Promotion Dossiers

All dossiers should be organized under the following headings in this order.

1. Preliminary Matter
   • A table of contents
   • Recommendation for Promotion form
   • A copy of the department's promotion and tenure criteria
   • A curriculum vitae
   • The department committee's recommendation
   • The chairperson's recommendation
   • College committee's recommendation (if any)
   • Dean or director's recommendation or endorsement
   • University committee's recommendation
   • Copies of letters of evaluation from peer reviewers together with supporting material (see below)
   • Candidate's statement (optional)
2. Evidential Materials
   1. Teaching

      Teaching is an extremely important factor in promotion decisions and one must incorporate into the dossier several kinds of evidence. The possibilities include:

      • Peer evaluations that attest to the candidate's pedagogical competence, knowledge of the subject matter, organization and preparation, ability to stimulate intellectual curiosity and willingness to work, innovative capacity, and such.
      • Student evaluations, properly tabulated and summarized, with means, standard deviations, and the rate of return for each question. The procedures used in administering the evaluations should also be described. Where available comparable departmental evaluations and past measures of the candidate's performance should be provided. (Note: Student evaluations should only be used in conjunction with other indicators and only to measure teaching competence, not popularity. Also the type and size of courses should be taken into account.)
      • Verbatim copies of student comments from student evaluations.
      • Testimonials from a random selection of former and current undergraduate and graduate students. The procedures for drawing the sample should be clearly described.
      • Criterion-referenced measurement
      • Course portfolio evaluation
      • Student performance in later sequential courses
      • Standardized test scores
      • Self-evaluation
      • Long-term follow-up of students
   2. Scholarship

      As in the case of teaching, the evaluation of scholarship requires much thought and care. Some professional activities count more than others, and units should indicate their weighting of these activities.

      The main types of evidence of scholarly attainment include:

      1. Solicited Peer Evaluations

         Solicited peer evaluations are always required for promotion. Although the number will vary by rank and department or division, every dossier should include outside peer reviews, written by individuals with established reputations in the candidate's field. These statements should analyze and evaluate critically the candidate's work and accomplishments and They should also comment on the candidate's potential for future development.

         Since peer evaluations are such an important indicator of a person's achievements, they should be included in the preliminary matter of the dossier where they are easily accessible. Furthermore, the solicitation of these evaluations must follow certain guidelines.

         1. A candidate may submit a list of potential reviewers, but the department committee should suggest additional names. Although the candidate must be informed of all potential reviewers and have an opportunity to comment on them, it is the department and not the candidate that makes the final selection.
         2. Letters of evaluation should be confidential.
         3. Each peer review should be accompanied by the letter requesting the evaluation and a curriculum vita or biographical statement describing the reviewer's credentials and relationship to the candidate. Insofar as reasonable and possible, only reviewers without personal ties to the candidate should be selected.
         4. If a person jointly authors an article, it must be known what the individual contributions of each contributor are to the finished work. Where authors are listed alphabetically or an individual is the junior author on a number of joint publications, it is important that the individual's contributions to each scholarly publication be assessed. Reviewers must be able to determine whether an individual can execute research in his or her own right.
      2. Unsolicited Peer Evaluations

         There are other kinds of information that can be interpreted as peer evaluations, although not of the same kind as derived through solicitation. This material, which should also be included in the dossier since it too describes the candidate's accomplishments, includes among others: articles citing the individual's work and the reasons for its importance; reviews of books, particularly when the reviews are in depth; reprinting of articles or parts of books in collections of distinguished contributions to a subject, and so forth.

      3. Professional Activity Prior to University Employment

         Scholarly productivity for promotion to the rank of associate professor generally cannot be based on work completed in earning the doctorate or other appropriate terminal degree prior to arrival at the University of Delaware. The research involved for that degree was one of the reasons for initial employment; promotion, on the other hand, must consider evidence of scholarship accomplished subsequent to that performed for the degree.

         This requirement does not mean that publications based on the dissertation should be totally ignored. Rather, the candidate must offer clear evidence of substantial scholarly achievement made after the awarding of the doctorate or other appropriate terminal degree.

         Like research, any prior teaching or service plays its role in the hiring contract, the level of monies involved, and the responsibilities attached to it. Prior activity plays little or no role in the promotion except to form a meaningful context against which later development and accomplishments can be judged. The point is simply that there must be evidence of continuing productivity.

      4. Prestigious Grants

         The acquisition of research or other grants, such as Guggenheim or NSF awards, is obviously a testimony to a person's competence and reputation and should be described in the dossiers.

      5. Unpublished Material

         Unpublished material may in some circumstances be an important indicator of a candidate's competence and achievements. Its evaluation, however, must be especially thoughtful. In particular, if it is to be a formal part of the dossier, it should be sent to outside reviewers for a critical assessment of its merits. The comments are meant to apply to unpublished manuscripts as well as so-called "in house" publications, such as research reports that are not subject to an external review process.

   3. Service

      Service includes innumerable types of activities rendered for the benefit of the department, college, university, community, profession, or nation. Willingness to undertake such work and competence in performing it are taken into account in the promotion process.

      Evaluating service, however, is difficult. Promotion and tenure committees need to know when there has been an outstanding level of service that has taken appreciable effort or service that has been done in some way that can be noted as excellent. Other than that, the main concern is that a person has fulfilled his or her service commitment under the criteria of the academic unit concerned and that the unit is satisfied. Administrative responsibilities can be considered as part of the service component, but they may not be used as a substitute for accomplishment in a scholarly discipline.