need to determine where in the current process there are gaps that need to be filled.

• We began to discuss the preparation of the dossiers, and recognized that we need more specific guidelines for outside letters and student evaluations. We discussed the suggestion that the SEAS P/T committee should receive copies of candidates' annual review summaries.

• At our next meeting (July 8, 10:00, Rodman Room), Roseanne Ford and Joanne Bechta Dugan will lead the discussion on preparing the dossier and George Cahen and Steve Wilson will lead the discussion on departmental committee deliberations.

• A number of handouts were distributed, including:
  • The P&T Review Committee Minutes from June 4, 1997
  • The P&T Review Committee Minutes from June 23, 1997
  • The P&T guidelines from the University of Arizona (dated 3/21/94)
  • The P&T guidelines from Stanford University (dated March 1993)
  • The P&T guidelines from UCLA (dated 10/18/95)

  

• A number of issues were discussed regarding the preparation of a tenure & promotion dossier:
  • For how long can a P&T dossier be updated / modified? (it was suggested that the update cutoff date should be when the P&T dossier is submitted to the Dean).

  • How should cross-disciplinary work be evaluated? (perhaps in consultation with a colleague from the discipline in question)

  • We agreed that maternity/parenting leaves are an important issue (for both male and female faculty). Should such leaves be granted automatically, or should they be requested and reviewed? It was argued in favor of the former.

  • It was suggested that Memo#9 (i.e., the SEAS P&T guidelines) should in general conform to the relevant official University Policy.

  • It was agreed that a formal timeline sheet describing the candidate's professional timeline should be included in the P&T dossier to help the committee understand the chronology of the particular case.

  • The need for some "arm's length" letters in a P&T dossier was stressed (i.e., letters from writers who have no professional or social relationships with the candidate) Ideally, the P&T committee would like to see letters from writers who haven't even met the candidate and only know of them from their papers and the literature (although it is admittedly difficult to obtain such letters).

  • Should candidates be allowed to veto certain letter writers from consideration when it comes to assembling their dossier? We agreed that perhaps this would be a good idea if done preemptively (i.e., like NSF permits in proposal reviews), but not post-facto (i.e., once a letter has been generated, it may not be ignored/retracted).

  • It was suggested that perhaps all dossiers should contain two internal letters of support for a candidates (written by UVa/Dept colleagues).

• Recognizing that "prevention" is much more effective than "cure", we agreed that feedback to individual candidates is a very important issue, not only once their dossier is finalized, but at multiple key points along the tenure-track timeline. This way, a candidate is made aware early of any shortcomings or needs to improve, while there is still time and opportunity for the candidate to act on such knowledge.

• For example, Departments should provide individually faculty with yearly formal letters, describing what the School/Department views as the positives AND negatives of that faculty member's performance with respect to the P&T criteria (some departments already do this regularly, but many still do not). This would greatly help candidates to prepare for the P&T process, and would eliminate the potentially negative "surprise" element in many P&T cases, especially the difficult ones.

• In addition to a yearly letter from the candidate's department, a similar letter from the Dean would be helpful also (say, once every two or three years, perhaps drafted with the help of the respective Dept Chair and/or with feedback from the P&T committee itself).

• It was noted that the SEAS P&T guidelines do not say much regarding reelection/reappointment, and we agreed that this should be remedied.

• We stressed the need for uniform output from the Department(s) to the P&T committee, including detailing of the chronology of the P&T case in a consistent and standardized manner.

• It was debated whether all tenured professors should vote on P&T cases at the departmental level, or whether only full professors participate in such votes. Recognizing that including all tenured professors (i.e., "stake-holders") in such votes would help foster collegiality, build a good culture, and enhance morale, we strongly supported this option.

• We agreed that the School should make efforts to make junior faculty aware that the "system" is not adversarial, but rather friendly: it is the full intention of the University and the School is to help junior faculty succeed, nurture them, and enhance their professional development. There are many mechanisms in place to assist junior faculty along these lines (e.g., the Teaching Resource Center) and faculty should be made aware of these mechanisms and the overall underlying philosophy.

• We agreed that out of fairness to everyone in the School and in order to maintain a consistently high standard across all departments, all hires into the higher faculty ranks and/or hires with tenure should be approved/screened by the School's P&T committee. It was recognized that sometimes strategic hires into higher faculty ranks may have a rushed/compressed timeline (e.g., when the School has an opportunity to hire a "star" in some area); nevertheless, the P&T committee can be flexible enough to accommodate such events (i.e., by holding special meetings, as needed). We noted that in such cases a vitae and letters of reference are usually already available/submitted, so a "dossier" already exists de-facto (and any missing information may be requested by the P&T committee at its discretion and obtained promptly).

