Revised Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

Dear Colleagues,

In an effort to clarify the expectations for tenure and promotion and to explicitly address promotion expectations and procedures for non-tenure track faculty, the VCEA Leadership has reviewed and revised our promotion and tenure guidelines. We have revised both the set of guidelines applicable to engineering and computer science disciplines, and the set aimed at the design disciplines and construction management. Please read the revised guidelines on tenure and promotion.

In revising our guidelines, we have done a few things:

1. Eliminated previous places where our guidelines were redundant with guidelines already published in the faculty manual and, instead, referred to the relevant sections in the faculty manual;
2. Eliminated the requirement that the college-level advisory committee would include a member from outside the college, and added the requirement that faculty representation from both Tri-Cities and Vancouver must be included on the advisory committee
3. Added considerable additional information regarding the evaluation categories and criteria for tenure and promotion to both associate and full professor
4. Included explicitly patents and other measures of intellectual property development and dissemination as metrics of performance
5. Established tier I and tier II metrics for prioritization of evaluation criteria
6. The School of Design and Construction also revised its guidelines in a parallel process, and those guidelines are included in this document
7. Included an entirely new section on supplementary procedures and criteria for indefinite term and fixed term faculty
   1. Included further discussion of these types of appointments as they are applied in the VCEA. Explained how the titles of instructor, senior instructor, clinical, and research faculty are applied in VCEA and the expectations and procedures for promotion for each.

For tenure-track faculty that were hired under the previous guidelines, we believe that these revised guidelines will greatly clarify expectations; however, current tenure-track faculty members will have the option of being reviewed for tenure either under the new guidelines or the guidelines that were included in their offer letter. All new offers beginning immediately will be covered by these new guidelines.

If you have any questions on the revised guidelines, please feel free to discuss with your chair or director, or an associate dean, or with me.

Sincerely,

Candis Claiborn
Dean, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture