Eligibility: To be eligible to serve on the Promotion and Tenure Committee, members must be tenured professors or tenured associate professors not serving as an Academic Administrator as defined by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. To be eligible to serve as the Energy and Mineral Engineering representative to the Earth and Mineral Sciences Promotion and Tenure Committee, the representative must be a tenured professor who is not serving as an Academic Administrator and who has previous experience on the departmental promotion and tenure committee but has not served in the previous two years.
Members, Size and Composition: The Promotion and Tenure Committee shall be composed of five tenured faculty members elected by the entire faculty. At least three will be at the rank of professor. Three members of the committee shall be elected each year. Eligibility will be restricted to tenured faculty. The two faculty members receiving the most votes will serve two-year terms. If any of the two faculty members with the most votes served in the previous year, however, they will be limited to a one-year term. The faculty member receiving the third most votes will serve a one-year term. Each faculty member may vote for three candidates in the election. After serving on the committee for two consecutive years, a faculty member may not serve for the following two years. The chair of the committee shall be elected annually by the membership of the committee. Per AC23, the P&T committee may seek non-binding input from other EME senior faculty members, as needed.
Election procedures: Elections shall be held at the end of each spring semester, after May 15, for a term of July 1 that year until June 30 the following year. The department shall notify all faculty of the election results within one week of the election. Eligibility for election will be based on a faculty members rank or expected rank as of July 1. All tenure-track and tenured faculty members, excluding those serving as an Academic Administrator as defined by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, are eligible to vote. A faculty member on sabbatical leave for the coming year is not eligible to be a candidate. A faculty member taking sabbatical leave in her/his second year of their term may not serve on the P&T committee while on sabbatical. In such cases, the Department Head shall hold a special election for a one-year term on the P&T committee. Election of the representative to the EMS committee shall be held first, followed by election for members of the Energy and Mineral Engineering committee. The ballot will be organized into sections for votes on the Professor ranked member and votes on the Associate Professor ranked member, with one vote allowed in each category. If any election is needed for a replacement to fill out a term, that will be conducted as a separate ballot following elections for the full-term members. The top vote recipients will be elected. Tie votes shall be resolved by a run-off election of those individuals receiving the same number of votes. The election of the chair for the Energy and Mineral Engineering committee will be held immediately once the members have been established. Faculty members who are elected may not decline to serve, except in unusual circumstances when permission from the Department Head is required.
Chair: The Chair shall be elected every year for a one-year term. The Chair must be a professor (full, not associate) and is elected by the five members who will serve on the committee during the coming year. Chairs may serve multiple successive terms.
Representative: The representative to the EMS committee shall be elected for a three-year term and shall be eligible for renewal.
Duties: Working within college and university (AC-23) guidelines, the promotion and tenure committee has the following responsibilities:
- The promotion and tenure committee shall conduct formal evaluations of the progress of pre-tenure faculty towards tenure and/or initial promotion. These evaluations shall culminate in a formal written evaluation and recommendation for granting of tenure or promotion (if applicable) submitted to the Department Head as per the schedule set out by the Department Head.
- The promotion and tenure committee shall conduct formal evaluations of Associate Professors seeking promotion to Professor, when such candidates are identified, including by candidate’s request, and put forward by the Department Head. These evaluations shall culminate in a formal written evaluation and recommendation for granting of promotion (if applicable) submitted to the Department Head as per the schedule set out by the Department Head. Evaluations for promotion to the rank of Professor shall follow the rules specified in AC23, “Only tenured faculty should be eligible to serve on peer tenure and promotion committees, and only faculty of higher rank than the candidate should make recommendations about promotion”. Committee members holding the rank of Associate Professor shall be excluded from participating in deliberations around evaluations for promotion to Professor and may not vote on any such promotions.
- At the request of the Department Head, the promotion and tenure committee shall conduct informal evaluations of Associate Professors who seek to be put forth for promotion to Professor in the following academic year. The evaluations will culminate in an informal review of the faculty member’s progress towards promotion. A recommendation by the committee for a full review in the next cycle is not a determination of whether a promotion is justified or not and should not influence the formal review process or final decision about the candidate. For these informal review cases, the associate professor needs to prepare an up-to-date dossier and provide the document to the department head by February 16th of the year prior to when the promotion is formally sought. The department head will forward the dossier to the departmental P&T committee chair for informal review of the entire committee. If an associate professor fails to provide an up-to-date promotion dossier in a given year, the presumption is that the candidate does not want to be given consideration for promotion in the following year.
- Where applicable and requested by the Department Head, the committee will evaluate faculty members in non-tenure track academic ranks (as described in AC-21) for promotion.
- The promotion and tenure committee shall conduct an annual review of this policy document, and the Chair will alert the Department Head of any revisions that the committee believes may be necessary.
Format for P&T committee's meetings: Consistent with University guidance, every Promotion and Tenure committee must decide at the outset whether all meetings will occur in-person or virtually if there is a significant reason to do so. Meeting format should remain the same throughout the P&T cycle. Prior to the committee’s first meeting, committee members must formulate a plan for meetings and decide upon one meeting mode (in-person or virtual) for all of the committee’s meetings. Promotion and Tenure committees may not meet via a hybrid approach (i.e., with some members in person and some virtual). For extenuating circumstances, one-time exceptions to keeping meeting format consistency during the cycle would need to be approved by the majority of the committee with the concurrence of the Department Head.
Format of EME P&T teaching peer-review evaluations: Peer teaching reviews in EME will be based on observations collected during class visitations by faculty evaluators. Feedback must be provided though the same standardized evaluation form, which must be agreed upon by the committee prior to the start of the evaluations of the cycle. For classes delivered in mixed (remote and in-person) mode, evaluations based on in-class visitations should be given preference. For classes exclusively in remote mode, evaluations based on synchronous participation in class should be given preference for performing the peer review.
Vacancies: If a member of the Promotion and Tenure Committee or the Representative to EMS resigns his/her position, or is unable to fill a full term, a replacement of the same academic rank shall be selected to fill the remaining term using the procedure specified below.
Under-performing Committee Member: If the faculty member is not fulfilling their duties, the P&T committee chair and/or department head may meet with the committee member to discuss ways the person can better meet obligations. However, the department head should not request the member’s resignation or take part in replacing the member. If the faculty member continues to be unable to meet their obligations to the committee, the P&T committee can vote to remove the member, and then a new member will be elected by a vote from the department faculty through normal voting procedures (detailed earlier).
When any vacancy occurs, the replacement to fill the open term will be selected through a special election in which faculty who are eligible to vote can vote for one candidate from the set of eligible candidates. If there is not time for a special election to be held before the committee must fulfill its obligations, the department head may appoint the faculty member who received the highest number of votes from the previous election but was not elected to the promotion and tenure committee.
Changes to this departmental policy are discussed in a faculty meeting and voted on by the tenured and tenure- track faculty with tenure-home in Energy and Mineral Engineering.