• We noted that there may perhaps exist a fundamental "disconnect" (w.r.t. expectations & standards) between the departmental P&T committees and the School's P&T Committee, and that this should be remedied.

• It was suggested that in order to ensure consistency and improve overall quality-control at the departmental level, perhaps a School P&T Committee member should be put on each departmental P&T committee.

• It was suggested that we should perhaps create a "decision-tree" -like analysis of P&T conventions and procedures to help guide the assembly and processing of P&T dossiers and the overall P&T process.

• We agreed that when the P&T Review Committee is ready to do so, we will eventually edit Memo#9 (the SEAS P&T Guidelines) line-by-line.

• We agreed that through the P&T filter, the School seeks to create, identify and reward individuals who will serve as "pillars" upon which the School can build its future for generations to come.

• Our next meeting is on Monday, August 4 at 10:00 am; during this meeting, Marva Barnett (Director of the Teaching Resource Center) will speak to us for the first half hour on teaching-related issues in P&T.

• A number of handouts were distributed, including:
  • The P&T Review Committee meeting minutes from July 8, 1997
  • Chapter Four from the book "Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia", by Steven M. Cahn (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers).
  • The P&T Guidelines from the University of Colorado, Boulder (November 1993)
  • The P&T Guidelines from MIT (September 1996)
  • Faculty Appointment Procedures Manual, UVa (1997)
  • Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines, UVa

  

• Marva Barnett (Director of the Teaching Resource Center), led a discussion with the committee on teaching-related P&T issues. She supplied the committee with several handouts, including:
  • The article "Countering Common Misbeliefs about Student Evaluations of Teaching, by Robert Boice, from "Teaching Excellence", Vol. 2, No. 2, 1990-1991.
  • Responses to a random Sample of Former Lilly / University Teaching Fellows and the departmental chairs who supported their applications; this study was conducted by the Teaching Resource Center based on interviews.
  • Guidelines for constructing and administering course / teaching evaluation mechanisms, by Michael Theall, Director of Teaching and Learning Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham.
  • Comments on teaching evaluation, from the Faculty Senate Academic Affairs Committee's macro_teaching_conversations, 1996-1997.
  • The article "Quick Starters: New Faculty Who Succeed", by Robert Boice, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, No. 48, Winter, 1991, Josey-Bass Inc. Publishers.
  • Several Web URL pointers, including: Faculty Senate University-Wide Conversation About Teaching, Teaching Analysis Polls, University Teaching Fellows Program, Teaching Portfolios at UVa, and an introduction to teaching portfolios by Peter Seldin.

• The University Teaching Fellows Program was discussed: it had great success and impact on participating faculty: over 80% of of past University Teaching Fellows were granted tenure. Department chairs who nominated the fellows uniformly reported (in a recent TRC poll) that participation in the UTF program (and/or receiving of other teaching distinctions/awards) was definitely a very positive factor in the tenure cases of their (UTF) candidates.

• We discussed the issues revolving around how to evaluate teaching. We agreed that building collegial trust is important here, and that peer review in teaching evaluation is a good idea (after all, if peer review is so widely used in evaluating research, why shouldn't it be used in teaching evaluation?)

• We agreed that it is a good idea to make it mandatory for faculty to attend at least one Teaching Resource Center workshop per year.

• It was pointed out that most other endeavors in our society require formal training, but that teaching seems to be a curious exception to this common sense. For example, if someone wants to become a driver, we certainly don't tell them "well, just get a car, start driving around town, and lets see what happens!" Ditto for other professions, such as medical doctors, accountants, etc. But for teaching, that's exactly the precarious approach that we seem to take (i.e., "just go into the classroom, start teaching, and lets see what happens!")

• It was pointed out that the art of teaching is a complex but learnable skill, and one at which individuals can definitely improve if they try. It was argued that a mediocre teacher can cause more damage to society while standing in front of a class, than an incompetently driver can while navigating our highways: yet we require drivers to go through rigorous training, testing, licensing, spot-checking, and periodic checks and improvements, whereas teachers are not made to benefit from any such helpful mechanisms. There is a fundamental lack of symmetry there: we should approach teaching more systematically, and this should be reflected in official policy.

