Mid-Probationary Review (aka Third-Year Review)

Overview

In accordance with the University of Texas at Austin Handbook of Operating Procedures 2-2160 and Regents Rule 31002, the School of Information’s Promotion and Tenure Committee will conduct a mid-probationary review (commonly called the “third-year review”) of the progress of tenure-track faculty towards tenure and promotion. This review normally occurs in the spring of their third year of full-time service.

The purpose of this review is to provide you with thoughtful, constructive, and evaluative comments about the trajectory of your progress, along with suggestions for improvements when appropriate. This review is not intended to provide an unequivocal signal of the likelihood of earning tenure; it is meant to assess your development toward reaching the standards needed for promotion to the rank of associate professor with tenure.

The balance of this webpage provides specific guidance about how to prepare materials for a third-year review and the timing of the process.

Material Preparation

The P&T Committee will conduct the review using materials provided by the reviewee; no external letters are sought in this review. The third-year review materials should be modeled on a promotion and tenure dossier, the general guidelines for which can be found at http://provost.utexas.edu/faculty-affairs/promotion-and-tenure/.

The committee suggests that reviewees work with their faculty mentor through various revisions of their materials. Please note that by providing the types of information specified below, it will ensure that the information under consideration is correct. Providing this information will facilitate the committee's ability to make better recommendations. Please bear in mind that well-organized materials with clear sections and headings will aid the P&T Committee’s comprehension of your accomplishments and plans in each area of evaluation.

CV

Please note section G.5 of the promotion and tenure guidelines, which specifies the required content of your CV, including the requirement to clearly label publications’ status (e.g., in preparation, in press, accepted). The EBC asks that you include additional information about the status of the outlet (e.g., impact factor for journals, acceptance rates for conferences) to the extent known. You should also include word counts for citations that do not include page ranges, such as online publications. Bulleted items listed in the guidelines may serve well as headings within your CV.  You may devote some space here to explain the context of your H-index score, for example.

Research Statement

Please describe your work and research path in terms that someone outside your scholarly community can understand. Begin with a high-level description that explains the questions that drive your research and why they are important. Speak to the methods that you employ to the extent they are relevant. Tell us what makes your approach different from that of others who study the same phenomena or topics, what your contribution has been, and why your work fits well in an information school. Please call our attention to particular papers, choosing your most important work in peer-reviewed outlets that reflects your contributions, such as conceptual, theoretical, or methodological advances.

Please provide any relevant norms related to publication in your scholarly community—such as the relative importance of books, journal articles, and conference papers, norms regarding sole-authorship and co-authorship, and norms surrounding the ordering of author names on co-authored publications—so that we can better evaluate your effort and contribution. You may also want to describe funding norms in your scholarly community (e.g., if funding is typical in your field, at what level, and from what types of agencies) and your success as compared to those norms.

End by briefly speaking to your research and publication plans in the remaining time before tenure review, being sure to note what challenges or obstacles you foresee. All of this information will help the EBC not just to evaluate your record to date, but to determine what kinds of recommendations and support may be helpful to you.

Teaching Statement

The teaching statement provides an opportunity for you to describe your teaching beyond the information we gain from your course instructor surveys and your listing of courses. Please speak briefly to your teaching philosophy and at greater length about your teaching accomplishments (e.g., new courses or materials you designed, integration of your research and teaching, and involvement in teaching beyond the classroom). Provide explanations for any low CIS evaluations or how you worked in subsequent years to improve them.

Service Statement

Please organize your service via separate sections for service by audience (e.g., to the school, to the university, and to your professional community). Please provide brief explanations that might help us to understand the importance of service outside the school. Note whether scholarly engagement with your service community is an important part of your research identity.

Advising Statement

Please briefly explain your advising of students across degree programs, inside and outside of class. You might provide additional information for advising that you do beyond the School or University that may not be visible to us.

Honors Statement

Beyond listing your awards and honors, briefly describe the importance of external ones, which may not be known to us. Include external references where possible to confirm your descriptions.

Timing

In the early fall of the reviewee's third year of service, Dona Kurtz will create a UT Box folder containing copies of your faculty annual reports, annual reviews, and course instructor survey results. All additional materials that you wish to submit to the P&T Committee, including the required materials listed above, should be uploaded to the Box folder by the first class day of the following spring semester. The results of the review will be communicated to you before May 1 of the spring semester.

Contact

Please contact Dona Kurtz at dona@ischool.utexas.edu with questions about this policy and its procedures.

Additional Information

Mid-Probationary Review For Tenure-Track Faculty