Time in Rank – Associate and Full Professor
This information is intended for chairs or others who are advising faculty or prospective faculty on what activities count as “in rank” for what types of promotion or tenure decisions. There are three other webpages that will be useful:
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Early Application for Tenure. This explains what happens when a candidate wishes to go forward sooner than their sixth year, especially when there was no explicit provision of credit-towards-tenure in the offer letter.
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Timeline Offer Conditions for Tenure-Track Faculty. Or, “should you offer years of credit towards tenure” for candidates with pre-IU Indianapolis faculty experience? This includes a brief discussion of what counts as “in-rank.” It is designed for chairs and deans to work through their options.
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Template: Explanation of In-Rank for New Hires. This is written with the audience of the prospective candidate, explaining for them what in-rank means in the IU Indianapolis P&T system.
Promotion to Associate Professor (combined with request for tenure)
The key campus criteria for being deemed worthy of promotion to associate professor and being granted tenure are:
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Quantity and quality of achievements, in the context of one’s discipline and area of excellence.
And,
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An emerging national reputation, rising trajectory, and promise of future accomplishments.
In their statements candidates are asked to talk about 3-5 key specific works. In this light, work accomplished before arriving at IU Indianapolis is part of one’s reputation, trajectory, and promise, as one’s scholarly path is gradually built up. Work accomplished while at IU Indianapolis shows a dedication to maintaining a desirable level of quantity and quality of achievements. People who are applying for tenure after a full five years at IU Indianapolis will normally choose accomplishments done at IU Indianapolis to be their 3-5 specific works.
Prior accomplishments will usually be discussed in two ways:
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Prior work can be shown to be the starting steps of a focused research agenda.
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Prior work has had time to garner citations; a candidate’s most-highly-cited material is likely to be the oldest material. These citations show that one’s scholarship has impact and are evidence of a growing reputation. <--most-recent accomplishments may be the best but they haven't had much time to enhance one's reputation.
People who are applying for tenure prior to five years:
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If they have been specifically awarded years of credit towards tenure, that should be specifically mentioned, and those years are part of “in rank” work, treated the same as IU Indianapolis work.
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If they have not, they should be careful to show how they have continued to work and improve during their time at IU Indianapolis.
- Do not assume that work as a research scientist or clinical faculty even at the 'assistant' level will count as 'in-rank' for tenure track consideration, unless specifically mentioned in an offer letter, a third year review, or school guidelines. Work done as a postdoc mostly does NOT count.
Tenure (for those hired at associate rank but without tenure)
Except in the School of Law, those hired at the associate rank are not obliged to apply for promotion (to full) at the same time as they apply for tenure.
The most important consideration for the bestowal of tenure is trajectory and promise of future accomplishments. In this light, all work to date can be part of the trajectory, but candidates should be careful to highlight recent work, as showing continued growth.
ALERT: When units have quantitative expectations for productivity, candidates should assure that their work during their IU Indianapolis probationary period meets those standards, on a work-per-year basis.
For example, suppose a unit says that “excellence” in research for promotion to associate professor requires at least 5 articles published in high-impact journals. Also, the normal pre-submission period is 5 years = 1 article per year. Candidates should be expected to show they have completed 1 article per year of service until they apply for promotion and tenure.
If someone has a parental leave, has received an extension due to uncontrollable problems, or is going up ‘early’, the standard would be the same “# articles per year” counting years of service and omitting any years where there is a formal extension or leave.
ALERT: IU Indianapolis criteria encourage consideration of quality over simplistic quantity. No candidate should rely solely on counts.
Promotion to Full Rank
For promotion to full, the primary focus is on work accomplished while in rank, that is, work done as an associate professor.
Candidates should:
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Clearly mark on the CV items produced during or after the promotion to associate. One simple way is to show all prior work in light-grey type. This makes in-rank work stand out.
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If an item was not on the CV at the time of review for promotion to associate, it counts as ‘in-rank’ for promotion to full. For example, if the candidate had submitted an article but it was accepted in December of the review year: that did not contribute towards their promotion to associate so it can count towards their promotion to full.
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In the candidate statement describe earlier work that has contributed to an ongoing research agenda and which demonstrates a current national reputation. For example, an article published 10 years ago may now be cited widely.
The most common minimum period between associate and full is five years.
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Candidates with less than five years in rank should be careful to ensure that there is sufficient prominent work accomplished in rank.
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Candidates with less than five years in rank should ensure they have full documentation for the 'satisfactory' aspects of their cases, e.g. teaching for research-excellence cases.
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When candidates have many years in rank, they may wish to describe responsibilities that have affected numeric productivity in the area of excellence, such as administrative contributions.
Candidates should consult their offer letters, discuss time in rank with their chairs, and for tenure, be sure the third-year review shows a common understanding. For other questions, contact Faculty Affairs at ude[dot]ui[at]rhdaca.
Reviewed and revised: 7/2023.