Assistant Prof. 升 tenure 的标准

这是某位 Assistant Professor 升为 Associate Professor前，某大学商院的某系主任草拟的 report，发来给大家看看。由于当中牵扯很多个人信息，我已编辑过了，去掉了具体人名等

SUBJECT:
                Application for Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure -

                        Dr. ××××

The Collective Bargaining Agreement (Article 12, Sections 12.9 (C) and 12.13) and ××× College of Business guidelines provide the criteria by which the credentials of a candidate for promotion and/or tenure are to be measured.  For Associate Professor, there must be demonstrated evidence of full competence as a teacher and "the candidate shall demonstrate either: (a) significant scholarship in addition to his or her dissertation....; or (b) outstanding intellectual leadership beyond the University community; or (c) exceptional achievement as a teacher."

I submit that Dr. ××××'s credentials, when evaluated against these standards, easily passes the criteria.  In my comments below, I will not only provide my assessment of his dossier, but I will also comment on an evaluation of Dr. ××××'s research by an outside reviewer and on the dissenting vote by a member of the Department PRC.

RESEARCH

Except for one of three outside reviewers, everyone else, including the dissenting vote at the DPRC level, is in agreement that Dr. ×××× meets and easily exceeds the research requirements for promotion and tenure.  His dossier includes 18 refereed journal articles.  Although not the only criterion by which to judge the quality of a journal, acceptance rates are one of the important criteria. Fifteen of the eighteen articles were in journals listed in Cabell's with acceptance rates identified.  Of those 15, 8 articles were in journals with acceptance rates of 10% or less; 5 of the remaining 7 were in journals with acceptance rates of 11-20%.  Dr. ×××× served as lead author on 4 of the eighteen articles.  His dossier is a model of presentation that should become the standard for all promotion dossiers in this College.  For each article, he not only provides the journal ranking, but describes the role he played in the research and writing of the article.  He has collaborated with 22 different co-authors on these articles.

His 19th article has just been accepted for publication in the Academy of Management Journal, one of the top journals of the management field.  He has 33 conference presentations since 1993, with 18 of them occurring in the last six years.  He currently has two other manuscripts under revision requests from journal editors and two more manuscripts under initial review. Four of his articles have been published with his ×××× affiliation noted.

The generally accepted "standard" of publication within the ××× College of Business has historically been 6-10 refereed journal articles, 3 of which should be in top tier journals. 
            By any measure, Dr. ×××× far exceeds that standard.  His research and publication record already nearly equals the records of tenured full professors in this department.

TEACHING

Dr. ×××× has been at ××× University for one full academic year.  In that time, he taught one undergraduate and four graduate sections of Organization Behavior and Human Resource Management courses.  One hundred and thirty one students evaluated his teaching performance in those courses; his overall average was 4.74 on our 5.0 scale.  This ranks his performance at the top of this department.  Dr. ×××× came to ××× University from University of ×××, which is a famous research oriented university and ranks top 5 in the field of Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management.  He taught there from 1997 until 2003.  His dossier summarizes his teacher ratings on a single sheet for 2001-2003 (he also provided the individual course evaluations for all of the courses he taught at University of ×××).  That summary, recording the evaluations of 282 students, gave him an average of 4.67 on the University of ×××'s 5.0 scale.  I recorded two additional years from the individual evaluations in the 10 courses he taught between 1999 and 2000.  The evaluations of 252 students gave him an average of 4.62 (out of 5.0).

Dr. ×××× brings a wide variety of pedagogy into his classroom.  He challenges students to be "all they can be" but is perceived as fair by student comments on the open-ended portion of the ××× University evaluations.  He has a substantial history of teaching in executive development programs and has already done some of that teaching at ××× University.

Despite the assertion of the dissenting member of the DPRC that [Dr. ××××] "simply has not had sufficient time to demonstrate his excellence in teaching" and another observation that "the results of the teacher evaluations from University of ××× are more difficult to evaluate", I would submit that Dr. ×××× has amply provided sustained excellence in the classroom over a long (6+ years) period of time.  There is nothing difficult about evaluating the University of ××× teaching evaluations.  They merely confirm what Dr. ×××× has demonstrated since he arrived at ××× University - he is a fully competent teacher.

SERVICE

One can take a narrow or wide view of what constitutes "service" as a faculty member.  The dissenting DPRC member chose a very narrow view, arguing that "it is premature to conclude that he [Dr. ××××] meets the criterion in the service area.  Since coming to ××× University 14 months ago, Dr. ×××× has been elected to or appointed to various department, college and university committees.  He has interviewed candidates for tenure positions.  He has helped develop executive programs.  He has continued to serve on three review boards for academic journals.  He has continued to be an ad-hoc reviewer for various organizations.  Prior to coming to ××× University, he co-Chaired two dissertations and was a member of four other dissertation committees.  While he has not yet been involved in dissertation committees at ××× University, he has been an evaluator of doctoral comprehensive examinations.

Article 12.13, paragraph (c) of the Collective Bargaining Agreement states in part that "a faculty member may properly be expected to assume increased responsibility, in keeping with the faculty member's professional interests, for the government of the University, the standards of the faculty member's discipline, and the welfare of the civic community."  To me, the record is quite clear: Dr. ×××× simply continued his faculty governance activities, service to his profession, and through his executive development activities at University of ××× and here, service to the welfare of the civic community.

RECOMMENDATION

Dr. ×××× was granted tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at University of ××× just prior to accepting his current position at ××× University.  University of ×××'s promotion and tenure process is very much like ours (indeed, the process is pretty much the same at most institutions of higher learning).  He came to us with an exceptionally high research productivity which has continued in the 14 months he has been here.  His consistently high (8th-9th decile at University of ×××, upper portion of the 4th quartile at ××× University) teaching ratings demonstrate a continuing history of fully competent teaching performance.  His service record, begun at University of ×××, is even more pronounced here and easily meet/exceed standards for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure.

When we offered Dr. ×××× his current position, it was in large part because we saw an exemplary record of past performance.  In the management profession, we are fond of saying that the best predictor of future performance is past performance.  Nothing Dr. ×××× has done in the past fourteen months has done anything to change my opinion when we hired him that we were gaining an exceptionally talented, productive and thoroughly professional colleague.  He meets and exceeds by a wide margin all of the criteria by which we judge faculty for promotion to Associate Professor and tenure.