University Criteria
In 1983, the Faculty Council of Representatives (the forerunner of the current Faculty Senate) adopted a resolution expressing its concern for affirmative action in tenure appointments. Subsequently, the resolution was incorporated into the University Criteria for Tenure Appointments as follows:
It is not possible to establish, at the university level, detailed criteria for tenure appointments for the many academic units in the university. The basic criteria are clear: excellence in carrying out the responsibilities of the position, and unusual promise for continued achievement. Since the requirements and criteria of a department may change, each decision is a separate action and independent of any other current or previous decisions within or outside the department.
The responsibilities of a faculty member include teaching, research and other scholarly achievement, public service, advising students, and contributing to the department, the college, and the university. Not all faculty members are assigned all these responsibilities. The emphasis given to each responsibility, as determined by existing circumstances, varies among the colleges and departments of the university and may change within a department.
The department, the chairperson, and the dean have the responsibility of weighing the different roles of each faculty member and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates for tenure, taking into account the mission and needs of the department and the college. These include the interests of the unit and the university to promote racial, ethnic and gender diversity among the faculty. But regardless of how the department weighs the relevant factors in any particular case, no candidate may be granted tenure who does not meet the requirements for overall excellence. Failure to meet any of the diversity factors may not be used as a negative element in the evaluation of any candidate.
Given the rigorous standards for tenure at Cornell, individuals whose performance has been acceptable, or even of high quality, may not receive promotion. Many candidates for tenure, in evaluating their own progress, often develop unrealistically positive attitudes relative to their chances for promotion. On the other hand, across the university, only about one-half of the candidates for tenure are promoted.
Since a tenure appointment is not a right, and since it could result in a collegial relationship within the department for a period of decades, the department faculty has considerable latitude in reasons for making a negative recommendation. However, such factors as race, color, creed, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, or disability must not be a basis for such decisions.
Time Period Prior to Review for Tenure
The initial appointment to the Cornell faculty of a highly qualified person who is already credited with significant achievements may be at the rank of associate or even full professor, but without indefinite tenure. Such appointments are for a limited term of not more than five years, typically in a probationary tenure status. That is, the award of tenure is deferred until the faculty member and the university become well-acquainted and a review leading to the long-term tenure decision is possible.
More commonly, however, tenure is awarded, along with promotion to the rank of associate professor, after a person has spent a period in probationary tenure status as an assistant professor. The length of that period depends on the amount of professional experience the individual has acquired between earning the terminal degree in his or her field and the initial appointment as assistant professor. If that period is no more than a year or so, the candidate is usually reviewed for promotion and tenure in his or her sixth year at Cornell, typically the third year of the second term of appointment as assistant professor. Then, if the outcome is negative, a one-year terminal appointment is provided in the seventh year.
According to university bylaws, a faculty member may not hold the position of assistant professor for more than the equivalent of six years of full-time service, unless, in the judgment of the provost, a temporary extension is warranted.
A department is not bound to undertake a tenure review for all those on the tenure track. The appointment of a faculty member for a definite term may be terminated for reasons involving staffing patterns, the decline in relevance of a research area to the mission of the department, or lack of funds. In such a case, the faculty member should receive written notice as early as possible that there will be no review and should be given a one-year terminal appointment. He or she should be informed of other suitable open faculty positions in the university. The faculty member may appeal the decision not to conduct a tenure review. The procedures for such an appeal are attached as appendix four or may be located on the University Faculty website:
https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/files/2015/12/APPENDIX-4-1cjbflt.pdf
Review Process for Tenure
Permission to initiate a review for tenure must be obtained from the dean, because it commits the college or school to long-term support of the position. When a review for promotion to tenure is conducted, it is required to be thorough and well-documented, since the decision that is made is of far-reaching importance both to the individual and to the university. The first step in the process is a review of the candidate by the faculty of the department. For this purpose, and with the assistance of the candidate, a complete vita and list of publications are assembled, together with copies of the most relevant of the publications. Typically the candidate is asked to submit statements of goals and achievements in research, teaching, advising and extension/service. Documentation of success in teaching is collected, in the form of course-evaluation questionnaires and letters from both selected and randomly chosen graduate and undergraduate students. Evidence of service to the community, the department, the college, and the university is compiled. Letters are solicited from colleagues in the university and from outside experts to provide an evaluation of the quality of the candidate’s creative work and its impact on the scholarship of the field.
The aim of the review is to assess the achievements of the individual during his or her probationary period, as well as the promise shown for growth and further achievement. The detailed procedures by which the department conducts its assessment vary, but they must include the basic elements mentioned above as well as: (1) making the documentation gathered during the review available to the tenured faculty members of the department, (2) holding a meeting of the tenured faculty members for the announced purpose of discussing and voting on the promotion in question, and (3) taking the vote. There is no general prescription for interpreting the vote; some departments do not consider such a vote positive unless the margin of positive over negative votes is quite large. In any case, the department chairperson is not bound by the vote, though he or she must report it to the dean. The chairperson represents the department in making and explaining to the dean the department’s recommendation for or against the promotion.
