Third Year Reviews

Quick Guide to Third-Year Reviews 

The third-year review in IU Indianapolis policy (Faculty Guide), has these primary purposes:

Ensuring that people have the "right" area of excellence.
- Someone may enter the third-year review process undecided, but both they and their committees should either decide upon the result, or schedule a fourth-year review.
Clearly indicating what needs to happen next. Distinguish between: your pace/quality are good and need to continue; your pace/quality seem slow, will need to increase but look promising; your pace/quality seem very problematic, let's have some intense follow-up
Communicating when the candidate has not conveyed their own agendas, accomplishments, and independence clearly.
The candidate statement should be reasonably effective and understandable at all levels at this point.
Chairs should make sure candidates are developing documentation (proof) of all assertions. (The campus discourages hefty dossiers at the third-year point, but proof will be needed later.)
If there are issues, take time to have follow-up meetings. Often the high stress of the third-year review means candidates are not taking in advice effectively at that moment.
Clarifying what intermediate and final scholarly work will be needed, e.g., internal/external grants, articles, presentations, and books. A tenure case is based on trajectory: what evidence will allow reviewers in the sixth year confident evidence of trajectory?
Ensure all levels agree on what counts as in-rank.
Resolve any disagreements among review levels.

Procedure:

Schools and departments set all deadlines so that the process can be completed by May 1st of the person's third academic year. Except for Medicine, e-dossier is NOT used for third year reviews.

The packet submitted to Office of Academic Affairs (by May 1st) should include in one PDF:

Candidate statement and CV
Department/primary committee evaluation
Chair evaluation
School/unit committee evaluation
Dean evaluation

Upload to the Third-Year Reviews folder in Teams for your school.

“The order of review and deliberation involving the department chair or school dean and the Primary and Unit Committees should generally follow the sequence and procedure used by each school in handling ordinary tenure and promotion cases.” IU Indianapolis Faculty Guide. 

Typically, the department and chair evaluations contain a full summarization of the candidate’s accomplishments and plans. The school and dean levels need not repeat summarization but should emphasize areas that need particular work in the future. Use of the third-year review in final tenure review (in a word: not unless the candidates wants to do so.)

Associate deans have access to notes on all third-year reviews. Faculty: determine your own department's timeline and documentation requirements. After it is concluded, you will be given copies of the report by your department chair. Office of Academic Affairs/Faculty Affairs does not contact you about the third-year review.

Reviewed and revised: 2/2024.