School of Public Service Mentoring Committee Guidelines for Tenure and Promotion

November 2018

Overview

The School of Public Service has adopted a Mentoring Committee model for promotion and tenure evaluation of tenure-eligible faculty.  This model was adopted because the School is organized around program and thematic areas, rather than departments, and increasingly faculty are working across programs, or are interdisciplinary scholars.  The Mentoring Committee aims to balance support of tenure-eligible faculty with rigorous analysis of their work.  It also seeks a balance of input from a small group of invested senior faculty who serve as mentors, with broader feedback from all tenured faculty in the School.

These mentoring guidelines are in accordance with the University Policy on Faculty Tenure and Promotion Guidelines (#4340): https://policy.boisestate.edu/academic-affairs-facultyadministration/policy-title-faculty-promotion-guidelines/. Please note that this set of guidelines and procedures is distinct from the State Board of Education-mandated annual review process.

The guidelines also reflect a traditional schedule on the tenure clock. Exceptions: faculty members bringing in years at hire or intending to go up in Year 5 will need to work with their mentoring committee to adjust their schedule accordingly. If a tenure-eligible faculty member is planning on going up for tenure early (prior to Year 6), then the faculty member needs to notify the mentoring committee by March 1, and the committee will provide feedback on that proposal.

A detailed timeline of the Mentoring Committee review process can be found in Appendix 1, including information about the external review process.

Composition of the Mentoring Committee and Role

The Faculty Director(s) oversee the School-wide tenure-eligible faculty mentoring program, form the Mentoring Committees, and identify Mentoring Committee Chairs. Faculty Director(s) will consider factors such as disciplinary or area expertise, program affiliations, service-loads, program lead input, and mentee input.  Mentoring Committees consist of two tenured faculty members in or affiliated with (when possible) the faculty member’s program(s), and a third tenured member from another program in SPS. Mentoring committees will consist only of SPS  faculty. If a faculty member’s work suggests a non-SPS mentor would be of value, a fourth, nonvoting member may be added to the committee. Replacement or substitute mentor appointments are also governed by the same process, and tenure-eligible faculty will be notified of these changes at the start of the academic year.

 A program lead, mentoring committee member, or the faculty member may request changes to a faculty member’s mentoring committee by contacting the Faculty Director(s).  The Director(s) not on the committee will approve or deny the request. Changes will be made in the best interests of the faculty member and based on conversations among all relevant parties. If prevented from making a desired change to the committee, a faculty member has the right to send a written appeal detailing the issue to the Associate Dean.

The mentoring committee will fulfill two tasks:  First, the committee will monitor the faculty member’s progress and provide advice and encouragement toward tenure. There are a variety of activities that the mentoring committee could engage in, including but not limited to:

• Planned, informal visits to each other’s classrooms
• Mentoring on how to apply for external funding
• Making introductions to potential research partners and collaborators across campus or external to the university
• Mentoring on how to conduct public service scholarship or how to make public service connections (e.g., inviting to a community stakeholder meeting)
• Mentoring the faculty member on how to identify and communicate a scholarly identity
• Helping the faculty member consider how to demonstrate the impact of their work (e.g., see Appendix 2)
• Providing ideas about how to strengthen disciplinary connections (e.g., reviewing journals, organizing conference panels, joining disciplinary committees)
• Troubleshooting issues around research, teaching, and service
• Sharing experiences for improving teaching pedagogy and practice
• Feedback on strategies for journal targeting and placement

Second, the mentoring committee will provide formal Progress Toward Tenure (PTT) annual reviews of the faculty member’s progress toward tenure beginning in their second year.  These functions will happen both during in-person mentoring meetings and through the mechanism of the PTT review itself, which includes feedback from relevant faculty, as noted in the Procedure section below.

Review Materials

Faculty being reviewed will keep their electronic profile up to date—the system will be used to provide the mentoring committee with materials demonstrating teaching effectiveness and professional commitment to teaching (including teaching evaluations), scholarly/creative /research activities, service activities, and (when applicable) administrative responsibilities.

Tenure-eligible faculty have been assigned Mentoring Committee folders in the Google Drive; these folders can be accessed by the faculty member, Mentoring Committee members, and Faculty Director(s).  In general, the requested materials align with what the tenure-eligible candidate will submit for tenure and promotion so as to create efficiencies and save time. These folders should include the following, organized by sub-folder, and as PDFs:

1. CV
2. A 3-4 page cover letter, double-spaced, that details the faculty member’s scholarly profile, including their research and teaching philosophies and how their works contribute to academia and public service. Cover letters can be updated or removed at the discretion of the tenure-eligible faculty member.
3. Yearly evaluations from Faculty Director(s)
4. Previous Mentoring Committee letters
5. Faculty 180 self-evaluations
6. Student course evaluations. Appendix 3 addresses formatting of evaluations.
7. These should be organized into sub-folders marked “peer-reviewed scholarship,” “professional scholarship,” and “public service scholarship.”
8. Additional evidence of research productivity, teaching effectiveness, evidence of participation in service activities, and evidence of administrative responsibilities and accomplishments, if relevant. All documents may be kept in Google Drive from year to year, and updated as necessary.