If, after a tenure review is carried out, the department’s tentative tenure decision is negative, it is communicated to the candidate before being given to the dean, and the candidate has an opportunity to request a reconsideration by the department. The procedures for this are attached as appendix five or can be accessed at
https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/files/2016/01/NEGTENUREDECISION-205n6kl.pdf
After the department’s initial review and any reconsideration are completed, the decision is reviewed at the college level by the dean. If the department’s recommendation is positive, the dean must appoint an ad hoc committee of faculty members outside the department to study the evidence and advise him or her in 29 reaching a decision. Even if the department’s recommendation is negative, the candidate may still request that the dean appoint the ad hoc committee.
Faculty Advisory Committee on Tenure Appointments
Introduction
FACTA is a university-wide faculty committee that evaluates the quality and consistency of the evidence used to justify a recommendation for promotion. FACTA sends its judgments on each case to the Provost, who is responsible for the final recommendation to the Board of Trustees. To do its work responsibly, FACTA must receive the appropriate information in a timely way.
Timing of submission of materials
The due date issued by the Academic Personnel Policy Office to the Dean’s Offices is the guaranteed date for timely consideration. Dossiers submitted after the due date risk not being considered in time for the next Board of Trustees meeting. Dossiers received later than 5 academic weeks before the Board of Trustees meeting cannot be considered by FACTA. (Three weeks of this 5-week period are reserved for Trustees’ mailings, etc.)
Materials to be submitted
Checklist for dossier:
The materials listed below are expected for an internal candidate for promotion. Some of these materials may not be available or applicable for external candidates, but a CV, letters of evaluation in addition to references suggested by the candidate, as well as evaluations of teaching, should be provided as a minimum for external candidates.
Dean’s Recommendation
- Report of the ad-hoc committee, including the names of its members
- Transmittal letter from the Dean, addressing disagreements or matters of serious concern in the file
Departmental Recommendation
- Letter from the chair presenting the case for promotion and addressing disagreements and matters of serious concern in the file
- Departmental vote (including abstentions)
- Report of any departmental review committee
- Letters from department colleagues that are part of the review process
- Comment on quality of journals, presses, and other venues where the candidate’s work has appeared
CV
- A complete CV, including a list of publications and/or artistic work, funded research, extension work, and university, professional, and service activities
Candidate Statements
- Statements from the candidate about his/her research, teaching, advising, service, and (if applicable)
Appointment/Performance Review Letters
- Initial job description
- Appointment and reappointment letters
- Any subsequent change in the terms of appointment
- Any written responses by the candidate to the above
External evaluation letters
- All letters received from outside experts about scholarly, creative and extension work
- List of external evaluators solicited, indicating which were suggested by the candidate and which by the department
- A brief explanation of the evaluators’ qualifications and their relationship (if any) to the candidate
- A copy of the letter requesting evaluations
- The role of external evaluators is to assess the candidate’s accomplishments, stature in the field, and future promise. They should be given a charge that is as specific as possible and should be provided with as much material relating to the candidate’s performance as is conveniently possible (excluding other confidential evaluations). Although the candidate may suggest external reviewers, the tenure dossier should include at least five letters from peers outside Cornell who have not been closely associated with the candidate and who have not been selected by the candidate. In selecting external evaluators, departments should select at least some well-established leaders in the larger discipline who are not working in the same subdiscipline as the candidate. The purpose of these evaluations is to understand the breadth of impact and promise of the candidate’s .
Teaching
- List of courses taught, with enrollments
- Summary of teaching evaluations, prepared by someone other than the candidate.
- Letters from students and advisees
- Copy of letter(s) requesting student evaluations
- Assessments by colleagues of teaching and course materials (e.g. syllabi, project assignments, homework sets, field studies, lab experiments)
Recommended (optional) Materials
In addition, FACTA has found the following information especially helpful:
An assessment of the candidate’s contributions to co-authored publications, explaining the conventions of the field in listing authors.
Comments on candidate’s efforts to improve instruction.
Statement of how student evaluators were selected, the rate of response, and the usual rate of response in the department.
Data on how candidate’s teaching evaluations compare to those of other faculty teaching the same or similar courses.
Physical format of the dossier
Dossiers should be submitted in a ring binder with clearly labeled index tabs marking major headings as noted above. Additional material should follow these sections and be similarly marked with clearly labeled index tabs.
Faculty Members in Probationary Tenure Status
Most commonly, a person entering a tenure-track academic career is given a three-year appointment at the assistant professor level. Toward the end of each year of this appointment, the faculty member should review his or her progress with the department chairperson or with a mentor among the department’s senior faculty members. In the third year, the department conducts a more thorough performance review. If the outcome is positive, it is normal for a renewal for a second three-year term to be recommended for approval by the dean.
If the outcome of the review is negative, the faculty member must be given a terminal appointment that allows him or her to serve two full academic terms after written notice of nonrenewal. If the faculty member clearly is not meeting expectations, the notice not to renew the appointment may be given earlier than the third year. In that case, the next year of the initial appointment serves as the required two terms of notice.
The procedures for appealing a decision not to reappoint a nontenured faculty member who holds an initial probationary-tenure-status appointment is located on the University Faculty website at
https://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/files/2016/01/NOTTORENEWNONTENAPPT-259vxar.pdf .
