Third Year Review for Assistant Professors in the College of Communication
University Resources
This policy was formulated in discussion with Department Chairs during the fall semester of 1998 and refined during Spring semester 2001. The procedures outlined below will be the policies recommend to the Departments/School in the College.
Each tenure-track faculty at the College of Communication is reviewed during the spring semester of the third year (or sixth semester) of their initial appointment as an Assistant Professor. The purpose of the review is to provide diagnostic feedback to the Department/School, the College, and the Assistant Professor regarding the individual’s progress toward the standards needed for promotion to the rank of Associate Professor with Tenure. The Third Year Review is not intended to provide an unequivocal signal of the likelihood of tenure.
The implementation of this review is delegated to the individual Departments/School. Each unit’s Executive Committee (EC) or Budget Council (BC), sometimes through an appointed faculty subcommittee, reviews the person’s work in the areas of teaching, research, and service. Materials reviewed should include, but not necessarily be limited to, vita, annual reports, published or accepted papers in scholarly journals, books, working papers, creative work, course syllabi, special student assignments, case developments, evidence of curriculum innovations, and teaching evaluations. Each individual Department/School may seek or forego solicitation of written evaluations of the Assistant Professor’s work by outside individuals in the field. Peer teaching reviews may be conducted as a part of the review, but are not required. The Assistant Professor may be invited to write a statement that describes their research program and their teaching program. If a subcommittee is used in the evaluation, the results of the subcommittee’s review are reported to the EC/BC and to the Chair/Director in a document that addresses each area under review – research, teaching, and service. The EC/BC may adopt the subcommittee’s report or may modify that report and forward a final evaluation to the Chair/Director and the Dean’s Office. If no subcommittee is used, the EC/BC prepares a final report addressing each area reviewed and forwards it to the Chair/Director and Dean’s Office. Such reports are commonly no longer than two pages, but should summarize all relevant information. The report must include a brief description of the process that was employed and the conclusions that were reached. The Dean’s Office must receive copies of any written evaluations or other materials that are given to the person reviewed. The Chair/Director is responsible for communicating either verbal or written feedback or both to the Assistant Professor.
The Chair/Director identifies and informs faculty who will be undergoing the Third Year Review by April of the second year of appointment and informs the Dean's Office of the faculty names. The Dean's Office compiles the names of all faculty in their second year who will be reviewed the following year and makes a formal request to the Provost's Office for teaching records on those faculty. The Provost's Office will compile all teaching records on the faculty member and send them to the Department/School in January of the faculty member’s third year; in this way the department will have five semesters of teaching records to review during the spring semester of the faculty member's third year. Reports are due in the Dean's Office by the end of spring semester of the third year.
