Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost
Promotion and Tenure: Overview of Annual Processes Regarding Tenure and/or Promotion
Annual Review of Probationary Faculty
Performance reviews of tenure-track probationary faculty are governed by the Section 7 of the Regents Policy on Faculty Tenure and theProcedures for Reviewing Candidates for Tenure and/or Promotion: Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty.
The President's Form 12 (PDF download) is required for each probationary appraisal. Note that the annual appraisal is based on the unit’s criteria and standards for tenure and/or promotion (the unit’s 7.12 Statement). The report on President’s Form 12 should address the performance of the probationary faculty member in the context of the unit’s 7.12 Statement. After the probationary faculty member is reviewed according to the Procedures for Reviewing Candidates for Promotion and/or Tenure: Tenure-Track or Tenured Faculty, the chair or head of a unit is responsible for meeting with the candidate and discussing the outcome of the review. The report of this review is recorded on President’s Form 12, which is signed by both the unit head and the probationary faculty member. The form is then sent to the collegiate dean or to the campus chancellor and finally to the Senior Vice President for Health Sciences for AHC faculty and to the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost for all faculty. These annual reviews become part of the promotion and tenure dossier for probationary faculty.
Review of Tenured Faculty for Promotion to Professor
Reviews of tenured faculty for promotion to professor are governed by the Procedures for Reviewing Candidates for Tenure and/or Promotion: Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty. Although there is no university-wide annual review of associate professors providing them with information about their progress toward promotion to the rank of professor, individual units may specify this procedure in their 7.12 Statements. The Procedures document does provide guidelines for review of associate professors for promotion.
Annual Review of Tenured Faculty and Post-tenure Review
Post-tenure review refers both to the annual reviews of tenured faculty and to special reviews outlined in Section 7a. of the Regents Policy on Faculty Tenure. All faculty members, including those with tenure, are expected to be reviewed annually; most often, this takes place during a merit review each spring. Each unit has established a set of goals and expectations for performance in the three areas of research or creative work, teaching, and service. One of the goals of post-tenure review (as part of the annual review) is to determine if faculty members have met the goals and expectations established by the unit. It may also provide a means of assisting faculty members who are experiencing difficulties in achieving the goals and expectations of their individual units. Each spring, units are asked to provide their results from annual reviews for tenured faculty from the previous academic year to the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost. These overall results are presented to the Board of Regents each year.
For additional guidance, see Rules and Procedures for Annual and Special Post-Tenure Review, developed by the Tenure Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Faculty Affairs. This committee is now called the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee of the Faculty Senate.
Chronology of Tenure and/or Promotion Processes
The chronology of the tenure and/or promotion processes at the University of Minnesota is specified in detail in the Procedures for Reviewing Candidates for Promotion and/or Tenure: Tenure-Track or Tenured Faculty.
The process of tenure and/or promotion begins at the unit level for each faculty member who is under consideration. This may be at the department, division, or college level, depending upon the structure of the particular unit. For most non-Academic Health Center (AHC) Twin Cities colleges (specifically the College of Biological Sciences, the College of Design, the College of Education and Human Development, the College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences, the College of Liberal Arts, and the Institute of Technology), promotion and/or tenure reviews originating from units are then sent to colleges for review by faculty committees (collegiate promotion and tenure committees) and the collegiate dean. For the Carlson School of Management, the Humphrey Institute, and the Law School, reviews are completed by the college and its dean and then sent to the All-University Promotion and Tenure Committee. This committee is composed of members from the three colleges as well as one member from another college. For colleges in the AHC, reviews are processed by department and by college committees (with some review from an All-AHC committee) before review by the Senior Vie President for Health Sciences. Following these reviews, the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost recommends candidates for tenure and/or promotion to the Board of Regents for all faculty at the University of Minnesota. The Board of Regents confers indefinite tenure and awards promotion to all University of Minnesota faculty.
Faculty members under review for tenure and/or promotion are able to view all materials in their dossier at each stage of the review, including letters from external reviewers and reports of faculty committees. Faculty members may respond to any materials in their dossiers as well and may write to the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost in response to all reviews and materials. These responses should reach the Provost no later than mid-March each year in order to ensure that they will be considered before a final decision is made.
For information specific to the Academic Health Center, see: Tenure in the Academic Health Center. For information about promotion and/or tenure at the University of Minnesota – Duluth, see UMD Tenure Code. Tenure and promotion processes for UMD differ from those on the other campuses because of their contract with the University Education Association.