• We agreed that is would be a good idea for the School of Engineering to tie some fraction of the yearly merit pay increases to teaching performance (the issue of how to evaluate teaching effectiveness is related, but orthogonal to this proposed policy). This will help dispel the common myth that "SEAS doesn't care about teaching" (i.e., we will "put our money where our mouth is").

• It was suggested that "teaching evaluations" should be separated into two distinct components, one serving an "evaluative" purpose (and can take place as usual at the end of each semester), and the other serving a "self-improvement" purpose for each professor's own benefit (and this later assessment should be done early each semester, in order for both the professor and the students to benefit from it during the remainder of each class). The later would be informal (e.g., it can include an outside peer meeting with the class and summarizing their feedback to the professor) and would not be made part of any official record, so as to minimize any potential concerns / anxiety, and to increase the effectiveness of the process.

• Web-based anonymous mid-semester teaching evaluations can be easily implemented for all departments and courses (for an example, see the Department of Computer Science's Teaching Evaluation Web form).

• A subcommittee (Jim Simmonds, George Cahen, and Gabe Robins) will meet several times to discuss teaching-related changes to the P&T guidelines. This subcommittee will produce a "proposal" by our next meeting (August 12) on how to modify SEAS outlook on teaching.

• Two additional subcommittees were formed as well, one on research (Yacov Haimes, Milton Adams, Joanne Bechta Dugan, and Gabe Robins), and one on service (George Cahen, Roseanne Ford, Barry Johnson). These subcommittees will meet separately and report their findings / proposals to the full P&T Review Committee.

• It was reiterated that hiring into higher academic ranks should be subject to the same uniform criteria and guidelines as those being applied to people being promoted / tenured internally to SEAS. In other words, "coming in from the outside" should not be easier or subject to different standards than rising through the ranks.

• It was questioned whether making new policy would really change the culture of the School. There is a consensus that it would: good policy changes can definitely improve things.

• We decided to share the P&T Review Committee's thoughts and progress with the rest of the SEAS faculty through a Web page. Feedback to the committee would be possible thorough a Web feedback, as well as other means. The Faculty Council would be kept informed of the P&T Review Committee's progress as well.

• Our August 28 meeting is cancelled; instead, we will meet Tuesday August 12 at 10am. We agreed that all of us will read Chapter 4 the book "Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia", by Steven M. Cahn (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers) by our next meeting so we can discuss it together.

• We decided that it would be a great idea to compile a list of books and articles which would constitute a "recommended reading" for all faculty. For example, this list would include:
  • "Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia", Steven Cahn, (Rowman & Littlefield)
  • "A Ph.D. is Not Enough", Peter Feibelman, (Addison Wesley)
  • "Tomorrow's Professor", Richard Reis, (IEEE Press)
  • "Teaching Generation X"
  • other suggested books / articles

• We will poll other faculty and arrive at a consensus as to what other materials should be added to this list. All faculty would be highly encouraged to read everything on this list.

• It was iterated that nothing this committee has discussed so far, including these official committee minutes, is set in stone nor is final in any sense. Rather, we are engaging in open discussions and welcome all feedback, which will in turn affect the committee's future deliberations. Thus, the issues / ideas described on this Web page should be construed as a stream-of-consciousness flowing from the committee, rather than official (present or future) SEAS policy.

• A number of handouts were distributed, including:
  • The P&T Review Committee meeting minutes from August 4, 1997
  • A hardcopy of the P&T Review Committee Web page
  • The first report of the Subcommittee on Teaching Issues

  

• We voted unanimously to go public with our Web page and solicit feedback from the full SEAS faculty ( the Web page was later announced to all SEAS faculty on August 12, 1997).

• We briefly discussed chapter 4 the book "Saints and Scamps: Ethics in Academia", by Steven M. Cahn (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, and we all basically agreed with the philosophy and insights discussed there.

• We proposed the following policy change: in order to maximize the effectiveness of the end-of-semester formal evaluations, they should be returned to faculty very quickly (say, within three days) after the course final exam takes place. There is no reason to drag the return of these evaluations up to six months(!) after the fact. We discussed several mechanisms by which such a quick turnaround can be accomplished, e.g., xeroxing the evaluations and returning the copies to the professors immediately , or even hiring extra temporary help during final's week to process (or xerox) the forms quickly (the negligible cost of doing so will have a tremendous benefit). The committee felt strongly that this is an important issue.