Mentoring Committee Letters

Progress Toward Tenure (PTT) reviews shall be both summative and formative in nature, and will review the faculty member’s accomplishments and future plans in relation to Boise State University Policy 4340, the School of Public Service’s Promotion & Tenure Guidelines, and the faculty member’s individualized workload as guided by the electronic system for annual reviews.

The committee will prepare a substantive, thorough, and detailed assessment of progress toward tenure, including formative and summative assessments and feedback from other SPS faculty.  This will be submitted to the faculty member, with a copy forwarded to the Faculty Director(s) for inclusion in the faculty member’s personnel file.

An annotated sample evaluation letter can be found in Appendix 4.

The Faculty Director(s) will review this assessment and the faculty member’s submitted materials, and provide feedback in writing before forwarding the materials to the Dean’s Office. If a Faculty Director is a member of a faculty member’s mentoring committee, the Faculty Director will excuse themself from this step and the other Director(s) will perform the review. If only one person fulfills the Faculty Director position, that person should not sit on any mentoring committees. The faculty member may attach a written response to this assessment, which shall also be placed in the personnel file if desired.

Mentoring Committee Chairs should place all Mentoring Committee letters in the Drive so that they are easily accessed by Faculty Director(s), the tenure-eligible faculty member, and Mentoring Committee members.

If weakness in the candidate’s teaching, scholarly/creative/research activities, and/or service are identified by the mentoring committee, the Faculty Director(s) shall assist the faculty member with developing and implementing a plan of improvement. The Faculty Director(s) are responsible for forwarding a copy of the PTT review (and any faculty member response) to the Dean’s office.

Procedure

Fall Semester:

Mentoring committee has informal mentoring meeting with faculty member, and Faculty Director(s) work with mentoring committee, program leads, and faculty member to determine who “relevant” tenured faculty (see below) for the PTT review process will be. Relevant tenured faculty are selected from the home program(s), or from the disciplinary or thematic area of the faculty member. The list of relevant faculty for each tenure eligible faculty will be stored in Google Drive and may change as faculty evolve. A program lead, mentoring committee member, or the faculty member may request changes to the relevant faculty list by contacting the Faculty Director(s).  The Director(s) not on the committee will approve or deny the request. Changes will be made in the best interests of the faculty member, the integrity of the tenure and promotion (T&P) process, and based on conversations among all relevant parties. If the faculty member is prevented from making a desired change to the committee they have the right to send a written appeal detailing the issue to the Associate Dean.

Spring Semester:

Sequential steps are taken to populate the faculty member’s Google Drive folder and complete relevant evaluative steps as outlined here: 

1. Faculty member populates Google Drive with review materials.
2. Mentoring committee reviews materials and drafts PTT review.
3. Mentoring committee chair electronically circulates the faculty member’s 1) CV, 2) Cover letter, and 3) the draft Mentoring Committee PTT review to all relevant tenured faculty. The third and fifth year review bear special significance, as they mark opportunities to review the faculty member’s successes and shortcomings at critical moments on the path toward tenure.
4. All relevant faculty meet and discuss the PTT review during the program’s annual T&P review meeting. If this meeting is the final meeting to be held before the school-wide tenure review, then a vote of all relevant tenured faculty will occur.   
5. Mentoring Committee incorporates feedback from all relevant tenured faculty, including results from the vote (when relevant) and drafts final PTT review.
6. Mentoring Committee meets with faculty member to review the PTT review.
7. Mentoring Committee submits final PTT review to Faculty Director(s).
8. Faculty Director(s) write brief responses to Mentoring Committee PTT review. The PTT review and Faculty Director response are then forwarded to the Dean’s office, which will manage the School-level tenure and promotion review process.

SPS Dean’s Office Role in Mentoring

The Dean and Associate Dean will meet regularly with tenure-eligible faculty as part of the SPS mentoring program.  These meetings may be question-answer sessions, relevant workshop sessions, and/or SPS mission and vision sessions.

SPS-level T&P Committee

The Dean’s office manages the School-level tenure and promotion review process. They appoint the school-wide committee from a list of recommendations that the Faculty Director(s) provide. The committee is composed of tenured and tenure-eligible faculty. At least 1/3 of the committee must serve for a period of two consecutive years to ensure and maintain a sense of continuity within the committee. Once the committee is chosen, the Dean’s Office will convene relevant meetings and provide the charge and directive for the review process. The committee then reviews the tenure eligible candidate’s materials and makes a recommendation to the Dean’s office.

