Hiring Tenure-Track Faculty
- Karla Steffen
For an overview of the process for recruiting and hiring tenure-track faculty, see COE: Hiring Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty.
For joint hires, see additional guidance at COE: Hiring Joint Faculty.
For information on the University’s leasing program for new tenure-track faculty, see COE: Housing Program for Tenure-Track Faculty.
Associate and full Professors without tenure
UT Austin may occasionally consider persons external to the University for appointment as senior faculty members to the ranks of Associate and full Professor without tenure. Hires of tenure-track associate and tenure-track full professors follow the same requirements as for Hiring Tenured Faculty, to include pre-review and review/approval of the PAR by the EVPP review committee.
Tenure-track associate and full professor appointments are typically most appropriate for new, external senior hires whose careers have been in a non-academic setting where there are limited opportunities to teach, to compete for external support, or to publish independent work. The decision on whether or not to pursue tenure for Associate or full Professor hires rests with the College and is made on a case-by-case basis. These appointments must be full-time, and may not be used for internal hires nor for promotions.
Tenure-track PARs
See also:
COE: PAR - T/TT Electronic Document Processing Guide: section-by-section instructions for processing a PAR in DEFINE
Before beginning, review EVPP: Prior Approval Request (PAR) Process for additional information and instructions.
Required documentation
For supplementary materials required in the PAR packet, see the appropriate checklist at COE: PAR - Supplementary Documentation Checklists > Tenure-track hires.
PAR process
Responsible party | Step | Action |
|---|---|---|
COE Faculty Affairs | 1 | Summer/fall: COE Faculty Affairs sends weekly calendar holds for late November-May to Chairs and Administrative Managers in each recruiting department. Holds will be cancelled or confirmed as needed. The purpose of the meetings is to discuss and finalize faculty offer letters. |
Department | 2 | Department recruits for position following all steps at COE Recruiting Process. |
3 | Department identifies position finalist, and submits a COE Faculty Hire Form, including as much information as is available at that moment. | |
COE Faculty Affairs | 4 | COE Faculty Affairs: |
b) schedules a meeting for the soonest available calendar hold date. Attendees: department chair, Administrative Manager, Assistant Director for Faculty Affairs, Chief Business Officer, and Dean-delegate. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss, review, and finalize the draft offer letter. | ||
COE Faculty Affairs, Department, and College leadership | 5 | Meeting takes place. |
COE Faculty Affairs | 6 | Draft offer letter is finalized based on meeting conversation and shared with Department. |
Department | Optional | AFTER draft offer letter has been approved by all meeting participants, and the finalized draft shared by COE Faculty Affairs with the Department, the Department may share the draft with the finalist. Once a draft offer letter is approved, any changes made to it also require Dean's approval. IMPORTANT: This draft must be watermarked "draft," and should not be signed by anyone, as it is not a contract. It must be clearly stated in all communications about it that the draft does not represent an actual offer of employment, is subject to modification, and is not final until the PAR has been final-approved by the Dean's Office. |
7 | Check University Community EID Listing to confirm whether finalist already has an EID. If finalist does not already have an EID, department directs finalist to create one at EID Self-Service Tools > Get a UT EID and report it back to department. | |
8 | Process a faculty job requisition in Workday. | |
 9 | a) Process FPN in DEFINE. See COE: PAR - T/TT Electronic Document Processing Guide b) Collect all supplementary documentation listed at COE: PAR - Supplementary Documentation Checklists > Tenure-track hires | |
10 | a) Approve completed FPN (DEFINE PAR document) forward to COE Faculty Affairs. b) Forward completed but unsigned PAR packet as a single PDF to COE-FacultyAffairs@austin.utexas.edu. PAR packet should include all documentation listed at COE: PAR - Supplementary Documentation Checklists > Tenure-track hires, in the order described. | |
COE Faculty Affairs | 11 | COE Faculty Affairs routes PAR cover sheets and draft offer letter to Chief Business Officer (CBO) for non-signature approval of financial commitments. |
12 | a) FPN and PAR packet review. | |
13 | a) If PAR packet is approved by Dean/Dean designee, COE Faculty Affairs approves FPN and adds approval notes in DEFINE. | |
Department | 14 | Format final offer letter on department letterhead, update date, remove watermark, etc. |
15 | Send signed offer letter to COE-FacultyAffairs@austin.utexas.edu. | |
COE Faculty Affairs | 16Â | COE Faculty Affairs: |
b) shares PAR and offer letter with COE Finance Team. | ||
c) adds PAR and offer letter to faculty personnel files. | ||
d) adds new hire to COE SharePoint Lists. | ||
e) submits Faculty Housing Program interest form if applicable | ||
APS | 17 | EVPP final-approves the PAR upon receipt of the signed offer letter, and pushes the hire to Workday. |
FPN updates as follows and onboarding processes can begin: Status: APPROVED     -- COVER SHEET --     Document ID: 60FPN999XXX                 Action: ___   Summary: Faculty, Lisa                             ** Offer Accepted - Position in Workday** | ||
Department | 18 | Close the Interfolio position following the guidance at Closing the position on this page. |
Offer letters
Tenure-track faculty offer letters are written by the COE Assistant Director for Faculty Affairs in collaboration with the hiring department and are subject to the approval of the Dean/Dean Designate. To initiate the offer letter request process, the department AM submits a COE Faculty Hire Form, including as much information as is available. See PAR process, steps 3-6 on this page for additional steps.
Before extending a final offer letter to a candidate, the PAR and offer letter must be approved by the Dean/Dean Designate. COE Faculty Affairs will obtain College-level approvals and will notify the department Administrative Manager when these approvals have been obtained and it is allowable for the department to proceed with the offer.
Once a draft offer letter is approved by the Dean, any changes made to it also require Dean's approval.
PAR-Workday integration process
After both the DEFINE FPN document and PAR packet have been approved by the Dean's Office, and the signed offer letter has been received and processed by APS, the following information is pushed into to Workday from the PAR, overwriting the initial data entered on the job requisition:
Personal information (name and contact information)
Job Details (benefits eligibility, Job Profile, FTE, etc.)
Compensation
Pay Group (determined pay frequency, e.g., monthly)
Education
After the final-approved PAR pushes the new faculty appointment to Workday, the department should review the details (title, salary, FTE, benefits-eligibility, etc.) of the Workday appointment for accuracy. If any errors are discovered, the department Administrative Manager should update via the appropriate Workday business process and provide a brief explanation in the comments, and attach a copy of the offer letter and/or other helpful documentation to the business process.
Closing the position
Immediately after the conclusion of a faculty search and/or once the posting is no longer needed, the department should close the Interfolio position (archive) and indicate an outcome. For searches that did not result in selection of a candidate, add a note about why no selection was made (e.g., cancelled due to lack of funding, position no longer needed, lack of qualified applicants, etc.).
See guidance at COE Recruiting Process > After the conclusion of the search.
Online training for this step is available at the following links:
Please send suggested additions to this page and notifications about broken links to COE-FacultyAffairs@austin.utexas.edu.
Welcome to the University Wiki Service! Please use your IID (yourEID@eid.utexas.edu) when prompted for your email address during login or click here to enter your EID. If you are experiencing any issues loading content on pages, please try these steps to clear your browser cache.