Inclusive Excellence — November 7, 2016

Inclusive Excellence with Kathy Lechman

Please join Dr. Kathy Lechman, CFAES Director of Equity and Inclusion for our session on Inclusive Excellence.

“Inclusive Excellence” is a concept stemming from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) that many colleges and universities across the nation have adopted. The focus of inclusive excellence is to build educational environments where students, faculty, and staff can thrive. Through various types of legislation, higher education has become more diverse, but has it become more inclusive? Inclusive excellence is not simply about numbers of students, staff, or faculty. It is about understanding the ways in which we influence the environment around us.

This session will explore the role of implicit bias in recruiting and retaining faculty, staff and students. To make the most of our time I ask each person to visit the Project Implicit site and take two or three of the tests. You will not be asked to share your results, but we will use our experiences with the Implicit Association Test as the basis of our discussion.

Date: Monday, November 7, 2016
Time
: 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Location: Agricultural Administration Building 140G, Columbus; Research Services 209, Wooster

Please R.S.V.P. to this session by emailing burant.2@osu.edu as soon as possible.

Meeting Notes: Promotion & Tenure — October 3, 2016

Promotion and Tenure Review — Presentation from Kay Wolf

Kay Wolf, OSU Office of Academic Affairs: Promotion and tenure is a quality improvement program. We want you to show your major accomplishments while you’re at Ohio State University. What are your goals and strategies each year and where are you with them?

The idea is to grow and take ownership of your growth.

Teaching is important. What are you learning and how are you growing with it?

What are the outcomes of your service and engagement? We don’t ask as much for younger faculty, but some it’s very intertwined in who you are.

You are an Assistant Professor. Ask for assistance. We want you to succeed and are very proud that you are at Ohio State.

For the six year P&T review, the review begins with the tenure initiating unit (TIU) P&T review. The Chair then writes a letter. You have a 10 day period to respond to the letter, but this is not a chance to rewrite everything.

Take the opportunity to read the letters closely and write a response if you feel you need to. It then goes to the university committee. I read every dossier.

If the TIU was positive and the Chair was positive, but not the Dean or college-level committee, I will also take it forward to the University committee for one final look. The University follows through for you to ensure that the process and criteria was followed by everyone. The appointment will be approved by the Provost and Board of Trustees.

During your fourth year review, the TIU and the Dean will make the final decision. It does not come forward to OAA.

Your mandatory review is the sixth year review.

Clinical faculty reviews are the same as fourth year reviews and end at the level of the Dean. The Dean then decides promotion vs. non promotion and reappointment vs. non reappointment.

Mandatory reviews must go forward. Start working on Vita as soon as it goes up. Reviews must go forward even if you have missing data. Non-mandatory reviews do not have to go forward if you’re missing data.

Working with teams: what is your responsibility?

What is the unique piece that you contribute consistently to your team? Your unique niche is extremely important to the team… You really need to show what this means in your narrative.

STEP mentoring can count as Extension or teaching in your portfolio, but it can’t be both.

Appointments across the campus–with an MOU or in two departments etc.–be sure you’re contributing to other departments correctly and work with your Chair.

Mark Sulc, Horticulture & Crop Science: In documenting team contributions, hopefully your department is seeing the change in science, but it’s very important to describe your unique piece in that. Under every publication, be VERY specific about what you wrote, your research, etc. and hopefully your external letter writers will know what you are doing. They will hopefully say you are a team player, can describe your contribution to the team and say that without you it cannot happen. Another option is to get a letter from a collaborator.

Kay: It helps if you ask the Chair to write a request for the letter to your collaborator so it appears very neutral. When it gets to the
University committee, it’s important for them to understand as well. Think of everyone reading this… Some TIUs or someone at the University-level might not know your work, so describe things clearly and specifically.

Question: Can external letters come from collaborators?

Mark: External reviewers need to come from non-collaborators. They can know you and your work, but cannot have worked with you on a project.

No more than half of the external reviewers can be suggested by the candidate. The P&T committee usually suggests most of them.

In regards to your dossier:

Vita.osu.edu will be launching in April 2017. Research in view is closing on December 31, 2016. You don’t have to fear your data has been lost. Assistance will be provided for those faculty going forward in any manner.

Question: Is this a tool that can be used for annual reviews?

Kay: I would not recommend it. I think you should print everything in December. If someone is new, I would allow them to use a Word document or something else.

Dossier tips:

  • Do not repeat
  • Think about what you’re trying to convey–what are your strengths? Think that through!
  • Recognize your college and unit. This is important! They set the criteria for you and if you don’t understand the criteria, you need to talk with people on the P&T committee and the Chair of your department.

You have two choices when you go up for P&T: to use the document from when you were hired or the document for the current year you are going up.

Narratives — why bother?

It is YOUR STORY. The one place that you can demonstrate the growth of your career. Show outcomes and tell your story through growth.

Jeff Sharp: It’s a lot of work to take on those five external review letters. You don’t want to start that process and then back out if you’re not ready. Just make sure you think about it.

Mark: Your trajectory and works in progress are important at the fourth year review. Most people are making good progress. The committee wants to know if there is momentum.

Jeff: Regarding the idea of narratives: you need to study what your unit’s criteria are. If your narrative addresses them, it would be useful.

Terry Niblack: Avoid overly technical language in the narratives, especially in narratives about research. It’s impossible to interpret some. Make sure you’re communicating to  people who don’t know about your field.

Jeff: Good point. Even when you’re listing journals, let us know this if is a top publication in your field.

Question: What time of year is the dossier due?

Terry: Your department will determine that. That should be communicated to you by your departmental P&T committee. It will probably be in spring to late-spring.

Mark: Every department is different so talk to your Chair and the P&T committee.

Once it is sent to the college, the dossier is sent to the Dean, then the Dean makes a committee of nine different people. The job of the college committee is to determine if your unit review occurred in a proper way. That the right criteria were applied, the right procedures were followed, etc. We look at all the dossiers. There’s usually three sub-committees and we divide each of the dossiers to really, really look at them and then come back with a recommendation to the main committee. At the college-level we read all of them, but at a finer level we look at them again in our sub-committees. If there are concerns, the whole committee looks into it.

The college committee does a very good job of being very objective and sticking to their role to determine that the review was conducted in the proper way. There have been times where flags were raised and the committee went in a different direction from the department, but if everything was done right at the department level, then it should go right through to the university.

If there are issues a the unit level, it has to go back and be reconducted at the unit level.

The committee will then take a vote and writes a letter to the Dean. The Dean then writes their own report.

Terry: Search OAA governance and it will show you the governance documents for every unit.

Question: Is there ever a case that the peer expert might be outside of the department, but within the university or does it always have to come from outside of OSU?

Kay: The rule says external, so it has to be outside of OSU.