Hiring Faculty with Tenure
Purpose:
Provide an overview of requirements, policies, and processes specific to hiring new faculty with tenure.
Relevant Definitions:
Pre-review – initial consideration of the tenure case by the Provost Office (Faculty Affairs). The review provides an opportunity for any concerns to be raised or to stop the recruitment, but approval at the pre-review stage is not a promise or guarantee of ultimate final approval.
See Pre-Review wiki.
New Hire Tenure Review (NHTR): sometimes/previously called “mini P&T review” or “outside tenure review”; college portion of the process but also used to disambiguate this process from “regular” promotion & tenure review. Although a less comprehensive process than the “regular” review, departments are required to recruit tenured hires applying the same standards as they would for an internal promotion.
Ad Hoc P&T committee – faculty within COLA responsible for reviewing and voting on new hire tenure cases. Consists of three faculty members drawn from the current year’s P&T committee.
COLA HR: Dean's Office HR Team in general, reachable at cola_hr@austin.utexas.edu; lead contact: Stuart Tendler.
Process:
This process directs you to the Tenured and Tenure-Track (TTT) PAR wiki for instructions on how to complete the PAR. Here, we provide instruction only on those aspects of the process that are unique to the process of hiring faculty with tenure, not otherwise discussed in the main TTT PAR wiki article.
Upon pre-review approval for a tenured faculty hire, COLA HR will create a Box folder for the new hire tenure review (NHTR) materials and invite department manager to the folder.
COLA HR will then email the department, notifying them of the pre-review approval, and will request that the department upload the NHTR materials to the newly-created Box folder.
The college has a list of required new hire tenure review materials and file naming conventions that the department must follow.
The department manager may ask COLA HR to add additional staff to the tenure materials folder, if needed.
Department submits requested materials and notifies COLA HR when all items have been uploaded.
The communication part is so important! Otherwise, COLA HR will not know to move the process forward.
COLA HR confirms that all of the required materials have been uploaded and removes the department staff from the NHTR Box folder, and proceeds with the ad hoc review process (see step 6 below).
Removing department staff ensures 1) no further changes can be made by department; and that 2) the folder can be set up for review by the ad hoc p&t committee, preserving their anonymity.
Department prepares the PAR, while the ad hoc review proceeds, to facilitate the overall process.
As noted on the TTT PAR wiki, many of the tenure review materials overlap with the tenured hire PAR packet materials, but not all NHTR materials will end up in the completed PAR.
For example, although the PAR will include a teaching assessment from the department, the teaching evaluations provided for the tenure review will Not be included.
COLA HR secures three reviewers to form the ad hoc p&t committee and then releases the NHTR file for their review.
COLA HR records votes of the three reviewers, notifies department that the tenure review is complete, and coordinates the Dean’s statement for the NHTR file.
COLA HR will ensure the Dean’s statement is added to the PAR PDF before the Associate Dean signs (see TTT PAR Process Overview, step 11).
Important COLA guidelines:
The department governing body must vote on extending an offer of tenure to a new hire, and standard voting rules governed by faculty rank apply. This vote may overlap with the vote to extend an offer of appointment.
Department materials must comply with requirements and expectations set forth in Provost guidelines for hiring faculty with tenure.
Department solicitation requests for external evaluation letters are expected to use an adaptation of the university’ standard promotion Sample Letter template, or equivalent.
Faculty being hired with tenure are expected to be hired into their current/equivalent rank. Departments considering applicants for a “jump” in rank through the hiring process must discuss this possibility with the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs before proceeding.
Other Related Links:
Hiring Tenured & Tenure-Track Faculty (EVPP website)
COLA Tenure Hire P&T File Checklist
Provost Guidance on Promotion and Tenure