Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

Standards of Achievement

The Indiana University Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering in Indianapolis, adheres to the IUPUI campus guidelines for promotion and tenure (P&T). School standards supersede campus standards, and departmental standards supersede School standards, only insofar as they require a higher or more substantive level of academic achievement than the campus guidelines do. This current document replaces all previous documents pertaining to promotion and tenure approved for the School of Informatics and the School of Library and Information Science.

All candidates for academic advancement are advised to study the campus guidelines to understand the many quantitative and qualitative ways candidates may document and substantiate their achievement. It is the candidate’s responsibility to prepare for reviewers a dossier that accurately documents and persuasively explains the candidate’s academic achievement.

Academic advancement at IUPUI is awarded for excellence in scholarship. In line with campus standards, the School embraces a broad definition of scholarship, based on its conception as

1. the creation of new knowledge;
2. the dissemination of this knowledge in appropriate external venues;
3. the determination of its excellence through external peer review; and
4. documented demonstration the significant impact of the knowledge on thought and/or practice in its discipline, profession, or field of application beyond the campus.

Like the campus, the School accepts the broad senses of knowledge as articulated in Boyer’s model of scholarship, and candidates are advised to study this model.

Scholarly excellence is the goal of academic work, and the final determinant of a candidate’s qualification for academic advancement. However, because the concept of excellence can be multi-faceted or subject to a wide range of interpretations, candidates must explain the impact of their scholarship. In broad terms, the impact of scholarship can be seen in its value and/or significance. Value is generally found in its use, practice, method, or application and is demonstrated when a scholarly product is accepted beyond the campus as useful to peers or to a broader audience of those knowledgeable in the field.

Significance is generally found in the thought and theory that advances professional or disciplinary understanding in its field. Value and significance are often intertwined and may not be easily distinguished from each other. The School is an academic institution and as such, its standards for academic advancement recognize first and foremost the importance of review by external scholarly peers in the most appropriate academic venues. In this document, the School offers these definitions for candidates and reviewers to evaluate excellence and impact.

With all this in mind, the School requires the following for academic advancement:

• Consistent effort to generate scholarship from the candidate’s academic work and to disseminate it in high-impact peer-reviewed external venues and/or applications.
• Documentation of the impact of this academic work and associated scholarship on thought and/or practice in its discipline, profession, or field of application beyond the campus.
• Consistent effort to attract external support to advance the candidate’s academic work and/or to further the mission of the candidate’s department, School, campus, and university.

Candidates for tenure must document a rising trajectory of effort to generate scholarship and to attract external support, and a sufficient degree of success in disseminating that scholarship in peer-reviewed venues. These efforts must be sufficient to achieve for the candidate an emerging national or international reputation in the candidate’s declared area of excellence (research, teaching, or service–or through the balanced case).

Candidates for promotion to full rank must document a sustained national or international reputation for scholarly excellence and impact beyond the campus demonstrated by ongoing achievement in the candidate’s declared area of excellence (research, teaching or service – or through the balanced case).

The Process

Candidates for promotion and tenure are responsible for knowing the campus, School, and departmental standards, processes, and deadlines for promotion and tenure. In a normal progression toward tenure, candidates shall follow the procedural calendar explained below for preparing and presenting tenure dossiers. Because the School grants tenure and promotion to associate rank simultaneously, probationary candidates at the assistant rank must apply for promotion and tenure at the same time. Candidates for tenure who already hold associate rank are not automatically considered as candidates for promotion to full rank. Candidates for promotion to full rank or to senior lecturer or to clinical associate, although not bound by the “tenure clock” of scheduled progress in years, must follow the same procedural calendar for the preparation and presentation of their dossiers.

A. The spring semester of the fifth year of candidate’s probationary appointment

1. Candidates prepare their dossiers by the format guidelines of the IUPUI campus.
2. By May 1, candidates present their dossiers to the Departmental Chair. For example, a candidate appointed to the School in the fall of 2010 would present a tenure dossier to the chair by May 1, 2015, which would be presented to the Department and School committees in the fall of 2015, to be reviewed at the campus level in the spring of 2016. Candidates who begins their probationary appointment in the spring semester of any year shall follow the same tenure schedule as candidates who begin in the fall of the same calendar year.
3. The Department Chair prepares a list of at least eight external reviewers for the tenure candidate.
4. By May 15, Department Chairs send a solicitation letter, candidate’s CV, examples of scholarship, and a condensed copy of the tenure dossier to reviewers. Because of the frequent difficulty in obtaining external reviews, this list may extend to 10 or more external reviewers. Departmental Chairs shall attempt to the greatest degree possible to identify reviewers considered experts in the candidate’s discipline and declared area of excellence. Departmental Chairs shall consult with candidates to ensure that any potential reviewer is “at arm’s length” from the candidate, that is, the reviewer has no vested interest in the candidate’s academic success (see IUPUI guidelines). Candidates may suggest reviewers; however, Departmental Chairs are under no obligation to use them. The candidate shall be given the opportunity to request the exclusion of particular reviewers, but only for nonacademic reasons, for example, because of past personal or financial associations. Although Departmental Chairs are under no obligation to comply with such requests, the candidate may officially note his or her request at that time, and this note shall be forwarded to subsequent internal reviewers.

