Faculty Workshop: Promotion and Tenure

1. Faculty Workshop: Promotion and Tenure Understanding the Process, Your Role In It, and Ensuring Consistent and Fair Dossier Evaluations

2. Intended Audience and Workshop Agenda Workshop targeted to faculty who will be members of their Departmental P&T Committees. Agenda: Promotion and Tenure Process Overview Role of Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee Promotion and Tenure Requirements Departmental Committee Operational Requirements and Recommendations Communicating Departmental Outcomes Effectively Ensuring Consistent Application of Standards, Policies and Procedures Q&A

3. Ground Rules - RESPECT Rule of three – 3 people speak before you Expect to learn something about yourself & others Speak clearly Participate honestly & openly Engage by listening and speaking Concise – keep your comments succinct Turn off your devices, or at least put away distractions!

4. Promotion and Tenure Process Overview* DH Solicits External Reviews^ Candidate Prepares Dossier August Department P&T Reviewsº September October DH Reviewsº Candidate Submits Dossier Candidate Submits Addendum November Dean Reviews December University P&T Reviewsº DH Shares Reviews with Candidate January Provost Reviews February Candidate May Submit ”Error in Fact” March Recommendations Submitted to President April * Defined in Section 8, Faculty Handbook ^ External letters of recommendation not disclosed to candidate º Internal letters of recommendation available for candidate review May BoT Reviews & Approves

5. Role of the Departmental Committee Defined in Section 8.1.3, Faculty Handbook The Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee reviews the promotion and/or tenure application taking into account the standards and practices of the Candidate’s discipline … and: in relation to guidelines and criteria established by the institution, evaluate the Candidate's research contributions, teaching effectiveness, and service to both internal and external communities; and make a written recommendation to the Department Head regarding the Candidate's progress toward, or suitability for promotion and/or tenure. The Departmental Promotion and Tenure Committee shall determine the process followed in producing this recommendation.

6. Promotion Requirements Minimum qualifications of each faculty rank are defined in the Faculty Handbook, Section 4.4 Additional considerations are defined in the Faculty Handbook, Sections 8.1.7 and 8.2.1. For T/TT faculty, the criteria are summarized as follows: “Promotion in rank at Mines for tenured and tenure-track faculty is based on the quality of a faculty member's overall performance in teaching, scholarship, and service, and the likelihood of continued growth in their accomplishments and their professional reputations nationally and internationally.”

7. Tenure Requirements Criteria for tenure are set forth in the Faculty Handbook, Section 8.1.2: The factors that shall be considered by Mines in making a tenure decision shall include, but not be limited to, the following: the Candidate's academic degree and other professional attainments; the quality and trajectory of the Candidate's performance in teaching, scholarship and service; the likelihood that the Candidate will continue to produce at or above his or her current level and continue to grow professionally; the Candidate's progress toward establishment of a national and international professional recognition; the Candidate's potential for achievement of greater professional recognition; and the compatibility of the Candidate's academic expertise with the long-term, programmatic goals and requirements of Mines.

8. Definition of Activities Relevant to the Criteria: Faculty Senate Guidance Section 6.5 – Academic Affairs Procedures Manual Constructed by a faculty committee charged by the Faculty Senate with results endorsed by the Senate and Academic Affairs administration Provides guidance to candidates as to how they should document, and to committees as to how they should review and evaluate attainment of broader institutional expectations for promotion and tenure Every member of a Departmental Committee should read this document prior to reviewing candidate dossiers.

9. Definition of Institutional Criteria: Sample - Successful Teaching “Examples of successful teaching for those promoted to Associate Professor with tenure may include: Dedicated, high-quality student instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels as demonstrated by the following: student evaluations, teaching portfolio that includes examples of teaching methods and/or effectiveness, teaching statements, and teaching awards. Designing or leading of classroom activities that enhance the educational experience or that are important to the teaching mission, including leading undergraduate and graduate independent studies, advising senior design teams, teaching field session, etc. Development and implementation of highly effective or innovative teaching methods and incorporation of feedback from formalized assessments, where appropriate. Development of teaching infrastructure. …”

10. Ensuring Consistent Application of Criteria and Fair and Equitable Dossier Evaluations Discussion topics: How does implicit bias come into play? How are P&T Expectations conveyed to the applicant? What are common discussions in the committee?

11. Behind the scenes • Likeability: Since you know the applicant, be careful how personal information may influence your evaluation • Likeability often hurts women, doesn’t typically affect men (Nimmesgern 2016, Wade 2001) • Mentoring: Does your department have a formal mentoring program? How do the applicants know what is expected of them for P&T? If there was there a change in DH, how did the department ensure that the candidate received consistent advice and guidance? • Women and underrepresented faculty often have less access to informal mentoring, which can impact their access to information on the expectations for tenure (McDonald et al. 2013, Elliott et al. 2011)

12. Common Discussions in Committee • Parental Leave: How do you take family or parental leave into consideration? How do you know whether or not someone stopped their tenure clock? • Previous Work: How do you determine if previous work is counted? (or discounted?) • Tip: check the handbook & procedures manual • The Color of Money: Are there different values placed on different sources of money? Different types of funding (e.g. an NSF education grant versus an NSF Engineering grant?) • Is this value system documented for the candidate? How does the applicant know?

13. Common Discussions in Committee • Collaboration: How do you value (or discount) collaborative research and publications? • Collaborative work done by women and underrepresented faculty is more likely to be attributed to collaborators, compared to their white male counterparts (Sarsons 2015) • Was the value of collaboration clearly described for the applicant? • Scholarship: What types of publications are valued? Is the H-index important? What author order is expected (i.e. are grad students first author)? • Women are often less cited than men. This negatively impacts women’s H-index, and is beyond their control. (King et al. 2017) • What are the scholarship expectations for teaching faculty? Were these expectations made clear to the applicant?

14. Common Discussions in Committee • Service: How is service valued (or undervalued)? • Women are often given and take on higher service loads than men, which in turn impacts their scholarship (Guarino et al. 2017) • Teaching: What information do you look at when evaluating teaching? Only Question #11? Or other information in the dossier? • Research shows that Question #11 is a poor measure of effective teaching. Despite being effective teachers, women are often judged more negatively and harshly by students (Boring et al. 2016, Uttl et al. 2017, Boring 2017) • External letters: Have you given your external letter writers guidance to remove bias from their letter and evaluation? How do you evaluate letters? • Rubric: Do you use a rubric to evaluate all the components of a dossier? • Using a rubric is one way to reduce implicit bias (Jackson 2016, Uhlmann et al. 2005)

15. The P&T process: Judgmental or Supportive? • To quote Dean Moore: ”For too long our tenure process has been judgmental and adversarial. If we could be more supportive and make this a positive process, we would probably foster a better community and improve retention of faculty” • Why do Women Leave Science & Engineering? (Hunt 2015): “Women’s higher relative exit rate is driven by engineering rather than science, and that half the gap can be explained by the relatively greater exit rate from engineering of women dissatisfied with pay and promotion opportunities. Family-related constraints and dissatisfaction with working conditions are found to be only secondary factors. • Women who have negative or unclear experiences are more likely to leave the institution.

16. Clarifying P&T expectationsAn initiative from Academic Affairs • Provost Holz has asked departments to craft documents that define P&T expectations • These guidelines should be field specific and provide more detail than the procedures manual • Exact numbers aren’t required, but the common questions in the previous slides should be addressed (e.g. the color of money, the value of educational research, collaboration, etc) • As this is best practice across higher education, departments should google to find examples.

