Change in Promotion and Tenure Guidelines

The Departmental Committee

(Reference: UNF Faculty Handbook (1997), Section 5.4 (4.3) [Chapter 5, p. 21-22])

The department committee's function is to review each candidate's tenure or promotion dossier and to provide a separate written assessment of the candidate's qualifications and a recommendation to the department chairperson.  The appropriate assessment and recommendation shall become part of each candidate's dossier.  It shall describe the committee's procedures, shall discuss the committee's analysis of the candidate's credentials with reference to both the department's and University's tenure and/or promotion criteria, shall include the results of the final vote taken by the committee, and shall set forth a tenure and/or promotion recommendation by the committee. When reporting the final vote, the committee shall not identify the vote, by name, of any individual member of the committee. In determining tenure or promotion recommendations....

Rationale: Committee recommendations should be viewed as a group property of the committee.  It is unnecessary and undesirable for participants in the tenure and promotion process to know how individual committee members voted.  Providing such information in a committee report potentially targets individuals for reprisals and produces a chilling effect on academic freedom.