UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
Office of the Provost |
October 11, 2000 |
Deans, Directors, and Chairs
Dear Colleagues:
At the current time, departments are reviewing
Assistant Professors/Assistant Professors (wot) for promotion
and/or tenure to the Associate Professor/Associate Professor
(wot) ranks. I write to remind you of some revisions that
were adopted by the Faculty in Section 24-54 of the Faculty
Code, Procedures for Promotion.
Under these revised procedures, candidates are
now to be more greatly integrated into the review process
in several ways. Section 24-54B provides that candidates
for promotion are to be responsible for assembling their own
promotion record. Therefore, candidates are to be allowed
to place in their promotion files any material that they feel
should be considered. Further, the Code specifically now states
that each candidate shall “include a self-assessment”
of his or her qualifications for promotion in the file.
If departments or undepartmentalized schools
or colleges utilize faculty advisory committees to do initial
assessments of a candidate’s qualifications for promotion,
that committee, if it prepares an initial report to the faculty,
must do so in writing. A written summary of that report and
the committee’s recommendation is to be provided by
the department chair or his or her designee (which might be
the chair of the initial faculty review committee) to the
candidate. No names of reviewers or vote counts should be
included in that summary. The candidate, if he or she chooses,
may respond in writing to that report within seven days. The
department faculty are to receive a copy of the candidate’s
response before the departmental conversation and promotion
vote occurs.
After the departmental discussion and vote
is completed, the department chair (or dean in an
undepartmentalized school or college) is required to prepare
a summary of the discussion and
recommendation and provide that summary to the candidate.
Again, names and vote counts should be omitted from that summary
report. The candidate may then choose to respond to that
report within a seven calendar day period.
If the recommendation is at the department level,
all of these materials (the committee report, the candidate’s
response, the department chair’s summary, the candidate’s
response, and the chair transmittal letter) are to be provided
to the dean. The dean is to share this material with the college
or school elected advisory council for its informed advice
before the dean finalizes his or her recommendation to
the provost.
These new procedures suggest that some additional
time is necessary at the unit and college
level. Departments and colleges have received from the Office
of Academic Personnel a timeline for transmittal of promotion
files. It was previously indicated that Academic Personnel
would expect these files by November 15. In light of the new
requirements, we will extend that deadline to December 15,
2000, thereby providing the departments, colleges, and schools
additional time to ensure that all of these promotion procedures
are followed.
Please call me if you need any additional information
about this or any additional time for
processing individual reviews. We will still seek to meet
our goal of informing candidates who are undergoing mandatory
promotion reviews of the Provost’s decision by February
2001.
Sincerely,
Signed: Steven G. Olswang, Vice Provost
SGO:ghf
cc: Dr. Lee Huntsman
Ms. Rhonda Lahey
Dr. Lea Vaughn |