• We agreed that it is still not clear exactly how teaching evaluations should weigh in during personnel decisions. It was mentioned that peer review of teaching should include more that just classroom attendance by a peer. We also discussed whether undergraduate teaching is qualitatively different than graduate teaching.

• We agreed that the Faculty Annual Activities Report should be modified and improved, following the recommendations proposed in the report by the Subcommittee on Teaching Issues.

• We agreed that we should divide our approach to teaching issues into two main components:
  1. What is the actual process / mechanisms by which we judge teaching quality?

  2. How should a P&T committee and SEAS use teaching evaluations to make its personnel decisions?

  In other words, we need to address exactly how to measure teaching quality, as well propose policy on how to use this data.

• We agreed that the Subcommittee on Teaching Issues should update its report to include additional issues (e.g., the ones discussed above).

• The Subcommittee on Service Issues will meet separately soon and report to the full committee.

• The Subcommittee on Research Issues will meet on Monday August 18 in Yacov Haimes's office. We agreed to start thinking about the various research-related issues that we need to address, including:
  • Qualitative measures of judging research quality.
  • Conference papers vs. journal papers
  • Research dollars and their impact / importance
  • (Co-)authorship issues
  • Explicating the role of the candidate's (self-) letter
  • Leadership and how to measure it
  • Is the traditional research/teaching/service triad still valid?
  • How can we exercise more "vision"?

• Our next meeting of the full P&T Review Committee will take place on Wednesday, August 20 at 10:00am in the Rodman room.

• A number of handouts were distributed, including:
  • Minutes of the P&T Review Committee meeting, August 12, 1997
  • Minutes of the P&T Review Subcommittee on Research Issues, August 18, 1997
  • Draft for discussion RE upcoming group meetings with SEAS Faculty
  • P&T Guidelines from the University of Michigan
  • P&T Policies from the UVa Medical School

  

• We agreed that it would be a good idea to start public discussions among SEAS faculty regarding the P&T Review. These discussions would include meetings with groups such as:
  • Assistant professors
  • Associate professors
  • Chaired professors
  • Department chairs
  • Women and minority faculty
  • General faculty
  • Research faculty
  • Students
  • Previous Dean(s)
  • etc.

• Individuals and groups will be given lists of issues to think about beforehand, so as to make the actual group meetings more productive.

• We agreed that we should create a new Web subpage that will list the issues on which we have already reached committee-wide consensus.

• We reviewed and discussed the summary of the August 18 meeting of the Subcommittee on Research Issues.

• Jim Simmonds will draft a writeup for the committee summarizing some important teaching-related issues (e.g., mandatory attendance of TRC workshops).

• We discussed whether the P&T Review Committee should propose specific policy in the new P&T guidelines, or simply make general statements of philosophy and recommendations; there were arguments heard on both sides of this issue.

• We agreed that faculty mentoring is very important, and that junior faculty should be mentored and nurtured during their formative stages in all aspects of academia and professional development. Perhaps (one or more) mentors should be formally assigned to each incoming faculty, and if a P&T case is weak, these mentors should be called in front of the P&T committee and held accountable; this would encourage better mentoring School-wide.

• We agreed that we should look for and reward "leadership". Although leadership may be difficult quality to teach & identify, there are excellent "Leadership Seminars" (some of the Committee member have attended these) to which we should send faculty members (or even entire departments). One example of such a seminar is the Rodman leadership course.

• We agreed that a candidates' dossier should indicate which three papers the candidate considers the most significant, and that the P&T Committee should actually read those papers (this parallels the NSF model where PI's are asked to list only their ten most significant publications).

• We discussed the possible relative impact that software packages (and patents) may have, and whether software in particular should be "credited" in the "publication" category. Pro-and-con arguments were raised. For example, historically, some software packages had tremendous impact on society and our profession, such has:
  • The UNIX operating system, which enabled mini-computers to thrive, quickly became a standard, and garnered its authors the Turing Award.

  • Xerox PARC's original window-based user interface in the 1970's, which defined the way virtually all user interfaces look today.

  • The first spreadsheets, which actually drove the PC revolution (i.e., spreadsheet software is what originally caused millions of people to buy PC's; it was only later that PC's were "discovered" to be useful for other applications as well).

  • Mosaic - the first graphical Web Browser: even though this was simply a primitive user interface slapped on top of an FTP-like capability, this single application quickly ushered in a world-wide information revolution as well as a multi-billion dollar industry.

  On the other hand, we agreed that most software packages are clearly not in this exalted category, and that if a software package truly encapsulates revolutionary or novel ideas, then it shouldn't be too difficult to distill some archival journal publications from it as well.

