Assembling the Dossier

DOSSIER DUE DATES and DEADLINES

Submit dossier and publications: Dossier preparers at the department/unit level should upload the Dossier, described below, to Interfolio (rankandtenure.georgetown.edu) before school-specific deadlines. Please consult with your Dean’s office on those deadlines. Once reviewed by school Deans, schools should forward the Dossier in Interfolio by the following dates for the Provost-level review.

Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure:

Associate Professor with tenure to Full Professor:

  • No deadline

Any supplemental materials (i.e., books) that cannot be uploaded to Interfolio should be delivered to the Office of the Provost with copies to the Office of the Dean. Please contact Kristen Rogers to create a case shell or for additional assistance with this process.

DOSSIER PREPARATION and SUBMISSION

All materials must be uploaded using Interfolio at rankandtenure.georgetown.edu.

These must include the following sections:

1. Cover Page Summary

Please use the Cover Page Summary template which includes the following information:

  • Candidate name, date of initial appointment, and present position;
  • Action sought;
  • Votes of each voting unit; and
  • Names of the external evaluators

2. Table of Contents

A table of contents, listing all applicable items contained in the file, with the page numbers of each. Sequential page numbering should begin immediately after the table of contents, and should include all documents in the file. Please use the Table of Contents template with fillable fields in Adobe Acrobat.

3. Departmental Actions 

Documents reflecting the actions taken by the appropriate units, such as minutes of meetings at which the candidacy was discussed, and/or letters from appropriate deans, chairs, and/or committees evaluating the candidate’s record of teaching, scholarship and service. Materials to be sent to all voting members well in advance each rank and tenure meeting are listed here.

  • Form recording departmental action: Use the Main Campus Rank and Tenure Case Attendance and Voting Worksheet
  • Record of Departmental meeting- A letter from the Committee Chair based on a transcript of the faculty discussion of the case
  • Record of vote tally to include the number of faculty in the unit eligible to vote; the number of eligible faculty present/absent for the vote; the number of faculty who voted (should reconcile with the vote tally).
  • The vote in the department meeting will be communicated to the faculty member using the appropriate template as follows:

    a.   75% or more approval: Your application received the support of at least 75% of the members voting (yes or no) or abstaining on the case. Your case is now proceeding to the next step in the review process.    OR

    b.   50%-75% approval: The vote was majority positive, but your application did not receive the support of at least 75% of the members voting (yes or no) or abstaining on the case.

    c.   Less than 50% approval: The vote was not majority positive. The designated statement must be approved by the voting faculty and appended to the department/unit meeting minutes. In schools with more than one voting body, this template may be used for developing each body’s statement as indicated above.

4. Candidate’s CV

The candidate’s complete CV should be included. Questions about format should be directed to the candidate’s mentor, department chair or unit head for specific disciplinary expectations, if any. See CV template here

5. Candidate’s Statements

As part of the dossier to be considered for tenure and/or promotion at Georgetown, the candidate submits three statements: a research statement, a teaching statement, and a service statement (ordinarily 6-10 pages in total will suffice). The statements should focus on professional accomplishments and should not include personal information.

All of the internal Georgetown reviewers at the departmental, school, campus, and University level review all three statements.  Because many of these reviewers are from outside the candidate’s field and area of expertise, candidates should prepare statements that explain their expertise in their field in a way that is accessible to non-experts in the field.

The external reviewers may receive the candidate’s research statement (without the teaching and service statements), along with the candidate’s CV and publications, consistent with campus policy.

  • Research statement
  • Teaching statement
  • Service statement

6. Junior Faculty Evaluations (if applicable)

7. Mid-Probationary Period Review

All documentation created or assembled (including the department’s report and chair’s letter, the deans’ letters, and any response from the candidate) will become part of the record to be included in the dossier if and when the candidate applies for promotion and tenure. If the applicant opted out of the review or a review was not provided, please include a brief explanatory note.

8. Teaching

Include materials demonstrating the applicant’s teaching record. Information should be provided for each course, each year, taught by the candidate. Where compiled student evaluation data are available, units should provide the numerical summary. In this case, please do not include individual students’ sheets. However, if it is not possible to compile data, then all of the individual students’ narrative evaluations must be included. If these, too, are not available, the file should contain a letter explaining the absence of student evaluations. The file should also contain, if they exist, written faculty evaluations of the candidate’s teaching, including reports of class visits. At the unit’s discretion, sample syllabi and other relevant material may also be provided.

  • Student Evaluations
  • Class evaluations by colleagues
  • Course syllabi

9. External Evaluator Selection Process

Copies of the following materials pertaining to the selection of and communication with external evaluators:

Please use this template when sending email requests to possible external evaluators. This questionnaire should be sent with this email to help determine whether a possible external evaluator is an “arms length” reviewer.

