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Faculty Governance

II.B Promotions Committee

1. Preamble: The Promotions Committee makes recommendations each year regarding faculty promotions except for those Assistant Professors being considered for tenure. The Committee receives documentation from the candidates and their peers according to the approved procedures and may also solicit, with the candidate's written approval, additional information of a professional and academic nature which it considers pertinent to the evaluation of the candidate's record. The members are to evaluate the available evidence. Their function, individually and collectively, is to represent the entire faculty of the College in the matter of promotions.

2. Composition: The Committee is composed of seven tenured faculty members elected at-large to staggered two-year terms.

3. Promotion Procedures Calendar: Between March 15th-April 1st, after making its promotion recommendations, the outgoing Promotions Committee assembles a master list of names for possible consideration in the following year:

1. This list is to include the names of all faculty members who have held their present rank for the minimum period. Since academic rank measures a faculty member's standing in the general academic community, “time in rank” is understood to include time served at institutions other than RIT as long as these institutions have comparable minimal criteria for earning the rank thus held. As a general rule, the minimum period is three years for Instructor to Assistant Professor, five years for Assistant Professor to Associate Professor, and five years for Associate Professor to Professor.
2. The list should include names submitted as a result of a general call for recommendations issued by the Committee. This call for recommendations might be worded as follows: “The Promotions Committee is assembling a master list of possible candidates for promotion next year. All faculty members who have been in their present rank for the minimum period are automatically on the list. We would appreciate receiving recommendations of faculty members who may merit consideration for promotion before having spent the normal time in rank.” Names received in response to this call are added to the list regardless of time in rank. Such recommendations may be submitted by any faculty member or administrator.

The Committee is to notify all faculty members on the list that they are eligible for consideration and ask if they wish their names removed. A written response is required. The deadline for responses is July 1st so that candidates from the previous year will have been notified of what action has been taken on their earlier candidacies prior to the deadline. All candidates who do not ask in writing to have their names removed stay on the list, and this list is passed on to the new Promotions Committee which takes office in the fall.

4. Guidelines for Promotion: The qualities hoped for in a member of an academic community are unquestionably difficult to list. It is nevertheless wise to outline broad guidelines which are meant as reminders to the Promotions Committee of the sorts of things which must be taken into consideration. Especially important is the necessity to recognize the mutually interdependent relationship between teaching effectiveness and scholarship. While the communication of content depends upon effective teaching technique, good technique is irrelevant without meaningful content. For this reason, it should be understood that, although “Scholarly Qualifications and Activities” appears first among the promotion considerations at each rank level, and “Teaching Effectiveness” appears second, this ordering is in no way intended to indicate the relative importance of the two considerations.

1. Assistant Professor: Promotion to Assistant Professor ought to be awarded only if the following matters have been considered:
   1. Scholarly Qualifications and Activities: Data appropriate to the following considerations should in the first instance be gathered from the relevant Academic Department. This does not preclude solicitation of advice and information from other sources.
      1. Degree: Appointments at the rank of Assistant Professor will be made only to people who hold the terminal degree appropriate to college teaching in their field. For most fields in the College of Liberal Arts, the appropriate degree is the Ph.D.
      2. Professional Activities: Promotion to Assistant Professor should be made only if there are indications that the candidate is active in professional activity appropriate to his or her discipline or profession. In the College of Liberal Arts, this may mean completion of the Ph.D., publication of research, other literary publication, professionally related consultation, the exhibition of works of art, activity in community affairs of academically or professionally appropriate kinds, and the like. It is important that the candidate's work in such areas indicate at least a promise of later high quality achievement in the candidate's academic or professional field.
   2. Teaching Effectiveness: It is admittedly difficult to measure teaching effectiveness. Nevertheless, a sincere effort should be made to solicit and access data gathered from student evaluations (in order to measure student perceptions of a candidate's classroom performance) and from collegial evaluations (in order to measure the appropriateness and currency of the course content).
   3. Academic Activities: Since the following matters are not simply matters of competence in a particular academic discipline or profession, sources of information other than the Academic Department may be especially appropriate. The advice of the Academic Department must be given due weight in these matters, however.
      1. Service to the Institute and College: Length and character of service in present rank should be considered, as should committee work and other formal and informal services rendered to the Academic Department, the College, and the Institute. Given RIT's emphasis on career-oriented education, the College of Liberal Arts has a unique responsibility to provide an intellectual, humanizing tone to the Institute environment. Hence, faculty involvement in academic governance and overall student life at the Institute (especially out-of-class contact with students) is an important educational responsibility of faculty in this college.
      2.     2. Service to the Community and Profession: A degree of service to the community through lectures or other means of providing expertise to the community at large should be expected of any faculty member. Such activities deserve minimal consideration in relation to promotion unless such activities are especially important to the community or are a direct extension of the candidate's academic or professional field. Holding office in professional organizations and related activities may be considered under this category.
2. Associate Professor: Promotion is awarded only if tenure has been awarded to the candidate and the following matters have been considered:
   1. Scholarly Qualifications and Activities: The candidate should demonstrate an increasing engagement in professional activities of the kind outlined above. The candidate's Department is the most important source of information on this matter, but it is appropriate to solicit professional evaluation from persons in the candidate's field who are not affiliated with RIT.
   1. Degree: Only in rare cases should the rank of Associate Professor be awarded to a candidate who lacks the appropriate terminal degree for teaching at the college level. Such rare cases include situations in which a candidate's long and distinguished service to RIT began before the terminal degree was required at appointment.
   2. Professional Activities: The candidate should demonstrate achievement in such scholarly and professional activities as were outlined in the promotion guidelines for Assistant Professor. This achievement should be measured by standards pertinent not just to the RIT community, but to the appropriate broader academic community. Information gathered from local and non-local sources should clearly indicate that the candidate is making progress in professional terms.
   2. Teaching Effectiveness: Candidates should demonstrate continuing teaching effectiveness. A candidate for the higher academic ranks should be able to show continuing growth in instructional skills, developed through the refinement of existing methods and/or adoption of new techniques, Moreover, it is assumed that scholarly development will result in increased critical powers, and capacity to synthesize information, all of which should positively affect an individual's maturation as a teacher.
   3. Academic Activities: Candidates should demonstrate a continuing record of academic service since promotion to Assistant Professor.
3. Professor: Promotion to Professor is awarded only if the following matters have been considered:
   1. Scholarly Qualifications and Activities
      1. Degree: Promotion requires a terminal degree in the candidate's academic or professional field, except in the most unusual circumstances.
      2. Professional Activities: The candidate should not only demonstrate achievement in such scholarly and professional activities as are outlined for the lower ranks, but should have gained recognition in the appropriate academic or professional field. Evaluations from outside RIT should be solicited. This in no way should be understood as minimizing the role of the Academic Department in giving advice to the Promotions Committee.
   2. Teaching Effectiveness: Candidates should demonstrate a high degree of teaching excellence as proof of academic potential realized to the fullest. All sources of data should be considered, including student and collegial evaluations.
   3. Academic Activities: Candidates should demonstrate a continuing record of academic service since promotion to Associate Professor.
4. Emeritus: Faculty members may be awarded the rank of Associate Professor Emeritus or Professor Emeritus upon retirement. That distinction acknowledges long and distinguished service to the academic community in general and to RIT in particular. Promotion upon retirement requires observing the standard procedures for promotion.

Approved January 12, 1988
Revised October 5, 2007