The following guidelines are to be followed in the preparation of dossiers for faculty members applying for promotion to Associate Professor or Full Professor during the academic year 2010-11.

To Be Provided by the Candidate

• Current CV
• Personal statement on research, teaching, and service. The personal statement is the candidate’s own assessment of the position (s)he occupies in the field and in the department, in each of the following categories: research (2-4 single-spaced pages), teaching (no more than 2 pages), and service (no more than 2 pages). The statement should address such questions as: what research or other forms of professional accomplishment have you realized during the current promotion cycle (since your last promotion or initial appointment)? What is the nature of your present research or practice? How do you contribute to the field at large? What do you see as your most significant contributions? What research plans or professional ambitions do you have for the future, and how do these complement or expand on the work you have already accomplished? What is your general philosophy of teaching and connection to students in the classroom and in one-on-one advising sessions? What is the intellectual rationale of the courses you teach, and what is their contribution and relevance to departmental priorities? How does your research complement your teaching or mentoring of students at AUB? What types of service have you undertaken (department, faculty, and university committees, community service and regional projects, professional groups, international organizations or boards), and how is your service related to your professional development and interests? Some of these questions may not be applicable to all candidates.
• List of courses taught during the current term of employment with short descriptions of courses provided
• List of graduate students directly mentored
• Copies of all publications that have appeared during the current promotion cycle, as well as those accepted for publication or in press but not yet published (documentation required for the latter); work in progress can be included if the candidate wishes it to be considered. Four publications deemed by the candidate to be most representative of her/his most recent work, to be designated for sending to referees.
• Additional materials as applicable (demonstration of clinical performance, patents, projects, exhibits, portfolios, etc...)
• List of external referees whose expertise is closely related to that of the candidate, and are therefore qualified to evaluate the application for promotion. Normally, referees should be of rank equal to or above that to which a candidate is applying. Candidates for promotion to Associate Professor should supply six names, and candidates for Full Professor, eight. Candidates may also list the names of people whom they wish to exclude along with the reasons for exclusion.

To Be Provided by the Promotion Committee (The promotion Committee is Appointed by the Chair in Consultation with the Dean)

• List of names of external referees—at least six for candidates for promotion to Associate Professor and at least eight for candidates for promotion to Full Professor. Potential referees should be contacted to assure their willingness to take on the task. The promotion committee should then supply this list to the dean. Taking into consideration both their own list and the list provided by the candidate, the committee should also recommend which six (associate) or which eight (full) should be contacted first along with a brief explanation. No more than fifty percent of this recommended list should come from the candidate’s suggestions. Note that not all possible outside referees are equally appropriate: members of the candidate’s dissertation committee should not be included in the referee lists, nor should active collaborators, and no more than two letters should come from previous collaborators.
• Evaluation letters by graduate students, especially advisees, solicited by the promotion committee, if applicable
• ICE scores for all courses taught during the current promotion cycle, obtained from the dean’s office. Additional teaching assessments, if available, such as peer reviews and records of classroom visitations.
• Enrollment records for courses taught or statistical data reflecting clinical performance or journal impact information, if applicable
• Internal letters solicited from AUB faculty in cases where the candidate has been engaged in inter-faculty research and activities
• Memo of the promotion committee, signed by all members. The committee’s recommendation is one of the most critical items in the dossier. It should be a closely argued document of at least 4-5 pages that contains a brief description of the candidate’s recent career as well as the scholarly assessment of it, gleaned from all the documentation received from the candidate, from sources within AUB, and from external referees.
  
  The committee members are expected to become intimately familiar with the candidate’s dossier, including published research materials, those that have been accepted for publication, and substantive work in progress, if submitted by the candidate. Their memo should include separate sections that evaluate the candidate’s research, teaching, service, and clinical practice, as appropriate, emphasizing the candidate’s professional trajectory and future potential for the home department and faculty. The committee should be sure to explain the basis of its own evaluation of the case. Both positive attributes and negative points should be frankly acknowledged and addressed, and clear arguments should be made regarding the pertinence or relevance of such issues to job performance. It is not necessary to quote at length from the outside referee letters, but only to refer to them. Note that the recommendation memo should not overly dwell on the quantitative measures of a candidate’s achievement in terms of scoring, impact factors, or number of articles in print: many of these are evident from the documentation assembled and may provide base data from which an assessment can begin. What is needed is a qualitative assessment of the individual and his/her interactions and promise at AUB.
  
  The recommendation, signed by all members of the committee, should make an unambiguous recommendation for or against promotion. If there are disagreements within the committee about a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, these are preferably addressed in the committee’s report rather than reserved for a minority report.
  
  The recommendation is sent to the department/track/program (hereafter referred to generically as department) for a vote, but, before voting, the full dossier must be made available to all members of the department who are eligible to vote on the case in a way that ensures the confidentiality of the outside letters. Reading the full dossier by all eligible departmental members is essential to responsible self-governance and conscientious voting.
  
  For departments that have an insufficient critical mass of eligible voting faculty members, the dean may ask faculty members from closely related fields to participate in the departmental evaluation; alternatively, the dean may cluster several units together or form a faculty-wide committee for this purpose.

To Be Provided by the Department Chair, Track Convener, or Program Director (Hereafter Referred to Generically as Chair)

• Chair’s recommendation after the departmental vote. The chair’s memorandum provides a description of the faculty deliberation and details of the vote on the candidate’s case, adding whatever candid comments (s)he may wish to make on the candidate’s contributions to the department, including a summary of the mentoring process employed with the candidate.
  
  The memorandum is not meant to be a rehash of the case, but a chance for the chair to add a personal perspective of his/her own, ending with an endorsement of the faculty vote, or a rejection of it. If the chair is of a rank below that to which the candidate is applying, s/he should still provide to the voting members of the department a report evaluating the candidate’s contribution to the department’s teaching and service activities. In such cases, the chair will not attend the voting meeting; rather, the eligible members will choose from among their ranks someone to act in lieu of the chair who will report on the departmental discussion and vote.
  
• Minutes of the department/track meeting on promotion

To Be Provided by the Dean

•  Letters from external referees. In inviting referees, the dean should emphasize that the contents of the letters and the names of their senders will be kept in strict confidence. It 
  should be clear why a letter is being requested and the rank for which the candidate is being considered. The request may include the following questions:
  
  1- What are the most significant contributions of the candidate to the field, in terms of research and service?
  
  2- What important contributions has the candidate made in the current promotion cycle and over the course of her/his entire career?
  
  3- To what other scholars in the field would you compare the candidate?
  
  4- Does the quantity of the candidate’s publications support the case that quality of research is matched by a purposeful trajectory in terms of real and/or potential impact on the field?
  
  5- Would you recommend the candidate for continuance/promotion in your own department?
  
  The dean’s office should keep a log in regard to outside referees. The log should include the promotion committee deliberation explaining the choice of referees, how reviewers were initially contacted (usually via e-mail), copies of the responses from referees (who accepted, and who refused and for what reason), and a copy of the formal request letter explaining AUB’s expectations in the case.
• Minutes of the meeting of the faculty advisory committee
• Form containing voting totals and signatures of the faculty advisory committee
• Dean’s recommendation. The dean’s letter is a personal assessment, written after consultation with the faculty advisory committee, the members of which must become familiar with the candidate’s dossier. In borderline cases the dean may require the committee to obtain additional outside referees’ letters or request such letters after the advisory committee’s deliberations are complete.

To Be Provided by the Provost to the President
Provost’s recommendation after deliberation of the expanded Board of Deans