Appendix 1: Mentoring Timeline

Appendix 2: Ways to Demonstrate and Communicate the Impact of Peer-Reviewed Scholarship, Professional Scholarship, and/or Public Service Scholarship

• Cite impact or influence of the candidate’s scholarly work within his/her own disciplinary field through journal ranking, impact scores, and other metrics.
• Ability to capture awarded grants and contracts whether its internal or external funding partners.
• Show impact on advancing knowledge, new methodologies or significant changes to existing methods, public benefits of the research, and  communication with and validation by peers (e.g., peer-reviewed articles).
• Show public scholar identity through a substantial profile of media coverage in areas of expertise.
• Document research and community engagement awards from academic, professional, government agency, and non-academic community
• Demonstrate candidate’s efforts have been sustained and transformative for a professional association, government agency, or non-academic
• Evaluate one’s own applied research to include potential or actual impact on policies and practices.
• Provide quantitative evidence (e.g. increased production or widespread adoption of a product or technique) and qualitative evidence (e.g., reviews by knowledgeable scholars/critics and expressions of benefit or value by stakeholders and community partners).
• Describe evidence of candidate’s innovation on clients, partners, or other end users (e.g., local or regional adoption of work or recommended best practices).
• Demonstrate impact of work that helped create new businesses, jobs, promotions, or leadership opportunities.
• Connect to teaching effectiveness in formats and settings outside the classroom, including the impact of learning on practice, application, and policy.
• Connect to service effectiveness in formats and settings outside the classroom
• Demonstrate impact of faculty member’s efforts to promote equity, inclusion, and diversity.
• Describe mutually beneficial community-university partnerships that address critical community needs.
• Document one’s contributions to large scale projects and grand challenges.
• Explain how interdisciplinary approaches helped address societal problems and challenges.

This list is illustrative not exhaustive. Its adapted from the University of Georgia’s Guidelines for Appointment and Promotion for Public Service and Outreach Faculty (pdf) and from Boise State’s Human-Environmental Systems Tenure & Promotion Guidelines.

Appendix 3: Teaching Evaluation Formatting

Below is the format template for presenting teaching evaluation quantitative results. A copy of this excel template will be placed in each tenure eligible faculty member’s Google Drive folder.

Appendix 4: Template for Mentoring Committee Letter

Date

To:  Dr. [Mentee name]

Assistant Professor

School of Public Service Boise State University

 

Dear [name]:

The members of your mentoring committee—[names of mentoring committee here] have reviewed your portfolio and your progress toward tenure.  [Add a sentence about other relevant faculty who provided feedback, when necessary].

The mentoring committee believes that you are (or are not) making progress toward tenure. Dr. ___ is in year ___ of the Promotion and Tenure process, and her workload is 40% teaching, 40% research and 20% service.

[Detailed comments about teaching here] [For example…] Dr. ______ is proving herself to be a

__________ instructor in the School of Public Service. Her student evaluations are consistently _____. The qualitative evaluations suggest__________. Dr. ______ has been nominated for _____awards and has developed _________classes. Dr. _______ mentors or advises_________. [Be sure to also include any issues with teaching, if they exist, so that there is a written record of concern. End with a sum of performance on teaching overall.] The mentoring committee believes Dr. ______ is making satisfactory/unsatisfactory progress towards tenure and promotion in the area of teaching.

[Detailed comments on research here.] [For example…] Dr. ______ approach to research ______. Dr. ________ is publishing in __________. [Comment on quality and quantity of peer reviewed research as well as impact.] Her work is receiving attention from _________. There is also ______ evidence that Dr. _______is performing ________ scholarship. [Comment on quality and quantity of professional and public service scholarship.] This scholarship is having an impact as evidenced by _________. [Be sure to include any issues with research if they exist and end with a sum of performance on research overall.] The mentoring committee believes Dr. ______ is making satisfactory/unsatisfactory progress towards tenure and promotion in the area of research.

[Detailed comments on service here.] [For example…] Dr. ______ has _______ in ______service. Dr. ____ is also connecting her research to service in the following ways____________. [Detail progress in terms of program, school, university, discipline and/or public service and how service is related to their scholarly profile. Address comments as to the impact of their service where appropriate.] [Be sure to also include issues if there are any and end with a sum of performance on service overall.] The mentoring committee believes Dr. ______ is making satisfactory/unsatisfactory progress towards tenure and promotion in the area of service.

[Mentoring committees may also want to make comments about the faculty member’s scholarly identity and how it contributes to the school here.]

We have enclosed a copy of our report and will be submitting one to the faculty director(s), as well.  A copy of this letter and the report will be placed back in the Google Drive with your other materials.

If you have any questions, please feel free to discuss them with us.

Sincerely,

[Mentoring committee names should be signed above. Signed document should then be uploaded to the Google Drive.]