This document is intended for chairs or others who are advising faculty or prospective faculty on what activities count as “in rank” for what types of promotion or tenure decisions.  There are two other documents that will be useful:

• Timeline Offer conditions for Tenure Track Faculty. Or, “should you offer years of credit towards tenure” for candidates with pre-IUPUI faculty experience?  This includes a brief discussion of what counts as “in-rank.”  It is designed for chairs and deans to work through their options.
• Explanation of in-rank for new hires. This is written with the audience of the prospective candidate, explaining for them what in-rank means in the IUPUI P&T system.

For promotion to associate professor (combined with request for tenure)

The key campus criteria for being deemed worthy of promotion to associate professor and being granted tenure are:

• Quantity and quality of achievements, in the context of one’s discipline and area of excellence

And,

• An emerging national reputation, rising trajectory, and promise of future accomplishments In their statements candidates are asked to talk about 3-5 key specific works.

In this light, work accomplished before arriving at IUPUI becomes is part of one’s reputation, trajectory, and promise, as one’s scholarly path is gradually built up.

Work accomplished while at IUPUI shows a dedication to maintaining a desirable level of quantity and quality of achievements.  

People who are applying for tenure after a full five years at IUPUI will normally choose accomplishments done at IUPUI to be their 3-5 specific works.  Prior accomplishments will usually be discussed in two ways:

• Prior work can be shown to be the starting steps of a focused research agenda.
• Prior work has had time to garner citations; a candidate’s most-highly-cited material is likely to be the oldest material. These citations show that one’s scholarship has impact.  

People who are applying for tenure prior to five years:

• If they have been specifically awarded years of credit towards tenure that should be specifically mentioned, and those years are part of “in rank” work, treated the same as IUPUI work.
• If they have not, they should be careful to show how they have continued to work and improve during their time at IUPUI.

For tenure, for those hired at associate rank but without tenure

Except in the Law School, those hired at the associate rank are not obliged to apply for promotion (to full) by the time they apply for tenure.  

The most important consideration for the bestowal of tenure is trajectory and promise of future accomplishments.  

In this light, all work to date can be part of the trajectory, but candidates should be careful to highlight recent work, as showing continued growth.  

2

ALERT:  When units have quantitative expectations for productivity, candidates should assure that their work during their IUPUI probationary period meets those standards.  

For example, suppose a unit says that “excellence” in research for promotion to associate professor requires at least 5 articles published in high-impact journals.  Candidates should be expected to show they have completed 5 articles from the time they were hired at IUPUI until they apply for promotion and tenure.  

Review committees should be cautioned to consider as a ‘normal’ probationary period, the time between hiring and review for promotion.  If someone has a parental leave, has received an extension due to uncontrollable problems, or is going up ‘early’, the standard would be the same “five articles” from year Hire to year Review, even if measured by the calendar the five years of service were spread over 5, or 7 or 3 (if early) years.  

For promotion to full rank

For promotion to full, the primary focus is on work accomplished while in rank, that is, work done as an associate professor.  

Candidates should:

• Clearly mark on the CV items produced during or after the promotion to associate. One simple way is to show all prior work in light-grey type.  This makes in-rank work stand out.  
• If an item was not on the CV at the time of review for promotion to associate, it counts as ‘inrank.’ For example, if the candidate had submitted an article but it accepted in December of the review year, that did not contribute towards their promotion to associate so it can count towards their promotion to full.  
• In the candidate statement describe earlier work that has contributed to an ongoing research agenda and which demonstrates a current national reputation. For example, an article published 10 years ago may now be cited widely.  

The most common minimum period between associate and full is five years.  

• Candidates with less than five years in rank should be careful to ensure that there is sufficient and prominent work accomplished in rank.
• When candidates have many years in rank, they may wish to describe responsibilities that have affected productivity in the area of excellence, such as administrative contributions.

Special note for Teaching Professor:  Because this rank was created only in 2019, special considerations are necessary for senior lecturers or lecturers to apply for this rank, because they may have achieved “Teaching Professor”-level accomplishments while lecturers.

Reviewed 7/12/2019