Office of the Provost and VP for Academic Affairs

The following are documents required for the first binder (the 25-page binder).
Note: use no less than 11-point font; double-sided pages are acceptable. Again, organize this binder. Use tabs or dividers—those do not count toward the page limit.

• Curriculum vitae (maximum of 10 pages; can be double-sided)
• Statements or summaries (include a discussion of their relationship to TAMIU’s mission):
  • Research (maximum of two pages; please include a paragraph on how research will contribute once tenured)
  • Teaching (maximum of two pages)
  • Service (maximum of two pages)
• All annual evaluations (PPEs; you can obtain these from Dean’s Executive Associate or Office of the Provost)
• Midterm review (you can obtain these from Dean’s Executive Associate or Office of the Provost)
  • Student evaluations, per year/semester

    Sample Evaluation

    Semester	Class	Format	# Enrolled	# of Survey Respondents	1. Course as a whole (median)	2. Course content (median)	Instructor contribution (median)	Instructor effectiveness (median)	Items 1-4 (median)
    Spring 2023	Course #: Name:	Online	20	6	4.2	4.5	4.5	4.2	4.3
    Spring 2023	Course #: Name:	Face to Face	141	83	4.8	4.8	4.8	4.8	4.8

As you move through the promotion and tenure process, additional materials will be added to this binder by your department chair and dean.

• External reviewer letters
• Promotion and tenure committee letters
• Chair letter
• Dean letter

Below are suggested materials for each section that you should have in your binders (list is not exhaustive).

Teaching:

• Professional reflection
• Syllabi and course materials
• Statement of teaching goals
• Teaching load information, including level and class size
• Evidence of use of technology and innovative pedagogy to complement instruction
• Professional development in teaching, including workshops and seminars presented and attended
• Artifacts from students
• Letters from peers who have observed classes or reviewed course materials
• Honors or awards for teaching excellence

Research

• Evidence of research, scholarly activity, creative performance
• Books and monographs
• Articles in refereed scholarly journals
• Other scholarly publications o Book reviews
• Papers presented at scholarly meetings
• Editorships and service on editorial boards
• Professional consulting
• Creative activities, shows and performances
• Grants

Service

• Evidence of service to the University
• Service on departmental, college, or University committees
• Student advising o Faculty or staff mentoring
• Evidence of service to profession
• Evidence of service to community
• Evidence of service to students

To be eligible to apply for tenure, a faculty member must be:

• a full-time employee and
• hold the academic rank of Assistant Professor or above. Faculty members who hold joint appointments with other state, federal, or private agencies or with two or more parts of The Texas A&M University System may be entitled to tenured status as faculty members, if they meet the aggregate requirements for tenure and meet the minimum time in rank at Texas A&M International University. Administrative positions per se are not subject to tenure.

Beginning with appointment to the rank of full-time Assistant Professor / Librarian or above, the probationary period for a faculty member will not exceed seven years of full-time service at Texas A&M International University. Up to three years of appropriate full-time service at other institutions may be included as a portion of the probationary period if agreed on in writing at the time of initial employment. Acceptance of credit toward promotion and tenure obligates the faculty member to apply for promotion and tenure on the accelerated schedule agreed to in the letter of employment.

All tenure track faculty members must come under tenure consideration no later than the sixth year of their service at Texas A&M International University. A faculty member who believes his/her Teaching, Scholarship, and Service record merits early tenure may apply during the fifth year of service toward tenure.

Generally, it is in the fall of your sixth year at TAMIU. However, if you were allowed to carry-in years toward tenure, it will depend on how many years credit you were given toward tenure. According to TAMIU Rule 12.01.01, tenure-track faculty are considered probation and the probationary period for an eligible faculty member will not exceed seven years of full-time service at TAMIU. Review for tenure shall be no later than the sixth year of service (unless an extension of the tenure probationary period has been approved according to TAMIU Rule 12.01.99.L1, Extension of the Tenure Probationary Period). Failure to apply for tenure when required will lead to a terminal contract of one calendar year from the semester in which an application was due.

Research, teaching, and service are evaluated for tenure.

All areas are important, but of the three, research is most important, and evidenced in the reduced teaching load tenure-track faculty receive upon hire at TAMIU. The expectation is that a reduced teaching load would allow time to develop or enhance scholarship. However, teaching is also important. A candidate will not be tenured if he/she has a pattern of ineffective teaching. Service is less important for gaining tenure than are the records of scholarship productivity and teaching effectiveness. Deans and chairs have been told to assign a limited number of service obligations to tenure-track faculty, although in years 4 and 5, we would like to see a bit more service to the department, college, and university from tenure-track faculty.

Tenure is not an “average” of the three areas. The expectation is that a faculty member who earns tenure has a strong record in all three areas. You might be excellent as a teacher and collegial and constructive in department and college service, but if your publication record is inadequate, you would not be recommended for tenure. It works the other way too. You might have a great record of publication and grants, but if you are ineffective as a teacher, you would not be recommended for tenure.

Tenure decisions related to research are based on the totality of your achievements and not on a sum of individual years. For example, in the humanities you could earn a “3” on research for each annual evaluation for a 5 year period but not have an adequate research record. How? The rubric for annual evaluations of research activity allow for a satisfactory score of “3” if a humanities faculty member delivers a conference paper. However, if all that the faculty member does in 5 years is to deliver 5 conference papers and does not publish, that person would not be recommended for tenure.

