"This is an issue that needs to go on the fast track," Peter Nickerson said at the Oct. 22 meeting of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee.

"We are getting this (revised promotion dossier checklist) in advance of the deans being consulted-this is a draft-and we have to move or we'll be left behind....If we're going to have a voice in this, we're going to have to move quickly and deliberately, but it has to be done in this light year and not the next."

The Committee on Faculty Tenure and Privileges last year recommended that teaching be given more regard and weight in the promotion process.

In response to that recommendation, Kenneth Levy, senior vice provost, and William Fisher, vice provost for faculty development, have proposed items be added to the promotion dossier checklist to provide additional information on teaching activities and teaching evaluations.

Additional items proposed
These include quantitative teaching evaluations; letters of evaluation from external and internal reviewers; items prepared by the candidate, such as the candidate's statement about research or creative activity; the candidate's teaching portfolio, and the candidate's statement about service.

The way dossiers are put together and interpretation of the information they contain varies from school to school, Levy noted.

"It's used throughout the campus, not necessarily uniformly," he added. "Apart from just reporting of numbers, the comparisons that are made are very different from school to school and department to department. Not only is the data not uniformly presented, what is done with the data is very different from place to place."

"In terms of a teaching portfolio, it's hard to prescribe what should go in there," said Claude Welch, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science.

The portfolio could include material that would be highly relevant to teaching, but also would show how well the candidate has worked to stay current in the field. "It is nice to have syllabi that show publications that are relevant and recent," that show faculty who are keeping up with their teaching, as well as with their research, he said.

The new criteria proposed in the checklist for the promotion dossier would give each candidate a chance to speak in his or her own voice and provide a clearly better dossier than has been presented in the past, Welch said.

Student letters a conflict?
Melvyn Churchill, professor of chemistry, noted that letters of support contributed by current students could represent a possible conflict of interest.

Evidence of good teaching is critical and should be provided in one way or another, said Dennis Malone, SUNY Distinguished Services Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. However, he cautioned, quantification "has to be done carefully....It's a difficult thing to do well."

James Faran, associate professor of mathematics, questioned how faculty could evaluate a colleague in a different discipline. "It might be possible at the departmental level, but when you get up to the decanal level...I couldn't evaluate a chemistry assignment," he said.

Fischer agreed this is a concern, and said review of the portfolio should be set up to include peer review so there is an internal peer review, as well as an external peer review, which would address these issues.

Faran also questioned whether faculty would, in effect, be forced to "sell" themselves when they come up for tenure or promotion.

"I can understand your concern," Fischer said. "In the instances where we have new materials, we will have to add instructions to the handbook as to how these are to be interpreted....The function of these documents is not to have candidates market themselves, but to interpret their work for the reviewers."

Personal statements are helpful to candidates, said Fischer, providing them with an opportunity to say to reviewers, 'This is what my work means,' rather than leaving it to the whim of people in other disciplines to figure out.

Make portfolios school-specific
Margaret Acara, professor of pharmacology and toxicology and chair of the committee, said portfolios need to be school-specific. "Obviously, clinical faculty will be doing a lot different activities than the arts and sciences faculty," she added.

Senators are perhaps worrying about the wrong area of assessment, said Fischer. "The reason for enlarging the teaching dossier is to neutralize the quantitative teaching evaluations....It's relatively meaningless in any significant sense. I think we should be focusing on peer review of the portfolio as the significant assessment of teaching so we don't get bogged down in quantitative teaching evaluations. Quantitative teaching evaluations should be very low on the radar screen."

The Committee on Faculty Tenure and Privileges also will need to examine the roles of centers and institutes in the review process, according to Nickerson. "We need to find out the issues that we will have to look at. If we don't, other university committees will," he said.

One of the concerns that the committee will need to examine is "how the institutes and the department interact and how the institute is consulted in the dossier process," said Acara.

Herbert Schuel, professor of anatomical sciences, noted that one possible source of conflict will be faculty involved in interdisciplinary institutes who are up for promotion. Departmental colleagues may view the faculty member's involvement in an interdisciplinary institute "as inconsequential or disloyal to the department. The way we evaluate contributions in terms of teaching and scholarly contributions will be changed," he said.

John Meacham, professor of psychology, disagreed that there was reason to be concerned about the role of institutes and centers on the tenure and promotion process.

"Let people muddle through. It might be that once we get two or three years down the line that we see a type of issue emerging. I really don't see an issue here now," he said.