Each promotion dossier must include at least five letters from external reviewers that meet the qualifications summarized in Subsection D.9(a). this section.
- The dean must approve the final list of external reviewers for each candidate.
- Most of the external letters included in the dossier should must be from reviewers nominated solely by the department or college/school.
(a)Qualifications of External Reviewers
External reviewers must understand the academic setting and the standards expected for discipline-specific benchmarks in terms of research excellence with respect to productivity, impact, and trajectory.
In addition, external reviewers must satisfy the following criteria:
- Tenured full professors and recognized experts serving at peer or aspirational peer institutions who are knowledgeable about the scholarly expectations for promotion at an R1 doctoral university
- Reviewers must have no real or potential conflict of interest related to the candidate (e.g., spouse, partner, PhD advisor, postdoctoral mentor, etc.)
- Reviewers must not be close collaborators with the candidate. Ideally all reviewers will be “arm’s length.”
- However, the department chair and/or dean have some latitude to select external reviewer(s) with whom the candidate had a minor collaboration as co-authors or co-PIs
- Reviewers should be selected from different institutions.
Any deviations from these considerations (e.g., reviewer from a non-peer institution or emeritus professor) must be thoroughly justified in the Summary of External Reviewers subsection [G.1110(a)].
The department chair and/or dean must address the selection of co-authors and/or co-PIs as external reviewers.
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