The quality of the journal or academic press in which your publication appears does matter. What constitutes “quality” in a scholarly journal? Generally, the following are characteristics of the top-tier journals in a field: a national and international scholarly audience, high number of submissions but low number of acceptances, frequent citations of journal articles by leading scholars in the field, prestige of sponsoring academic institution, and indexed by leading data bases. The impact of your contribution to your field matters greatly also, regardless of the reputation of the journal – something that citations by other scholars or critical reviews might reveal. External letters evaluating your research and publications are given great weight in determining the quality of your contribution to your field.

New tenure-track faculty receiving greatly reduced teaching loads will certainly be expected to be much more productive in their research and scholarship than those who earned tenure in past years. The research productivity standards for tenure rise as the university continues to develop and excel as an accredited institution of higher learning.

In general, it is recommended that you strive to publish an average of one referred article a year. This does not mean, however, that you cannot qualify for tenure with fewer. Each candidate’s record will be viewed individually on its own merits and in accordance with the standards in the discipline and in relation to peer and aspirational institutions. Some successful candidates therefore might have fewer than one referred publication per year, but faculty should strive for consistent research productivity during their probationary period.

Another consideration in determining if your research record is adequate is this: your publication /research record should indicate that you have established a research agenda that you can and will continue to pursue once tenured and that promises to lead you eventually to a full professorship. Tenure is awarded to those whose record of achievement suggests that they will continue to be productive scholars and excellent teachers and colleagues. You secure a tenure-track position based on your potential, but you earn tenure based on your progressively sustained performance.

In many fields, multiple authored articles are the norm, and in those fields the position of one’s name in the authorship listing is generally important. Being listed as the first author generally indicates a greater contribution to the research or writing of the article than those who are listed in the middle or last. Single-author articles are the norm in many disciplines, and thus carry more prestige in those fields than would co-authored articles. You may wish to indicate the percentage of effort that you made to the co-authored work and/or explain what you did in regard to the publication (e.g., performed the statistical calculations).

In many but not all disciplines, publication of a monograph is much more important than publication of articles. Among books, monographs are considered more important than editing a book for which the editor may have written an introduction and/or one of the articles in the anthology of articles. Would it be better to concentrate on writing and publishing a book than on writing and publishing several articles? In the humanities, certainly. In fact, many universities require a book publication (not a contract) for tenure. In other fields (e.g., behavioral science), publication of articles in referred journals is considered more important than publication of a book.

Publications prior to joining TAMIU are considered, but it depends on whether you were granted years toward tenure at TAMIU. If, for instance, TAMIU allowed you to bring in two years credit toward tenure, those two years will be considered as part of your tenure decision. However, you should not solely rely on accomplishments before joining TAMIU. We want to see productivity during the time you are here—at this university.

This varies by discipline. In the humanities, grant funding for research projects is extremely scarce. In the physical sciences, external grants to support faculty research are much more available. Procuring grants in any discipline is quite competitive and of value to the university and to the faculty who receive them. STEM faculty are expected to apply regularly for grants to fund their research, and the tenure-track faculty in the STEM fields that have been hired in the last two years and given greatly reduced teaching loads are expected to secure external grants to support their research. Failure to do so would lessen considerably, but not necessarily negate, their chances to earn tenure.

Articles that make a significant contribution to how your discipline is taught are valuable. Are articles on teaching your discipline considered as important as works of scholarship as are articles that make a clear and direct contribution to new knowledge or new insights in your discipline? For most disciplines, frankly, no. You were hired because of your expertise in a content area of your discipline, and you are indeed very much expected to be an effective teacher, but you are not expected to become a publishing scholar on the pedagogy of your field. That would be the mission of faculty in the College of Education, but not in the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Nursing, nor the A.R. Sanchez, Jr. School of Business. If you publish in your discipline, that’s expected and required. But, if you also publish in the pedagogy of your discipline, that’s even better.

TAMIU Rule 12.01.99 implements an A&M System Policy which allows institutions to extend the tenure probationary period under “extraordinary circumstances:”

For the purposes of this Rule, “extraordinary circumstances” shall include any catastrophic or life-threatening illness, an unforeseeable emergency, or circumstance of similar severity which would seriously impede progress toward demonstrating qualification for the award of tenure. The University shall have the sole discretion to determine what circumstances rise to the level of an “extraordinary circumstance.”

If such an “extraordinary circumstance” exists, then please make sure that you follow all of the procedural requirements for requesting extended time. See the HR website for details.

Faculty members who believe that they have met the minimum appropriate Education, Experience, Teaching, Service, and Scholarship requirements for promotion to all faculty ranks but Full Professor must:

• Send a letter to their Dean by August 1 preceding the academic year in which they intend to apply for promotion. Associate Professors / Librarians wishing to apply for promotion to Full Professor must send their letters to the Provost by August 1.
• The Dean must certify in writing within two weeks that the appropriate Education and Experience standards have been met.
  • Should the Dean fail to certify that appropriate Education and Experience standards have been met, the faculty member has the right to appeal the case to the Provost, who shall make a final decision and respond to the faculty member in writing within two weeks.
• The Provost will follow the same procedure for certifying that Associate Professors / Librarians have met the appropriate Education and Experience standards to apply for promotion to Full Professor / Librarian, with the President the person to whom faculty may appeal the Provost’s decision.

Administrators holding faculty appointments who apply for promotion and tenure must meet the same criteria for promotion and tenure as required of other faculty members. Thus, the merits of their applications will be based on their overall work as faculty members, not as administrators.