  In summary, while we agreed that software may sometimes have substantial intrinsic academic value, software should not in general serve as a substitute for journal publications in a P&T case. Milton Adams will draft a writeup for the committee addressing and summarizing some of these issues, and Gabe Robins will present a computer-science perspective on this.

• We discussed the issue of how to evaluate the quality of conference (vs. journal) publications. It was noted that some conferences are quite rigorously peer-refereed and have very respectable paper acceptance ratios (e.g., 1-in-5), and that this should be taken into account in P&T cases (and explicated in the letters, etc.)

• Milton Adams, George Cahen, and Roseanne Ford will draft a writeup for the Committee addressing how "excellence" is evaluated with respect to the traditional three areas of research, teaching, and service (e.g., whether deficiencies in one of the areas can be "made up" by excellence in the other areas, whether we should absolutely insist that each candidate should excel in all three areas, etc.)

• Our next meeting of the full P&T Review Committee will take place on Monday, September 8 at 1:30pm in the Rodman room. The next meeting after that will take place on Monday, September 22 at 1:30pm in the Rodman room, and Dean Miksad will attend this meeting also.

An article was handed out, from the Sept 5 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, on standards RE evaluating research, teaching and service.

• Former SEAS Dean, Edgar Starke, visited the P&T Review committee and answered some questions posed by committee members RE P&T-related issues. The ensuing discussion included the following thoughts:
  • Publications should not be counted based on numbers alone; rather, evidence of "impact" should be sought vis-a-vis the publications.

  • Rank and tenure should be decoupled, i.e., it should be possible to hires into the higher tenure-track ranks without tenure (although tenure review in such cases may be greatly accelerated).

  • All tenure cases, even those resulting from hiring directly into the higher ranks, should go through the P&T Committee.

  • Excellence in teaching and scholarship both involve scholarship , so these two endeavors should be considered together, not separately.

  • We need more research faculty and general faculty.

  • P&T voting rights decisions should be left to the individual departments.

  • We should not forget that our mission is "to educate students".

  • We should "try hard to hire people better than ourselves."

  • If we hire better people, the standards will rise.

  • We should raise the standards before we hire, not afterwards.

  • Bad teachers should not be given tenure.

  • Studies have shown that there is a strong correlation between good research and good teaching (ego and drive are strong factors in both).

  • Rejected promotion cases should wait two years before trying again.

  • In P&T Committee discussions, people from the same department as the candidate should stay in the room, but only to answer questions, not to push their own candidate.

  • Conferences should be weighted as much as journal articles if they are rigorously refereed (by multiple reviewers) and are prestigious.

  • Single-authored papers are not a requirement in P&T cases.

  • Retiring into a full-professor rank should be a common courtesy, but this should be decoupled from emeritus status since the latter imposes space and other departmental constraints.

  • There is no need for the School to micro-manage too many issues at the departmental levels.

• The Subcommittee on Teaching Issues will produce a report on its recommendations regarding the following issues:
  1. Systematic student evaluation of classroom teaching
  2. Self-evaluation or personal statement
  3. Peer review of syllabi, examinations, and other teaching materials
  4. Peer review of classroom teaching

• The Subcommittee on Research Issues will produce a report on its recommendations regarding the following issues:
  1. Self-evaluation or personal research statement
  2. Judgements by colleagues within the University
  3. Judgements by outside colleagues
  4. Evaluating publications and presentations

  (these categories are based on the Chronicle of Higher Education article listed above.)

• Our next meeting will be September 22 (when Dean Miksad will attend). The next few meetings after that will take place on the Mondays of September 29, October 20, November 3, 10, and 17, all from 1:30-3:00pm.

• All assistant professors will be invited to the September 29 meeting, and this invitation will be announced by Email to all SEAS faculty.

Dean Miksad visited our committee to review the progress to-date, and to discuss some P&T-related issues, such as:

• Should new hires into higher ranks go through the P&T committee?

• How should conference papers be valued in a P&T case?

• Should attendance of Teaching Resource Center workshops become policy?

• Should we seek teaching and research faculty? Are such positions tenurable?

• Should emeritus status be awarded only sparingly, in well-deserved cases?

• Should "cumulative trends" be used to evaluate P&T cases?

• How do we change SEAS culture to encourage teaching peer-reviews?

• How do we implement a "prevention vs. cure" philosophy / culture?

• Letters should be from peer-ranks and preferably higher-ranked people.

