The Faculty Personnel Committee (FPC) has completed its work for the 2003-2004 academic year. The FPC consists of ten elected faculty members and two student representatives (when possible). No students participated in this year's committee. Each faculty member has one vote. Five faculty are chosen from the College of Arts and Sciences and five from the professional schools. The faculty on this year's committee were: Keith Aoki (Law), Tom Bivins (Journalism and Communication), Katharine Cashman (Geology), Dianne Dugaw (English), George Evans (Economics), Ellen Herman (History), Sana Krusoe (Art), Randall Moore (Music), Peter Wright (Business), and Yuan Xu (Mathematics). Dianne Dugaw served as FPC Chair.

During the 2003-2004 academic year, the FPC advised the Provost on thirty-seven cases involving tenure and/or promotion. The breakdown of the cases was as follows:

• Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure 17
• Tenure only 2
• Promotion to Professor 14
• Promotion to Professor with Tenure 3
• Promotion to Senior Instructor with Tenure 1

The FPC held fifteen meetings during the current academic year, each lasting from one and one-half to two hours. In addition, each member of the committee spent approximately two to three hours per week reading files and was responsible for writing the FPC reports on three to four cases, a task which required substantial time beyond the commitment to reading and assessing the files.

The committee appreciated those files that were well prepared and adhered strictly to the guidelines found in two sources: (1) Faculty Guide to Promotion and Tenure at the University of Oregon (Office of Academic Affairs), and (2) Timetable and Guidelines for Recommending Promotion and/or Tenure for Faculty Members (Office of Academic Affairs). We strongly urge everyone connected with the preparation of tenure and promotion files to follow these guidelines carefully. This would remedy many of the problems encountered by the FPC each year in the evaluation of cases.

Each year the FPC Final Report includes complaints about the preparation of files and pleas for strict adherence to guidelines. This year's FPC is no different. Based on problems we encountered with a number of the files this year, we make the following recommendations:

1. Every department and professional school should include a copy of its promotion and tenure document in the promotion file. Because standards for research quantity and quality vary across fields and disciplines, it is crucial for the FPC to have for each case an explicit statement of the expectations and standards for research in each field, as well as for teaching and service. These standards should be applied in a consistent way for all cases within a department, college, or school, and they should be consistent with university-wide guidelines. In addition promotion and tenure guidelines should be sent by departments to all outside reviewers.

2. If a department or program requires that candidates meet standards and expectations beyond those printed in the unit's standard guidelines for promotion and tenure, these further expectations must have been given to the candidate in writing. If the current printed guidelines function for the department or program as a "minimum" requirement, this expectation must have been explicitly stated to the candidate.

3. We encourage departments and programs to revisit and revise their written guidelines for tenure and promotion and to communicate these to their faculty.

4. University promotion guidelines specify a maximum of six to seven letters from external reviewers. Each file should contain at least five letters and not more than seven, unless special circumstances dictate otherwise, in which case the reasons for this variation should be provided. The clear majority of outside reviewers should be chosen by the department, not by the candidate. Candidates for tenure and promotion should be counseled against submitting the names of collaborators or mentors as possible outside reviewers.

5. It is important to explain the reputation of the schools and programs of the external reviewers and to make clear why each reviewer is qualified to evaluate the candidate's work.

6. Departments and programs should send the same materials to all of the external reviewers, unless there is a compelling reason for not doing so, in which case an explanation for any differences should be given in the department head's evaluation letter.

7. Connections between the candidate and the external reviewers should be explained in brief statements identifying the reviewers, and, if appropriate, in the department evaluation.

8. Each department or program should provide an explanation of the relative weighting to be given to various types of publications: research books, textbooks, such as peer-reviewed book chapters, peer-reviewed articles, non-peer-reviewed articles, peer-reviewed conference proceedings, extended abstracts, and so forth. The candidate's cv should make clear what kind of publication each item is. The evaluative report of department committees likewise should make clear how the different kinds of publications in the candidate's record are to be evaluated in the field.

9. It is useful to have an account of how courses are grouped by departments and schools in the calculation of teaching averages in comparing individual teachers to department means.

10. Departments are reminded that peer reviews of teaching are a required part of the each file.

11. In cases where there are long periods of research inactivity (i.e., ten years or more), it might be helpful to have some explanation for this in the file.

12. The FPC strongly recommends that the tenure and promotion cases of minority faculty members be monitored as a group by the administration, beginning at the point of the third-year review. Reasons to do so include: (1) obtaining full and accurate aggregate data about institutional patterns across disciplines and schools; and (2) using that data to more effectively recruit, mentor, and retain outstanding faculty members. We believe it makes sense to place this responsibility in the new office of the Vice-Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity, headed by Greg Vincent. We further encourage that this office regularly report on its general findings, with due respect for the privacy issues involved in individual cases, and to share these reports with the Provost's Office, the Faculty and Staff of Color Coalition, and the diversity planning office of the Oregon University System. The FPC was alarmed by the apparently routine expectation that minority faculty members will shoulder service burdens that are heavier than those of other faculty members.

13. This year's committee recommends that the registrar's office arrange a regular weekly time for committee meetings in the winter and spring quarter schedules of the individual faculty members who have been elected to the committee in order to ensure that weekly meetings are possible.

In closing, the members of the FPC express our gratitude for the excellent work of Ms. Carol White, whose professional handling of the details of processing the files helped us in our work. Her efficiency, attentiveness, and good humor were unflagging and very much appreciated.