17. What causes the inequities? Implicit Bias: We ALL – men and women – perceive and treat people differently based on their social and cultural identity group memberships

18. What is implicit/unconscious Bias? We ALL – men and women – perceive and treat people differently based on their social and cultural identity group memberships • Implicit biases are easily triggered evaluative beliefs or stereotypes that can influence our understanding of others and our behaviors toward them without our full awareness. • The key distinction is that the operation of implicit bias is largely hidden from our consciousness. A Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW5s_-Nl3JE

19. Some Strategies Adapted from the NCAC “You’re Biased” • Lighten up. Avoid Deadlines. • Tight deadlines, stress, or high emotions tend to cause us to show bias along with a lack of focus. Recognize your emotions and take notes or summarize… • Look inward. Check yourself. • Learn about your implicit bias: Take the Harvard implicit bias test https://implicit.harvard.edu • Think about your bias. Become aware of feelings you have about a student without reason. Think about what it felt like when you were once pre-judged. Think about the conditions or environment when it occurs. Some experts recommend “counter imaging”—intentionally developing an entirely different thought or image … than your first impulse suggests. • Clarify the base expectations amongst the committee. • Not having good information about specific criteria under which you should be assessing them can cause your biases to have more power.

20. Implicit Bias Research shows that people tend to associate favorable qualities with their own “in-groups,” (affinity bias) it is also quite possible to internalize negative biases toward one’s own group, particularly if it has been stigmatized by the broader culture. Greenwald (2006) California Law Review and Greenwald (2014) American Psychologist

21. Implicit Bias Research • 1. Milkman (2015) Journal of Applied Psychology and 2. Reeves (2014)Yellow Paper Series (Chicago: Nextions) An example of file review (reviewed writing sample w deliberate errors; half reviewed white name, half reviewed black name – all else the same)1 readers saw what they expected to see (implicit bias: greater competency, white; lesser competency, black) found evidence to validate what they expected to see as well (confirmation bias: fewer errors, white; more errors, black).

22. Some Strategies to Manage Implicit Bias Workshops by Devine et al. From: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Yes-You-Have-Implicit-Biases/241797 A summary: • Stereotype replacement — in which you recognize and label your biased behavior or thoughts and replace them with nonprejudicial responses. • Counter-stereotypic imaging — in which you imagine examples of people who defy the stereotypes of their groups. • Perspective taking — in which you try to adopt the perspective of someone in a marginalized group.

23. Rec Letters & Committee Letter Remember from the literature: Rec Letters written… for men have more professionalstatements for women have more personalstatements Think about the literature and implicit bias when you WRITE your committee letter And when you read letters

24. Departmental Committee Operational Requirements and Recommendations Committee Composition • By common practice, the Department Head appoints Chair and charges the Committee • All eligible faculty are required to participate except: • those on leave (i.e., medical, unpaid, or administrative), and • those on sabbatical (not required but may choose to participate) • Faculty eligibility is defined in Faculty Handbook (8.1.3, 8.2.2) and the Procedures Manual (6.1) • No department heads, no emeritus faculty, no transitional faculty

25. Departmental Committee Operational Requirements and Recommendations Operations (Procedures Manual 6.1) Committees may choose their own process procedures (e.g., when to meet, how to manage review of dossiers, voting, etc.) Faculty with COIs should recuse themselves from discussion and voting of individual dossiers. Faculty with COI should disclose this to the Chair With the exception of COIs, all faculty are expected to render an opinion on all candidates (no abstentions) Only vote tally reported in recommendation letter(s).

26. Departmental Committee Operational Requirements and Recommendations Departmental Committees must produce at least one formal recommendation letter for each candidate. This letter must: Define the outcome of committee deliberations and document the vote tally supporting this outcome Address if and then how the candidate meets the requirements for promotion and/or tenure as defined in the Handbook and articulated in the Procedures Manual Provide overall context of the standards commonly applied for promotion and/or tenure in the discipline In the case of a split vote, an additional letter summarizing the dissenting view must also be produced and submitted to the DH

27. Departmental Committee Operational Considerations Candidate Questions: Committee may ask candidate for additional information and clarifications. Document question and candidate response as part of recommendation letter. Process Questions: If Committee has process questions, Chair should reach out to Boyd or Walker for advice and recommendations. Committee Meeting Notes, Drafts and Emails: May be subject to disclosure in response to public records requests or discovery requests in litigation. Recommend developing committee protocol for record retention after recommendation voted on and finalized in written form. Confidentiality and Disclosures: Candidate is given Department and DH recommendations and has the opportunity to respond to correct factual errors. May seek additional information through post-review appeal process; however, no external letters or identities of external reviewers are provided to the candidate.