• Annuals should have new categories (e.g., "advising", "mentoring", etc.)

• How should "scholarship" be assessed?

• We need consistency in reporting research contracts (per PI).

• We need consistency in reporting publications.

• In service, we should put emphasis on the practice of our profession (i.e., "using your discipline to help others").

• We should not worry too much about the rare "exceptions" in our committee's work and deliberations.

All Assistant Professors will be invited to our September 29 meeting, and all Associate Professors will be invited to our November 3 meeting.

The SEAS Promotion and Tenure Review Committee has met with all of the SEAS Department Chairs. The following issues were raised by the Chairs in the ensuing discussion:

• How should we measure good teaching?

• How is good teaching rewarded? What is the incentive structure?

• It was pointed out that whatever the indicators of excellence are, it would be difficult to "fake" all the indicators.

• How does the Medical School and Law School evaluate teaching? We should look into this.

• We need to change the culture RE peer-review of teaching! (currently many SEAS faculty consider it "taboo" to have peer-evaluated teaching, whereas in the Law School it is the accepted norm).

• TRC can help in teaching improvement.

• Will the university support teaching improvement with resources? (TRC could use more university resources)

• The SEAS course evaluation form needs to be changed!

• Average time line for assistant-to-full promotions are too long at Uva.

• It was iterated that time-in-rank is not a criteria for promotion.

• Early promotions are appropriate for truly excellent people (i.e., "stars").

• Submitting three best papers in a P&T dossier is a good idea (i.e., stress quality over quantity).

• Why is there a "disconnect" between department-level and school-level P&T -related expectations?

• P&T guidelines must be flexible enough to recognize different types of candidates.

• What subset of the faculty should vote on department-level promotions? (most department chairs said that only the full profs vote now)

• How do we reconcile the school's plan to improve its overall research stature with the need for good teaching?

• P&T guidelines should clarify whether excellence is required in all three areas, or whether one can be excellent in one area and only "very good" in the other two areas.

• Plots of cumulative trends look too much like "bean-counting".

• How do you measure "impact"?

• Outside letters should count more heavily.

• Funding is important; it is an indicator of quality of scholarship, recognition, and successful peer-review.

• "Excellence" in research and "very good" in teaching merits tenure (most chairs agreed on this); we need to convey this in the P&T guidelines somehow.

• Outside hires should go through the P&T committee (most chairs agreed to this if it can be done quickly); also, some flexibility is required in such cases RE P&T dossier documentation.

• Emeritus status should not be automatic, but rather merit-based. (e.g., it has implication to resource allocation, such as office space).

• Tenure and promotion should be decoupled (i.e., it should remain possible to grant promotions in rank without tenure).

• Current Official SEAS Guidelines on Promotion and Tenure (i.e., the document this committee is charged with revamping)

• Subcommittee reports and summaries:
  • First report of the Subcommittee on Teaching Issues
  • Issues on which the P&T Review Committee has reached consensus

• Current Official SEAS P&T-Related Forms:
  • Annual Faculty Activity Report
  • Departmental Annual Report
  • P&T Dossier Outline
  • Waiver Outline

• Current Official UVa Policy:
  • UVa Policy on Promotion and Tenure
  • UVa Policy on General Faculty
  • Other UVa faculty policies, including leave policy

• Interesting Documents on Teaching Improvement:
  • Faculty Senate University-Wide Conversation About Teaching
  • Teaching Analysis Polls (from the TRC)
  • University Teaching Fellows Program
  • Teaching Portfolios at UVa with comments of workshop participants
  • Thoughts on tenure and teaching, by Kirk Martini
  • Introduction to Teaching Portfolios by Peter Seldin

• Official P&T policy of other UVa Schools:
  • UVa School of Architecture

• Official P&T policy and/or related documents from other Engineering Schools an Universities (The rankings of these schools are available atU.S. News and World Report):
  • Stanford University
  • University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • University of California, Berkeley
  • Carnegie Mellon University
  • Cornell University
  • Georgia Institute of Technology
  • University of Michigan at Ann Arbor
  • University of Texas, Austin
  • Penn State College of the Liberal Arts
  • Rice University
  • Texas A&M University, College Station
  • University of Washington
  • Virginia Tech
  • Duke University
    • College of Arts and Sciences
    • School of Medicine
  • Ohio State University, Columbus
  • University of Colorado, Boulder
  • Iowa State University
  • University of California, Davis
  • University of Florida
  • University of Southern California
  • University of Arizona