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Communications | Appointment and Advancement

Annual Memo on Academic Advancement – 2024


October 21, 2024

FROM:
CP/EVC LORI KLETZER
CAP CO-CHAIRS SUSAN GILLMAN AND GREGORY GILBERT

TO:
SENATE FACULTY

RE: Annual CAP/EVC Memo on Academic Advancement- 2024

Dear Colleagues:

As the new academic year begins, we write to address some frequently asked questions and clarify expectations and priorities for the Senate faculty merit and promotion process.

**Last year’s memo contains important information, including on work-in-progress, preemptive retentions, and college provost and department chair service; please review the 2023 Annual CAP/EVC Memo on Academic Advancement.

NEW: Overlapping Steps
Following preliminary consultation with CAP, CP/EVC Kletzer has proposed changes to campus academic personnel policy on Overlapping Steps (also called “barrier steps”). If the policy goes into effect, promotion from an overlapping step will be to Step 1 in the higher rank by default, with an equivalent amount of salary (1 step, 1 and 1⁄3 steps, 1 and 2⁄3 steps, 2 steps, or 2 1⁄3 steps) awarded as an off-scale increase. The policy change will prevent future Associate Professors from prematurely reaching the salary limits on barrier steps. Details can be found on the APO website (Policy Under Review); comments are due no later than November 18, 2024.

In order to transition to the new policy on Overlapping Steps, a Special Salary Practice adjustment will address a potential remaining issue for recently tenured faculty at their first review at the associate rank. In review years 2024-25 and 2025- 26, and contingent upon the adoption of the policy revision, a candidate who was promoted into the Associate rank at Step 3 and then at their first post-tenure review is awarded an acceleration-equivalent increase (i.e. equivalent to AC or A1) to Step 4, will not be subject to the salary limits on barrier steps. In these circumstances the salary equivalent of an extra one or one and 1⁄3 steps (AC and A1) will be added to the off-scale component. This temporary measure for newly-tenured faculty at their first associate-rank review will be needed only until the policy change is enacted.

NEW: COVID-Impacted Reviews
The May 2021 guidance on COVID-impacted reviews allowed for a “COVID Exception”– a salary increase equivalent to one step of salary in lieu of rank/step advancement– for three years. In recognition of the fact that the impacts of COVID on faculty scholarship can be delayed, we now extend the time frame for faculty to take advantage of the COVID
Exception for three more years, through review years 2024-25, 2025-26, and 2026-27. The COVID Exception can be granted once for each individual. It is also available to faculty hired after 2021 in cases where the pandemic has had continuing impacts on their research since arriving at UCSC.

Community Engagement in Personnel Review
What have we learned from this year’s systematic incorporation of community-engaged work in our review process? Using the 2022-23 guidelines, the campus aimed to address all aspects of community-engaged scholarship, from advice on how faculty should incorporate their work as engaged scholars in the file, including the bio-bib and personal statement,
to guidelines for departments on how to solicit external reviewers. Questions similar to those related to DEI have emerged specifically about where/how departments should give credit for community-engaged work, how to balance the individual areas of research/scholarship, teaching/mentoring, and service with the final, overall recommendation. Campus
practice to date is to value community-engaged work as a hybrid of scholarship, teaching, and/or service. This means scholarship in the sense that the translation of knowledge into terms that are accessible to the wider public and government policy-makers is part of the academic enterprise, especially at a public university that explicitly acknowledges
the significance in personnel review of institutional participation in the ongoing public dialogue on pressing social issues. Deans, departments, and faculty should take guidance on how public-facing, community-engaged scholarship connects with both teaching and service from an April 2017 UC Office of the President memo, “The Pursuit of Collective Excellence in Research”: “[a]lthough research is typically evaluated separately from teaching and service, these three elements of UC’s mission are, in fact, interdependent and can be synergistic….” In other words, for all review levels, instead of evaluating faculty performance separately in these three categories, research/scholarship, teaching/mentoring and service should be seen as integrally interwoven, particularly for faculty engaged in public-facing research and public service.

APM 210-1.d. states, “As the University enters new fields of endeavor and refocuses its ongoing activities, cases will arise in which the proper work of faculty members departs markedly from established academic patterns. In such cases, the review committees must take exceptional care to apply the criteria with sufficient flexibility. However, flexibility does not entail a relaxation of high standards.”

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Contributions in Personnel Review
The campus continues to work on clarifying how contributions to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEI) goals are incorporated into, and distributed among, the areas of personnel review. Faculty statements and department letters generally follow two routes: either they address DEI separately in each relevant area or they include a separate DEI
paragraph. Either way is appropriate. Increasingly, however, a pattern has emerged in this year’s cases of letters that recognize DEI in the overlap among scholarship, teaching, and service. As with Community Engagement, contributions from DEI can be placed into individual categories or can highlight how those contributions are interwoven across multiple
areas.

Teaching Professors
Since the issuance of revised APM 285 in 2018, the campus has made significant strides in recognizing the Teaching Professor series as equivalent to the Professor series in compensation, stature, and review procedures. We have implemented a rank and step salary scale, the Teaching Professor working title, and extended the Special Salary Practice
and Career Equity Review policies to the series. Please see prior CAP/EVC guidance on evaluation of Teaching Professors and application of the Special Salary Practice; external letters for Teaching Professor reviews and sample solicitation letter; Teaching Professors and teaching across the curriculum. Departments may also review APM 210-3, Instructions to Review Committees (on the Teaching Professor Series), newly updated in March 2024.

Senate Bylaw 55 has not been updated to give automatic voting rights to Teaching Professors, but many departments on campus have voted to extend Bylaw 55 rights to Teaching Professors. We encourage any department that has not done so to consider the benefits to the department and to the teaching professor of full and equivalent participation in the
faculty review process.

Soliciting Internal Letters
Internal letters are those solicited from UCSC programs or individuals outside of the department. This practice has become routine in some departments, particularly asking for assessments of university service. We encourage departments to weigh the need for such letters against the associated workload and time, and to solicit them only when
absolutely necessary. Letters should never be solicited from a voting member in the department, because they will already be contributing to the department discussion and letter.

Length of Department Evaluation Letters
Department letters are most effective when limited to 3-5 pages. In recent review years, we have continued to see a significant number of files with longer letters. The department letter should not repeat lists of information or quote at length from the personal statement(s), external letters, or SETs. Letters need not summarize a candidate’s advancement history, which is readily available to reviewers in DivData. Rather than summarizing the candidate’s research, letters should focus on the quality, innovation, and impact of the research as well as provide context, explanation, or analysis of impact for key items from the bio-bibliography. This also applies to deans’ letters: if a dean agrees with a unanimous departmental assessment, they need not repeat the explanation, unless there are additional achievements or contextual elements missed in the department letter.

Deadlines and Deferrals
As a reminder, a complete set of candidate materials must be submitted in DivData by the campus deadline, or an earlier deadline set by the department. Deans can approve an extension of 30 days. When the deadline has passed, Mandatory Reviews must proceed without materials, and all other on-call reviews must be deferred. Not-on-call reviews (e.g., early tenure cases or merits after Step 6) may not be accepted after the deadline, other than urgent retention cases.

Sincerely,
Greg Gilbert
Co-Chair
Committee on Academic Personnel

Susan Gillman
Co-Chair
Committee on Academic Personnel

Lori Kletzer
Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

cc:
Academic Personnel Office
Academic Senate Office
Deans
Department Chairs
Department Managers
Divisional Academic Personnel Coordinators

Last modified: Oct 30, 2024