What is the difference between tenure and promotion

The conferring of Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor obliges the University to support the career of the Member and it obliges the Member to continue to perform in a manner deserving of that support. In considering a Member for Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor, consideration will be given to the individual Member's life-time contribution in the areas defined in Article Faculty Member Rights and Responsibilities.

Each candidate for Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor is expected to establish a record of performance in each of Teaching, Scholarship, and Service.

The Dean will notify the Member on an annual basis that both the Dean and the Chair are available to mentor the Member. Promotion to Professor recognizes long-term, established, and outstanding Scholarship. In considering a Member for Promotion to Professor, consideration will be given to the individual Member's life-time contribution in the areas defined in Article Faculty Member Rights and Responsibilities.

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University of Luxembourg University of Nottingham ETH Zurich Ghent University Fraunhofer IIS, Erlangen In general, they do not evaluate your work specifically — the external referees and the faculty in your department do that.

The promotion and tenure policy summarizes the nature of the review above the department:. This process is described in the campus policy on promotion and tenure document, Provost Communication 9: Promotion and Tenure.

You should be able to obtain a copy from your department. What can I do to maximize my chances of gaining tenure here? A decision to grant tenure is a long-term commitment to a faculty member by an institution. At the University of Illinois, we use three primary criteria for making these judgments:.

Illinois is a university with global recognition. Therefore, faculty must be able to achieve at the highest levels of excellence. We hired you with the idea that you can achieve at a high level, and we will be investing in you throughout your probationary period to encourage you to demonstrate your abilities.

Unless your appointment is service-oriented, you should focus on teaching and research in your early years. When service is undertaken, it is best if it is closely integrated with your research area. If you are in a service-based unit, like the Cooperative Extension Service, work with your department head and dean to identify specific criteria and processes for demonstrating excellence in your practice within the first six months of your probationary period.

When the time comes to assess your promotion dossier, review committees will be seeking substantiation of a commitment to quality teaching and evidence of your distinction and visibility as a scholar in your field. Consult with your unit head for advice about the best way to demonstrate your achievements that committees can assess.

What do reviewing committees look for in a dossier? Within Your Unit: Departments and disciplines vary within institutionally set boundaries in what they seek in a successful case.

Different fields have different research cultures and patterns of publication that affect expectations about the quantity and type of research. As a matter of career development, your choices for publication submissions and conference attendance should include an assessment of whether the top people in your area read or participate in those venues.

It is highly desirable to assure that, at the time of the tenure assessment; the best people in your field have had an opportunity to view your work before it is sent to them as part of the assessment process.

Contrary to popular belief, this does not involve counting papers and awarding tenure to those with the highest numbers. It does involve an assessment of whether your record demonstrates a body of important work, with a significant theme or themes that shows your evolution and growth as a scholar, along with sufficient productivity to suggest long-term continuation of that pattern. Thus, a large number of papers either on unrelated topics or on the same very narrow topic will not necessarily be viewed favorably by a promotion and tenure review committee.

The review committee will also weigh heavily the judgments provided in the external letters of reference, and it will assess the prominence of the letter writers. Positive letters from acknowledged experts in institutions of comparable quality will outweigh glowing letters from scholars who are not very well known or regarded.

You and your unit head should devote significant thought to developing an appropriate pool of referees. Please pay special heed to the admonitions of Provost Communication 9: Promotion and Tenure and do not request or suggest letters from collaborators, former professors, or other people who could possibly be viewed as having a conflict of interest in your case.

Letters from persons of lower rank than you are seeking should not be solicited. For building a strong case, letters should be from full professors at peer institutions or from other acknowledged national and international experts in your field. What is more important, teaching, research or service?

This University is committed to excellence in all of these areas, but we recognize that equal excellence in each of them in individual cases is rare. It will be unusual and exceptional to award promotion and tenure merely based on strong performance in only one of these areas.

In every instance, the record of teaching, public engagement and scholarship should be thoroughly documented, with due deference to the college and the campus definition of what constitutes high quality in each category.

Several methods of evaluation should be used, and the record should be thorough enough to indicate not just past performance, but a high likelihood of continued excellence.

Our mechanisms for assessing each are different, however, and you should think about the ramifications of this as you move through your probationary years.

There is also the expectation at The Florida State University that a careful and detailed evaluation will occur at the end of the third year, specifically to serve as the basis for advice to the candidate on the progress being made toward a positive tenure evaluation.

In normal circumstances, the final tenure evaluation is conducted by scholars from across the university community and includes assessment by individuals from other universities.

The awarding of tenure means that the community of scholars has judged the candidate to have excelled in teaching, research, and service; that it has confidence in the individual's judgment; and that it welcomes the candidate into full community membership. On a practical level, the major difference between the untenured individual and the tenured one is that the latter can be removed only for "adequate cause.

This distinction is very important because each community of scholars forms its own definition of "adequate cause," specifically misconduct or incompetence.