Dubious Faculty Review

[Hegemony]

To be clear, yes, I had heard of the person before, and have attended several talks by them. There was nothing that led me to believe they would have a weak track record. But my field is quite large and there are a lot of scholars whose work I know a bit but not intimately.

[glowdart]

What's the teaching load? In my field, there are R1s which expect a book and articles at each level and then there are R1s who expect the research output that is appropriate to their teaching load. Promotion to full with 4 articles and other big projects would be excellent at Glow Uni, but we are a high teaching load PUI. Yet, I can think of some football powerhouse schools which are R1 schools and have a slightly lower load with slightly higher expectations than us, in accordance with the teaching expectations.

[Istiblennius]

^ What glowdart wrote. Did they also clarify for you what the line is allocated as? At my previous institution we had teaching lines and research lines and the criteria were different for each one. You still needed teaching, scholarship, service, but the weighting and expectations for each were different.

At another place I've been, we didn't even ask for external reviews. Which was also not ideal; the standards seemed to shift depending on who you knew. We had one person (a lovely human being but also trapped in the past) who made full with no publications and the only presentations as local Elks club and similar events. I honestly think this person would probably have been a better teacher and colleague if they had a reason to, you know, stay current with anything.

[Hibush]

I have both written these, and read one for promotions in my department. The most useful ones are those that provide an outsider's evaluation of the candidates accomplishments. Trying to guess our tacit expectations or politics is unhelpful.

If the letter says that the expectation is that they be a nationally prominent person in their field, and you are in that field then your judgement on their prominence is valuable. If you should have heard of them but have not, then they are not prominent. It is ok to say so. Kindly and objectively.

Evaluating the quality of the scholarship is valuable. Usually they include a small number of featured articles that help out. If it is lightweight work, then can put it in that context. Again, kindly and objectively. Usually it is pretty good at that point.

The department will place your evaluation, and the others, in their context when they send the promotion package on. Their recommendation may be pro or con, and the chair's letter can use evidence from your evaluation to support their position. You won't know which way they went.

[Ruralguy]

It might actually be harder than you think to determine precise load unless someone is willing to tell you. Some faculty handbooks just come out and say it, but then if this is an R1, there could be "buyouts" and such (doesn't seem to relevant for Hegemony's field). Also, the handbook would have to be widely available (some are not). If someone doesn't just tell you and you can't easily find it, then just try to find CV's of people in similar fields who were promoted at that school recently. Ideally, teaching load would be "averaged out" over such a group (i.e., you wouldn't be selecting only people with buyouts, but then reviewing someone who doesn't have them, or other quirks such as that).

[glowdart]

It might actually be harder than you think to determine precise load unless someone is willing to tell you. Some faculty handbooks just come out and say it, but then if this is an R1, there could be "buyouts" and such (doesn't seem to relevant for Hegemony's field). Also, the handbook would have to be widely available (some are not). If someone doesn't just tell you and you can't easily find it, then just try to find CV's of people in similar fields who were promoted at that school recently. Ideally, teaching load would be "averaged out" over such a group (i.e., you wouldn't be selecting only people with buyouts, but then reviewing someone who doesn't have them, or other quirks such as that).

True, though I'd argue the load & expectations may mean more than the R1 classification. Looking at my field, there are a couple of notoriously unrealistic outlier 4-4 PUIs which require a book for tenure and a second for promotion, and there are 3-3 R1s that require 4 articles and a national presence for each level as well as 2-2 R1s that require two books for tenure and a third for full. In general, the higher load R1s have very different requirements than the lower load R1s.

[jerseyjay]

I am not at an R1--my school is essentially a public open-admissions regional university with a 4:4 load--and we do not use external reviews, so take this for what it is worth.

At my school, there are minimum requirements (usually the amount of time in present position) so that any associate professor could try to get promoted for full if they meet these requirements. You are supposed to be good at all three areas (research, teaching, service) but really excel at one. So somebody with the record you describe would never get promoted to full based on research alone, but if they were an excellent teacher or had stellar service (e.g., had been the president of the senate or run a program) they might. (Also, the requirements have shifted over time, so there are fulls with no publications who probably would not be granted tenure today but are respected colleagues.)

It would seem that the best thing for the OP to do is, rather than guess all the moving parts that go into being full, is (as others have said) to evaluate the quality and importance of the publications. I would probably do this in the positive rather than the negative. That is, if the publications are earth shattering and among the best in the field, say so; but if they mediocre or marginal, instead of saying that explicitly, I would say something like "competent," "solid", or somesuch to indicate that they are okay but not on the cutting edge. As has been said, I would assume that your report will be integrated into the packet as a whole.

[mleok]

True, though I'd argue the load & expectations may mean more than the R1 classification. Looking at my field, there are a couple of notoriously unrealistic outlier 4-4 PUIs which require a book for tenure and a second for promotion, and there are 3-3 R1s that require 4 articles and a national presence for each level as well as 2-2 R1s that require two books for tenure and a third for full. In general, the higher load R1s have very different requirements than the lower load R1s.

