IV. PREPARATION OF DOSSIERS

For appointments and promotions to Associate Professor and to full Professor with tenure, as well as conferral of tenure actions, the following types of materials should be provided to the Provost's Office.

A. Cover Letter. The cover letter should not simply be an indication of concurrence. Rather, the Dean or Regional Campus President should submit a detailed cover letter summarizing his or her independent opinion on the entire case. The cover letter should provide a full account of the specific scholarly, professional or creative contributions made by the candidate, and the role of the candidate within the context of the units= planning priorities. The letter should provide a balanced explanation of the candidate's scholarly contributions to the field and the impact made on the profession. In addition to providing an interpretation of the letters from external referees, the cover letter should indicate the other types of evidence used to inform your recommendation.

The cover letter should present clearly the extent to which the recommendation was supported by the appropriate body of voting faculty in the unit and by voting members of all relevant committees. Actual votes should be noted. Reasons for abstentions at any level should be explained. If there is a minority opinion, the cover letter should address the reasons for the dissent. A representative for the dissenting views might be invited to submit a minority report. The dossier should also include the detailed letters written by the department or program chair, division chair, Regional Campus Vice President for Academic Affairs, and the chair of second-level promotion committees as appropriate.

We now have several years of experience with our mandate for peer and student evaluations of teaching. All faculty members should be made aware of the teaching evaluation policies operative within their academic units. All recommendations submitted to the Provost's Office must contain summaries of the results of student and peer evaluations of teaching. A wide array of data exist for evaluating teaching, and the quality of a candidate's teaching should be described not only in terms of classroom performances but also include assessments of factors such as advising undergraduate and graduate students, supervising dissertations and theses, other types of interaction with students, formal student evaluations, the development of curricular materials, syllabi, and the faculty member=s evaluations of students' work. As necessary, one should consult with the Office of Measurement and Evaluation of Teaching regarding the preparation of teaching dossiers.

The cover letter should present a summary of the candidate's University service. Within the dossier, other letters should present the candidate's service in more detail, including the nature and quality of the service, and the importance of the service to the discipline or profession, the home academic unit, and, as appropriate, the University.

B. Curriculum Vitae. The curriculum vitae should provide the essential professional history of the candidate, listing all elements of formal post-secondary education and all professional positions held. Publications should be categorized into separate groupings, such as books, abstracts, monographs, journal articles, chapters in edited volumes, and textbooks. Names of co-authors should always be included in the order in which they appear on the publication. It is important to list the page numbers for each published item or, in the case of a book, the total number of pages. There should be an indication as to which journal articles are refereed. Conference presentations, if reported, should be listed in a separate category. Through the faculty mentoring processes of your units, faculty members should be made aware of the appropriate curriculum vitae content for the purposes of your unit and the Provost's Office.

All courses taught in the past five years should be listed, with the enrollment for each course, as well as all master's theses and doctoral dissertations supervised. Mention should be made of the present professional status of those master's or Ph.D. graduates, and the publication of a thesis or dissertation.

Research grants should be listed, for at least the last five years. For each grant or contract, the granting agency, the title of the award, the period, and the amount designated as total or as direct cost of the award should be unambiguously indicated, as well as the project title of the candidate, e.g., principal investigator, co-principal investigator or other specific title.

Invited lectures, special honors, or seminar presentations at other institutions should be listed for the previous five years. Service to Department, School, University or external institutions that are professionally relevant should be cited in the curriculum vitae.

C. Annual Reviews of Faculty. The dossier should be supplemented with copies of all annual review letters that were sent to the candidate. Minimally, these written reviews must consist of a letter to the faculty member which contains statements as to whether or not the faculty member's performance in teaching, research and service meet Departmental/School/Regional Campus/University expectations. Detailed comments regarding these areas may be included and should be included in cases where performance does not meet expectation in any area.

D. External Referee Letters. All external referee letters received should be included in the dossier, whether favorable or unfavorable. For each external referee, there should be a brief description of the referee=s academic background, a notation as to who proposed each referee (e.g., the candidate, the program or department chair, the ad hoc committee or standing promotions committee, and/or the dean), and an indication of any special present or past connections between the referee and the candidate. A minimum of six external letters is required. The six required letters do not include reference letters from other University of Pittsburgh faculty members, with the exception of the Regional Campuses for which a maximum of two letters can come from faculty members on other University of Pittsburgh Campuses.

Referee letters should be sought from well-regarded scholars in similar and/or related fields--again without defining the area too narrowly. A broader net allows a larger pool from which referees can be drawn and also encourages opinions on the impact of the candidate's work on a larger body of scholarship. Six substantive letters constitute a minimum, so that initial requests should be made to nine or ten persons. The candidate should be asked to suggest a number of referees, and a maximum of three letters can be requested from persons on the candidate=s list. Although some referees may be persons who have had previous professional association with the candidate--such as doctoral supervisor, co-principal investigator, or co-author on a major project--most of the reports should be from scholars who know the candidate primarily because of their knowledge of the candidate's work and its impact on his or her field.

Referees should be informed that, in accordance with University policy, and with the exception listed below, their letters will be seen only by those participating directly in the decision-making process and, short of a court order or subpoena, every effort should subsequently be made to keep this promise. This means, above all, that letters should be duplicated as little as possible. Court interpretations of the 1978 Pennsylvania Personnel File Act have held that a letter of reference might not be exempt from employee access if a fee is paid to the writer of the letter. Where no fees are paid, letters are exempt from employee access under current court interpretations.

Letters of reference should be solicited by a leading member of the evaluating group. In no case should the candidate be allowed to directly solicit a letter from a referee. As appropriate, external referees should be provided with a curriculum vitae, examples of the candidate=s written work, instructional materials, and other materials upon which their recommendations are to be based. In the case of the creative and performing arts, referees might be invited to exhibits or performances, or they might be selected from among persons who have seen or attended such presentations. If this is not possible, slides or tapes may be submitted to referees.

Referees should be asked to make critical judgments about the candidate=s work (possibly mentioning specific items) and on its significance and impact. Further, referees should be asked to compare the candidate with others in the field at a comparable stage of development, preferably by having the writer suggest specific named benchmarks. Finally, it is very helpful and revealing to get answers to the questions as to whether the referee believes that the candidate would be promoted (or achieve tenure) at the referee's own institution and whether the referee would so vote.