B. The fall semester of the sixth probationary year

1. By August 20, candidates submit their full dossier for review by the Department Chair and the Department Promotion and Tenure Committee. Although candidates may have incrementally revised the dossier over the summer, and included new factual information (e.g., a record of new publications or grants), the relevant sections of this dossier presented to the Departmental Committee must be substantially the same as the dossier distributed to external reviewers.
2. By August 29, Departments shall assemble a Department Promotion and Tenure Committee to evaluate the dossier, either by election or as a committee of the whole. Department chairs do not appoint committee members. A Department P&T Committees shall be assembled for each candidate. For years in which more than one candidate presents a dossier, different committees may be constituted for different dossiers. Committees shall include enough members to ensure that the dossier is evaluated with five positive or negative votes, not counting abstentions. To meet this vote total and to ensure that dossiers are evaluated by those familiar with the candidate’s academic discipline(s), committees may include qualified faculty from outside the Department or School who must be tenured at IUPUI or IUB. The Department Chair in consultation with the School Executive Associate Dean (EAD) shall determine when such supplemental members are necessary and prepare a list of candidates. The EAD shall solicit these supplemental members. Departmental committees may not include the Department Chair or a faculty member holding an administrative appointment in the School of Informatics and Computing, Indianapolis, at any level (chairs, associate deans, and deans).
3. By August 30, Department P&T Committees shall convene to evaluate dossiers. Committees shall deliver their reports to the Department Chair by September 14. Committees shall be convened by the Department Chair. Thereafter, the Chair is prohibited from participating in committee deliberations. Committees shall elect a chair to serve for the duration of the evaluation of each dossier. Committees shall evaluate each dossier, vote, and prepare a written report of the deliberations, thoroughly explaining the reasons for the votes whether positive, negative, or abstentions. All members of the committee shall sign this report to attest to its accurate account of the deliberations. This report will be delivered to the Department Chair by September 14.
4. By September 17, the Department Chair shall deliver the committee report to the candidate.
5. By September 20, the Department Chair shall prepare a Chair’s Evaluation of the candidate’s dossier and share this evaluation with the candidate.
6. By September 25, the Department Chair shall deliver the Chair’s Evaluation and the rest of the dossier to the School P&T Committee at the Indianapolis campus. The School P&T Committee will convene to review the entire dossier including the Department P&T Committee’s Report and Chair’s Evaluation. The School Committee comprises all tenured faculty members holding appointments at the Luddy, Indianapolis, except those with administrative appointments, who are Department Chairs of the candidate’s department, or who formally evaluate the academic performance of the candidate in the course of their academic duties. The committee Chair shall be elected by the School P&T Committee at the beginning of each academic year and shall preside during all deliberations that year. Committees shall evaluate each dossier, vote, and prepare a written report of their deliberations, thoroughly explaining the reasons for the votes whether positive, negative, or abstentions. All members of the committee shall sign this report to attest to its accurate account of the deliberations.
7. By the third Friday in October, the School Committee shall deliver its report to the Executive Associate Dean of the School at the Indianapolis campus and to the Dean of the School.
8. By the last Friday in October, the EAD and Dean shall prepare independent evaluations of the candidate’s dossier. The EAD shall share these reports with the candidate.
9. By the last Friday in October, the EAD and the Dean shall deliver all previous reports, documents, and the full dossier to the IUPUI Office of Academic Affairs.

The composition of the P&T Committees

The P&T Committees

Tenured faculty members are the ones who make up the promotion and tenure (P&T) committees of a unit. The P&T committee at the department level consists of all tenured faculty in that department, while the P&T committee at the Luddy Indianapolis school level comprises all tenured faculty in the school. The voting procedures follow campus policy, prohibiting members from voting for candidates applying for a higher rank than themselves, and members can only vote once per case. The campus policy requires that a P&T committee must have a minimum of four yes or no votes to be considered of sufficient size. Usually, both department-level and schoollevel P&T committees meet and vote for a case. However, if the department lacks enough tenured faculty to vote, only a school-level P&T committee is acceptable for promotion-only cases. Threeyear review cases may be reviewed also by one P&T committee at the School level.

All tenured faculty in the School are eligible to serve on the Luddy Indianapolis school-level P&T committee. Each department’s faculty should elect two representatives among its tenured faculty to serve on the school-level P&T committee to ensure sufficient votes and disciplinary balance. The department-level P&T committee consists of all tenured faculty in the department who are not representing the department on the school-level P&T committee.

Inclusion of external members

If a department or school lacks enough tenured faculty or requires disciplinary expertise, the P&T committee may include qualified faculty from outside the department or school. However, candidates cannot have a role in identifying or soliciting additional members. If most members are external to the school, it is recommended that at least the committee chair is a tenured faculty member in the school.

Inclusion of lecturer-track representatives

For lecturer-track cases, the P&T committees may include one or two voting representatives from the lecturer-track faculty who are at least at the rank sought by the candidate, with the majority of voting members being tenured faculty. When possible, consistently with campus practice, the lecturer-track representatives should be at full rank.

Importance of confidentiality

The confidentiality of the P&T committee’s composition, meetings, notes, discussion and deliberation is vital to maintain the integrity and collegiality of the review process. P&T committee members are bound to the confidentiality of the committee proceedings. A member should not discuss with the candidate about their case at any time before, during or after the committee meeting and deliberations.

These guidelines take precedence over any other language in the P&T guidelines that speaks about the composition of the P&T committee.