Building to Tenure

Overview of the RTDY Process 

Mini-tenure typically takes place in your third year as an assistant professor and is a midway milestone on your way to tenure in year six. This process involves assembling documents, similar to what you will submit for tenure review, including:

• CV
• Personal statement
• Teaching evaluations 
• Evidence of scholarship (research), publications, or creative works
• Annual Faculty Reviews
• Evidence of service
• Other (grant proposals and awards)
• Pandemic impact statement (optional)
• Letters of support (from internal colleagues)

You will submit these for review by the department personnel committee (DPC), the chair of your department, the College personnel committee (CPC), the Dean, and the Provost. From this review, you will get useful feedback on your progress toward preparing a successful tenure case. 

There are three important resources that guide academic personnel decisions, including the RTDY process. They are the Academic Personnel Policy (Red Book) the Academic Personnel Policy (Red Book), the MSP Collective Bargaining Agreement, and the Provost’s Annual Promotion and Tenure Memo. This Building to Tenure document provides additional advice below on choices to make during your first years as an assistant professor that will position you well for the RTDY process.

Focus on work that supports tenure   

During the first three years, it is important to focus attention on work that is recognized during the promotion and tenure process, and not over-committing in areas that have less impact. These include:

• gaining external recognition for research;
• demonstrating a productive, independent research trajectory; 
• establishing a record of high-quality teaching;
• engaging in service, including a focus on developing external professional and disciplinary connections.

Be aware of discipline and department variations. The information below is a general guide to commonly asked questions. Because of field-specific variations, you should discuss your specific case with colleagues within the concentration, the departmental personnel committee (DPC) chair, and/or the department chair. 

Research 

UMass Amherst is a R1 research-intensive institution, so your research productivity, especially high-quality research, is a significant factor for tenure. Colleagues in your field can advise on efforts in this area. The Office of Research and Engagement (ORE) has staff and resources to help you develop your scholarship.

Pre-tenure, you should prioritize publishing. Keep track of the publications you have in the pipeline and where they are in stages of production (such as under review or revision). Depending on the nature of your field and expertise, you should consider seeking external grants, but focus on grants that could lead directly (and quickly) to research and peer-reviewed publications. Seek out roles on grants as co-principal investigator and/or key personnel rather than as project lead. 

The majority of your publications should tilt toward peer-reviewed articles, books, and book chapters (in that order). Standards for publications (in terms of quantity, type, and quality) vary by discipline. Practitioner-oriented pieces (such as magazine or newsletter articles), book reviews, encyclopedia entries, etc. are generally not as rigorously peer-reviewed and receive less weight in tenure consideration, but they can be an important way of demonstrating a clear contribution to professional practice.

Demonstrate an independent research trajectory. Show progress from your original dissertation, or a significant extension of your dissertation scholarship, with clear expertise in one or more areas of research focus. You should show increasing independence from previous co-authors by publishing more sole- or primary-authored articles.

Teaching and Advising

Teaching and mentoring students is also an important factor in tenure decisions. If you are new to teaching, there are many resources to help you learn best practices. In the college, in addition to your faculty colleagues, Fred Zinn and Kate Hudson can offer advice and address questions about teaching and learning. The university’s Center for Teaching and Learning is an excellent resource for pedagogical advice and resources; including a program which offers a Mid-term Assessment Process of teaching. 

In concentrations with doctoral programs, start out with a reasonable advising load by serving on comprehensive examination and/or dissertation committees, and then offer other forms of advising and mentoring whenever possible. 

Teaching evaluations should be above average or show improvement over time. The standard university course reviews (SRTIs) offer only a partial view of teaching, and research has shown that women and faculty of color tend to be rated lower by students in these kinds of reviews. Therefore, we encourage the development of a robust teaching portfolio to provide a full picture of your teaching and advising accomplishments inside and outside the classroom. Also consider including qualitative comments from the SRTIs, emails, or other communications from students about your teaching.

Minimize the number of new course preparations, both annually and prior to tenure. You should work with your concentration coordinator and department chair to plan for a limited/reasonable number of new classes you need to prepare during your pre-tenure years beyond any classes you may have designed and taught before entering UMass that have been added to the College curriculum.

Advise and mentor a reasonable number of students, ideally keeping a lower load than tenured faculty. If you are advising a larger than normal number of students, or serving on many committees, you should discuss with your department chair how to refrain from taking on more students until after tenure, or request additional consideration to offset your contribution to graduate advising (e.g., a corresponding reduction in service load, additional research funding). 

Service

Pre-tenure, it is best to concentrate on external service roles in your field, such as in professional associations. Departmental-level service should be modest; for example, avoid chairing major departmental committees until after tenure. 

If you are a jointly appointed candidate, work with chairs of both academic units to ensure that your committee service, departmental meeting loads, and teaching assignments are reasonable. Make sure that leadership recognizes the additional service inherent in joint positions.

Showing Productivity 

Pre-tenure, your scholarly trajectory is a key consideration in evaluating your productivity and impact. Personnel committees and academic administrators will consider whether a personnel file provides evidence of past, present, and future productivity. To that end, the College of Education will consider your full scholarly contributions (including work completed prior to the receipt of a Ph.D., as well as work completed prior to employment at UMass Amherst) in its personnel decisions. The College also considers if you have published consistently and/or increased your scholarly contributions since the receipt of your Ph.D. The Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development can help you find funding and apply for research grants, both internal to UMass Amherst and external. 

If your CV has pronounced gaps (e.g., a decline in the number of articles published for two years while you write a book, do a longitudinal study, or take family leave), it is important to provide an explanation in your personal statement.

You can delay the tenure decision year (TDY) if you need to take an approved medical or family leave during your pre-tenure years. Time on leave does not count in determining productivity in research or semesters of teaching. Because delays of the TDY are not always obvious to internal and external reviewers, we explain when soliciting letters that the time until TDY is not to be held against the candidate. Candidates may also note in their narrative that they took a leave with language such as: “The University of Massachusetts offers automatic or optional tenure delays associated with certain types of leaves (such as parental leave, sick leave, leave without pay). The university provides those tenure delays because no research, teaching or service is expected during such leave periods. My time at this university has entailed such delays.” This is also important to mention if the candidate faced significant challenges to research or publishing during the pandemic.