I'm just curious which R1s have 3-3 loads. That's the teaching load we assign to our teaching professors, and our tenure-track/tenured professors have 1-1 loads (actually 1-1-1 as we're on the quarter system).

[glowdart]

True, though I'd argue the load & expectations may mean more than the R1 classification. Looking at my field, there are a couple of notoriously unrealistic outlier 4-4 PUIs which require a book for tenure and a second for promotion, and there are 3-3 R1s that require 4 articles and a national presence for each level as well as 2-2 R1s that require two books for tenure and a third for full. In general, the higher load R1s have very different requirements than the lower load R1s.

I'm just curious which R1s have 3-3 loads. That's the teaching load we assign to our teaching professors, and our tenure-track/tenured professors have 1-1 loads (actually 1-1-1 as we're on the quarter system).

Enough in my field in the humanities that there's a distinction between the R1s with 2-2 loads and the ones with 3-3 loads. We also have a lot of departments at R1s that do not have PhD programs, so it's a  different landscape than what might be found in the sciences.

[Vkw10]

Sounds like this is a case where I'd conclude with something like, "Prof. X has focused on topic, an area which is not currently given much attention in discipline. Although X has a modest number of peer-reviewed publications for a scholar with his years of experience, his publications are in good quality journals. His work is a solid contribution to the discipline."

Not a strong endorsement by any means, but sufficient support if the department wants to promote a dependable workhorse. And if they want more articles published, they'll ointment it that "modest number" and tell X he needs to publish more.

[Ruralguy]

Probably what I would do, vkw. Might comment on quality of a specific paper, assuming there is a quality paper to discuss. Otherwise, respectfully lay out the facts.
Anyone who cares will either take it as enough or not, depending on their precise standards. Perhaps it pulls punches, but I think its up to people "on the ground" to deliver those blows. Its not the responsibility of outsiders  given almost no guidance to say "Don't promote him because he wrote too few papers."

[poiuy]

Yes, eight articles total. But their CV is cluttered up with a whole bunch of unquantifiable stuff: "Principal editor in online resource," and so on. It's all in one big category on the CV and I had to pick through and find the published articles. Four articles since tenure, two of them co-authored. I know people take variable amounts of time before putting in for promotion to full, but this person has been associate for twelve years.

Their CV is indeed crammed full of stuff, but my impression is that this is someone who achieved tenure and took their foot off the pedal of peer-reviewed scholarship, and instead put a lot of energy into more "helping the discipline" stuff like this online collection of encyclopedia-type articles. That's fine by me, but whether it counts for promotion is a conundrum.

I appreciate pgher's thought that this candidate's colleagues may have the same reservations I do.

Also, the vagueness of what I am supposed to do is part of the problem. I'm supposed to "evaluate." Beyond that it's unclear.

I will describe the work and its weight and positives, such as they are. Thanks, all.

Maybe you have already written your review Hegemony.  In my regional state R-2 institution, when candidates go up for promotion (whether to Associate or to Full), the CV is not the only thing sent out to external reviewers. 

The candidate has to write (1) an overall statement that summarizes their focus and trajectory, (2) a Research statement that highlights accomplishments and the area of concentration, (3) a Teaching statement, (3) a Service statement.  Only the Research statement is shared with external reviewers, but you should never have to pick through or decode their CV to figure out what they did. 

Furthermore, the Chair sends a Context statement for the candidate that describes the Department and University culture and expectations and if there are any special features about this candidate (e.g. do they do an exceptional amount of mentorship or leadership or something that is in the Department's interest).

If you didn't get these contextualizing documents, that's kind of odd in my opinion.

This may not change what you finally write, though.

[Hegemony]

I got a research statement and copies of the publications. Zero instructions from the department, though, apart from the vague description in the email ("evaluate the candidate...") I don't think I've ever gotten a contextualizing statement from a chair for one of these, although sometimes the email instructions are a little more precise.

[arty_]

Your description of the professor's output makes that person's research seem weak. I agree it is rough to determine how to evaluate a dossier when you have very little guidance - but your description is quite clear -- no one would find that record compelling.

Also, I respectfully disagree with the posters who appear to suggest you should only write a response if it is positive -- and that you'd divine this ahead of time. In my department we certainly had someone with very weak credentials go up , and if only more of the letters were more measured we might not be stuck with the person now. It would have been so much better.

I have penned only one negative tenure evaluation in my academic career, and admittedly it made me rather uncomfortable to do so. However, I would have appreciated it if some external reviewers were as measured and considered with the weak cases as they are with the strong ones.

[Hibush]

In the absence of specific directions, you'll likely do best by contextualizing your answers and making clear that they didn't provide one. That clarification makes your comments less likely to be misinterpreted.