The FAQ has eight sections and a webpage is setup for each. They include links to background material, e.g., links to what the colleges have to say about a particular topic. Each section has between five and thirteen questions and takes less than five minutes to read. Trickier topics are shaded yellow..
There is a Qualtrics questionnaire associated with each section. It is essentially a copy of the corresponding webpage (including links) with a yes/no question inserted to indicate support for the proposed process or statement. Provision is made for comments.
If you exit a questionnaire before completing it, then your responses are saved and you can return to it later.
The questionnaires are totally anonymized. If you would like to post a comment related to one of the eight sections, then visit the corresponding webpage. Thus, if you have something to share about student letters, you should go here and post your insight.
Please post below comments and insights that are about the overall project or which do not align with any of the 8 sections.
| A1 |
What is the best way to go about recruiting tenure track faculty? |
| A2 |
What aspects of the tenure process need to be discussed during the recruitment process? |
| A3 |
How should a recruit with incoming experience be advised about a reduced probationary period? |
| A4 |
When is it appropriate to hire someone at the associate-professor-without-tenure level? |
| A5 |
For joint hires, what factors need to be considered? |
| A6 |
What should be covered in the offer letter? |
| B1 |
Why is mentoring important along the tenure track? |
| B2 |
What is the difference between formal and informal mentoring? |
| B3 |
What should the mentor communicate to the mentee about research? |
| B4 |
What should the mentor communicate to the mentee about teaching? |
| B5 |
What should the mentor communicate to the mentee about service? |
| B6 |
How should the Chair handle a mentoring situations that are not going well? |
| B7 |
Should the conversations between mentor and mentee be private? |
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| B8 |
Why are annual reviews important? |
| B9 |
How should they be structured? |
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| B10 |
Why is it important to have a rigorous three-year review? |
| B11 |
What about switching to an RTE track? |
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| B12 |
How do leaves affect the tenure clock?? |
| C1 |
When is a tenure review normally initiated? |
| C2 |
What about staging an early review? |
| C3 |
What about delaying the review? |
| C4 |
What about discouraging the review? |
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| C5 |
What should the CV include? |
| C6 |
What are some guidelines for writing a good research statement? |
| C7 |
What are the attributes of a good teaching statement? |
| C8 |
What are the attributes of a good extension statement? |
| C9 |
How should service contributions be documented? |
| C10 |
How should a commitment to diversity and inclusion be expressed? |
| C11 |
What are the rules about updating the various documents that are supplied by the candidate? |
| D1 |
What is the purpose of the external letters? |
| D2 |
Who should be involved in the production of the external reviewer list? |
| D3 |
What are some of the key factors to consider when considering a possible external reviewer? |
| D4 |
What about having more than one reviewer from the same academic unit at another school? |
| D5 |
What about letters from Cornell faculty? |
| D6 |
What about letters from reviewers who are unfamiliar with the tenure system? |
| D7 |
How many external letters should their be in the dossier? |
| D8 |
How should the department produce the final list of external reviewers? |
| D9 |
How should the candidate go about producing a list of potential external reviewers? |
| D10 |
What about the candidate’s do-not-contact list? |
| D11 |
Should a template version of the solicitation letter be publicized? |
| D12 |
Are there certain questions that should not be posed to the external reviewer? |
| D13 |
How much of the dossier should be made available to the external reviewer and in what form? |
| E1 |
How should peer review of teaching be organized and reported? |
| E2 |
How should course evaluation data be presented? |
| E3 |
Should some number of former students be asked to write? |
| E4 |
How should the candidate’s ability to supervise projects and research be assessed? |
| E5 |
How should the candidate’s mentoring and advising skills be assessed? |
| F1 |
How do you evaluate research? |
| F2 |
How do you evaluate teaching? |
| F3 |
How do you evaluate service? |
| F4 |
How do you evaluate commitment to equity and diversity? |
| F5 |
How should the external letter rate-of-return be interpreted? |
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| F6 |
When does the Chair call the first meeting and how should it be structured? |
| F7 |
Should “straw polls” be part of the deliberations? |
| F8 |
Should the final vote of the tenured faculty be by secret ballot? |
| F9 |
How should the votes of those unable to attend the meetings be assessed? |
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| F10 |
How should the vote tally be interpreted? |
| F11 |
Should the results of the vote be known only to the chair and those downstream in the review? |
| F12 |
Should the Chair’s letter be shared with the tenured faculty before sending it to the Dean? |
| G1 |
What is an ad hoc committee? |
| G2 |
What are the rules associated with the size and make up of the ad hoc committee? |
| G3 |
Is the Dean obliged to form an Ad Hoc Committee? |
| G4 |
How might the Dean charge the Ad Hoc Committee? |
| G5 |
Can the Ad Hoc Committee request additional information? |
| G6 |
What happens if the Dean’s decision is positive? |
| G7 |
What happens if the Dean’s decision is negative? |
| H1 |
What is FACTA? |
| H2 |
How does FACTA work if the Dean’s decision is positive? |
| H3 |
How does FACTA work if the Dean’s decision is negative? |
| H4 |
What does the case get to the the Trustee level? |
I am glad that the process includes asking students for letters. But this brings up a concern about students. Not all students have an understanding of the different titles of their teachers (assistant vs. associate vs. full professor, lecturer vs. senior lecturer, etc.). Certainly not all students understand the processes for gaining tenure and promotion nor the standards proposed for these by the AAUP. The university should do something to ensure that students will understand all these matters. This includes undergraduates and grad students, those who hope for a career in university teaching and those who don’t, those who are from this country and those who are from abroad, those who have studied at Cornell from the beginning and those who have transferred from other institutions, those who are asked to write letters about their professors and those who are not.