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Appendix 6

Procedural Guide for the Committee on
Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure

1. New Faculty Appointments
   1. The appointment package with Chair’s letter and faculty vote, curriculum vitae and letters of recommendation will be circulated to the members of the committee.
   2. For appointments at the Acting Instructor and Assistant Professor levels, the committee members will vote on the appropriate form and return it to the committee chair. If the majority of votes are negative, the Chairperson will call a meeting to review the appointment under consideration. Any committee member has the privilege of requesting a meeting.
   3. For appointments at the Associate Professor and Professor level, a meeting of the committee will be required. The same procedure will be followed as is used to process promotion requests. Specifically, one member of the committee will be assigned the task of conducting an in depth evaluation of the proposed appointee. The requirements will be the same as described under
      "Promotions-B" below.
   4. Criteria: The same criteria will be used in making appointments as are spelled out in the guidelines for promotions. Although it may be difficult to obtain meaningful information in all areas of involvement if the individual is coming from another school, it is the department chair's responsibility to provide as much information as possible.
2. Promotions
   September 15th is the deadline for transmission of requests for mandatory review/promotion Assistant to Associate Professor) from the department Chairperson to the Office of the Dean. For non-mandatory review or promotions the deadline is December 1st. The APT Committee will meet after each of these deadlines and then forward the recommended actions to the Dean. The following procedures will be followed:\
   1. To ensure that all of the necessary material is present for the promotion request:
      1. By July 1st, the APT Committee Chairperson should send a check-list of all material to be included in the promotion request packet to each department Chairperson and to each faculty member being considered for promotion. It is the department chair's responsibility to have everything in order and the faculty member's responsibility to collect the appropriate materials (See Appendix 2).
      2. The committee reviewers will be supplied with similar checklists to identify missing information. The lists are forwarded to the committee Chairperson who will in turn, contact the appropriate departmental chair.
   2. The committee Chairperson shall distribute copies of the C.V. and letters of assessment to all committee members. These materials shall be carefully reviewed prior to the promotions meeting. In addition, each committee member may be assigned to review comprehensively one or more promotion requests. For the purpose of these reviews, all available relevant materials shall be forwarded to the assigned reviewer by the committee Chairperson. Each candidate for promotion and/or tenure will customarily be assigned to one primary reviewer. If the primary
      reviewer needs additional information, it is obtained via the Chair of the APT Committee and not directly from the candidate or her/his department. If the primary reviewer, for any reason, desires a secondary review of support materials s/he should inform the committee chair. In such cases, another committee member shall be selected by the chair for a second independent review. Reviewers' reports should provide comprehensive analysis of the candidate's record and a recommendation for approval or disapproval of the request. The original and seven copies of the
      report shall be forwarded to the committee Chairperson at least one week prior to the annual promotions meeting so that they may be distributed to the committee members in advance of the meeting. (Reviews are not sent to APT members of the candidate's department. In the event any candidate for promotion is a member of the committee Chairperson's department, reviewers for such a candidate shall distribute reports directly to other committee members rather than through the office of the committee chair.)
   3. The committee will meet during the month of October to consider all mandatory promotion and/or tenure decisions in order to meet the University deadline of November 10. The committee will usually meet in mid-December or January to review the non-mandatory promotion and/or tenure requests to meet the University deadline of February 1. Subsequent to each meeting, the committee Chairperson will promptly forward to the Dean a report of the committee action on each request. These reports will include the committee's recommendation, the vote taken and the basis for the recommendation.

   During the course of the meeting when a promotion request is being considered for a faculty member of the same department as a committee member, the committee member will absent him/herself during discussion and voting and will not be informed of the committee's action on this request after her/his return. If it is necessary for the committee Chairperson to absent him/herself for this reason, the Chairperson will appoint an acting chair to function in her/his absence. The acting chair will subsequently write the report of the committee's action and forward this directly to the Dean.

   4. After receiving reports of committee actions on promotion and tenure requests, the Dean should promptly inform the appropriate department chairs of the committee’s actions, whether favorable or unfavorable to the request. The committee expects that the department Chair should have the opportunity to request review by the Dean of a committee recommendation for disapproval of a promotion or tenure request. Department Chairpersons should be made aware of this review mechanism. Because the committee is advisory to the Dean, final decision on promotion and/or tenure requests is made by the Dean.

   The Dean's decision is transmitted to the Provost of the University. S/he retains a university Promotion/Tenure Committee which will be called upon to review difficult cases - i.e. those where recommendations among departmental faculty, chairs, college councils and deans differ. The committee members will provide advice but the Provost will make the final decision.

   5. Committee members will not write letters in support of requests for appointment, promotion or tenure except in unusual or exceptional circumstances. If a committee member does write a letter, that member will not be eligible to participate in discussion or vote on the disposition of the request that s/he has recommended.
   6. Committee discussion, reports and actions on appointment, promotion, and tenure decisions will be considered confidential with the committee. Such confidentiality is considered desirable for the following reasons:
      1. Recommendations of the committee are advisory to the Dean. Because the Dean may decide against concurrence with a committee recommendations, it would be improper and unfair to the faculty member involved for committee members to publicize these recommendations. The appropriate channel of communication for all committee recommendations is from the committee Chairperson to the Dean to the department Chairperson to the departmental
         faculty member.
      2. It is desirable that reviewers be protected against any possible ill feelings arising from an unfavorable reviewer's report. For this reason, the identity of reviewers is known only to the committee Chairperson who is responsible for assigning reviewers and to those members of the committee to whom reviews are forwarded (members not in the same department as the candidate).

      In keeping with University policy, the Dean has legitimate access to all documents of the Committee and may provide these to any member of his/her administrative staff so designated for purposes of assisting the Dean in arriving at decisions on appointments, promotions and tenure.

      The State's Public Records law may make this desired confidentiality impossible. Thus committee members cannot be guaranteed that their written letters, comments and analyses can be kept confidential; however, it is the policy of the UW that the records of advisory APT committees are confidential.

   7. The APT Committee is advisory to the Dean. Its primary function is to review the academic qualifications of those proposed for appointments to the faculty, promotion to higher rank and tenure. Committee votes should be confined to the academic qualifications of the faculty under consideration and are to be kept confidential.
   8. Monitoring of adherence to prescribed procedures is the function of the Office of the Dean. It is within the purview of the APT Committee to review the promotion materials for compliance with the Guidelines. Deficiencies in the appointment or promotion materials which have a bearing on the academic qualification of the candidate will be corrected by communication with the Office of the Dean before a vote is taken.