Copies of the following materials pertaining to the selection of and communication with external evaluators:

  • List of the evaluators proposed by the candidate, together with the candidate’s description of his/her relationship to each proposed evaluator;
  • Description of how external evaluators were selected, including a list of the evaluators proposed by the academic unit or appropriate faculty committee;
  • Letter by the person preparing the file identifying which of the external evaluators who submitted evaluations are believed to be objective;
  • Statement if it was impossible to find objective and neutral evaluators, a letter justifying that;
  • Use the External evaluators Summary Chart to summarize the process of identifying the external reviewers whose letters are included in the dossier.
  • Brief statement describing the qualifications of the external evaluators.
  • One copy of the letter sent to outside evaluators, inviting them to submit evaluations. Please use the appropriate template letter when requesting (a) an external evaluator to review Assistant to Associate with tenure or (b) Associate to Full.

Important: Please note that applicants for promotion and/or tenure must never be informed of the list of evaluators decided on by the unit, nor should applicants be allowed to veto evaluators selected by the unit.

An applicant may, however, inform the unit in advance of reasons why a particular scholar might not be a suitable evaluator.

10. External Evaluator Letters 

All letters from external evaluators assessing the quality of the applicant’s scholarship (Letters solicited when a faculty member came up for promotion to Associate Professor should not be included in the file when the faculty member comes up for promotion to Full Professor. However, if a candidate comes up a second time for tenure or for promotion to a particular rank, all letters received in connection with the first application should be included in the file, even if the faculty member decided not to complete the application process that year.)

11. External Evaluator CVs and External Reviewer Questionnaire

External evaluators’ CVs; abbreviated CVs or NIH-style bio-sketches are sufficient.

Also include the questionnaire returned with the response to the initial invitation to write an external review.

12. Other

Any other relevant materials, for example:

If a faculty member has applied for tenure or promotion to a particular rank before, any summaries of the results of the deliberations in a unit that were submitted to the UCRT before should be included here. The relevant unit should explain why its decision has changed, if it has, or why the deliberations were tainted, if they were;
All other materials that were in the file distributed to the faculty members who voted on the candidacy at the unit level;
Any relevant material that was not available at the time the file was distributed to the faculty members who voted on the candidacy at the unit level;
Letters from major co-authors describing the candidate’s contributions to joint publications

Also include letters from previous applications to the same rank (guidance from the previous section of the UCRT memo):

[I]f a candidate comes up a second time for tenure or for promotion to a particular rank, all letters received in connection with the first application should be included in the file, even if the faculty member decided not to complete the application process that year.

13. Dossier Submission

Work with your department administrator to make sure that all materials are uploaded to Interfolio at rankandtenure.georgetown.edu by the deadline for review.

Refer to UCRT Guidelines dated 9/3/2020 for more information.

DOSSIER REVIEW and TIMELINE

For the Dossier Reviewers

The candidate’s statement and the department report are the items in the dossier that also serve to help readers approach the full dossier contents.  It is a good idea to read through the assembled materials and ask what is striking or puzzling or unexplained.  The department report remains an opportunity to fill any gaps.  For example, collaborative, multi-authored work typically requires further explanation from the department and the candidate.  Similarly, non-top-tier, non-peer-reviewed published work may be taken as less important unless there is circumstantial and persuasive discussion of the specific publications and their publishing venues.  If there are negative letters or conflicted department discussion, fair-minded and objective contextualization can be very helpful. (Note: We’ve seen that defensive criticism, belittling, or peremptory minimization of negative items will generally be disregarded by readers of the dossier.)

Adding Decanal Letters

On the Main Campus, the candidate’s School Dean (or Deans for those faculty with joint appointments) reviews the dossier and have the opportunity to add their own confidential letters to the dossier package. In most cases, decanal review occurs after the School or Department has submitted the dossier and publications via Interfolio to the Office of the Provost and to the relevant deans. No matter the sequence, decanal letters are confidential and should not be included in the dossier materials that are available to other Main Campus Deans. The Deans’ letters should be delivered separately to the Provost’s Office, where they are added to the other dossier materials to complete the file and are delivered by the Provost’s Office to UCRT.

 OTHER GUIDANCE

Joint Appointments

In accordance with the Guidelines on Joint Appointments the primary department or school “is responsible for administrative procedures regarding tenure and promotion”; “will normally initiate the solicitation of outside evaluators after negotiation with the other unit”; and “must take into account and reflect the views of the secondary unit in its deliberations and report.”

Medical and Family Care Disruptions

Detailed discussion of personal medical or family-care related matters is not germane to the evaluation of promotion or tenure applications and should not be included in the dossier materials.  However, we all recognize that personal health and family circumstances from time to time interrupt, delay, or otherwise disrupt performance and progress during the probationary period.  We act in response at the time of the personal circumstances through policies and benefits such as leave and clock stops, among others, designed to offset time lost to family and health circumstances.  It is not inappropriate to make a general reference to such time away or clock stops, but the explanation should end with that.

Late Additions

If the department or school wishes to add material to the dossier after it has been delivered to the Provost’s Office for transmittal to the UCRT, any such material must be submitted through the Provost’s Office. This step is required to ensure that appropriate record of the full dossier submission is maintained.

We neither encourage nor discourage late additions. We cannot guarantee that any late-submitted material will receive the fullest consideration from the UCRT (for example, it will not if the UCRT’s work has already advanced on the application in question).

Late additions should be submitted with a brief cover note from the dossier preparer and be clearly labeled to indicate whether or not the addition was available to the faculty members who voted on the candidacy at the school or department level at the time of their review and vote.