What follows is an effort on the part of the Advisory Committee on Appointments, in consultation with the General Committee, to lay out for the College and candidates for appointment a more explicit description of both the criteria and the process for reappointment than presently exists in the Faculty Bylaws. Over the years, practice has added or refined a number of features in the appointment process. It is important that current practice be known and understood.
We should say at the outset that a set of principles underlies the design of the College and the process of education. While the concrete manifestations of these principles are always open to question and revision, the College, working through the Advisory Committee, looks to appoint and retain faculty who are in sympathy, broadly interpreted, with the basic principles of the College. Briefly, these principles include the commitment to the individualized nature of a Sarah Lawrence education and to the structures-seminars, conferences, and donning-that make that education possible.
These guidelines give the criteria for review in detail, and also discuss how evidence regarding the criteria are gathered. Candidates are evaluated in four main areas:
Teaching
At Sarah Lawrence, effective teaching is the sine qua non for faculty appointment and reappointment. No single definition of good teaching is sufficient, but among the attributes of good teaching, the College looks for the following:
- Mastery of the subject matter of the discipline
- Capacity to design interesting and sophisticated courses and to work with students in developing appropriate conference projects
- Breadth of teaching interests and subjects offered
- Capacity and flexibility to develop new interests and courses
- Skill in teaching students at all levels (e.g., from First Year Studies to advanced seminars) and across a range of abilities
- Sufficient teacherly presence and accessibility
- An ability to listen and take important cues from students
- Capacity to communicate enthusiasm and excitement, skill at engaging and motivating students
- Facility in helping students to see connections, to think across disciplinary lines, to place issues within a larger cultural context.
Donning
In donning, the College looks for a capacity to work productively with donnees and other students: to advise, inspire, encourage, and set limits. This includes the ability to help donnees to reflect on their experience; to help them consider academic options and to choose wisely from among those options; to interpret the College to the student and vice versa; to intervene, where appropriate, in time of crisis; to be open to students' opinions, problems, needs.
Scholarly or Artistic Growth and Intellectual Vitality
The College looks for demonstrated scholarly or artistic growth, intellectual vitality, and the promise of their continuation in the future. These qualities could be demonstrated in a number of ways, including, but not limited to: contributions to scholarly meetings; published articles and books; professional recognition through elections, awards, nominations; applications of one's own research to contemporary problems. Scholarly growth and intellectual vitality may also be shown by formal and informal presentations at Sarah Lawrence and through development of new ways to organize knowledge or approach a field, as illustrated, for example, by new teaching techniques.
For artists, writers and performers, shows, reviews, performances and other forms of external recognition measure creativity, vitality and leadership in one's field.
A completed Ph.D./terminal degree is a significant part of the case for reappointment. In the case of the Ph.D., the dissertation should be completed by the time of reappointment to a second three-year contract. The dissertation gives evidence of the ability to deal with an important intellectual question in a rigorous manner, and it gives an opportunity for scholars in the field to measure a candidate's promise.
Note: Review of scholarly or artistic work is part of the reappointment process, but is not a criterion for the reappointment decision. Consideration of scholarly and artistic work allows the Advisory Committee to guide candidates, post reappointment, towards the tenure review.
Contribution to the Educational Program of the College as a Whole
Leadership, Governance, Service
The College values intellectual and civic leadership as shown through inventing and enriching programs, arranging lectures and workshops, service on standing committees or on ad hoc projects (such as service on the Bookstore Committee or participating in Parents Day or Admitted Students Day).
Collegiality and relations among colleagues
In trying to build a humane and open intellectual community, the College gives relationships among colleagues high importance. Collegiality does not mean congeniality. Rather it means that the senior partners in the College need to be able, with confidence, to share with each other the tasks of leadership, governance and service to their College. The attributes for these roles are many, such as experience, vision, energy, depth, rigor, breadth, circumspection, clarity, flexibility, humor, responsibility, commitment and a robust sense of "troubleshooting."
Overall, the criteria should be considered as a constellation of desired strengths-pedagogic, scholarly, collegial-that are evaluated as a whole. While we look for excellence in all areas, we recognize that individuals contribute to the College in varying ways and weighting of the criteria will reflect that.
How the Criteria Are Measured
The Advisory Committee has available the following sources of information and data to assist its deliberations and judgments.
- Material provided by the candidate
- Candidate's letter to colleagues addressing their own particular goals and qualities as a teacher and scholar.
- Candidate's résumé (including a list of activities at the College), course descriptions, syllabi.
- Candidate's own written work, artistic product or performance.
- Faculty letters
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- At the time of reappointment, the Provost and Dean of Faculty solicits letters about the candidate from members of the faculty. Tenured members of the candidate's faculty group are required to write.
- In preparation for these letters, the faculty group chair arranges:
- A presentation by the candidate to the faculty group, which may also include other faculty members outside the group.
- A confidential discussion of the reappointment case by tenured members of the group.
- A confidential meeting between the candidate and the faculty group chair. The candidate is invited to bring a senior colleague to this meeting.
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- All other faculty, in and outside the faculty group, are invited to write. Additionally, the Advisory Committee shall also ask the candidate whether they wish to suggest to the Committee two faculty members in any field, other than the tenured members of their group, who in the candidate’s opinion are qualified to evaluate their work.
- Class visits
Advisory requires each candidate standing for reappointment to be observed by two tenured members by the end of the second year. Each observer’s assessment is conveyed to the Advisory Committee in a confidential letter.
Any candidate who feels that class observations (or other mentoring) in addition to the two required class visits would be helpful, is welcome to request that support from tenured faculty members.
- Course appraisals
Course appraisals are distributed by the Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculty in December for fall courses and May for spring and year courses. (All faculty, but particularly those up for reappointment, should encourage a full response in whatever ways they find effective and comfortable.) Students must sign course appraisals, but they may ask that their names be deleted from the faculty copy.
- Other Letters
Currently enrolled students in the spring, the Student Senate sends to all students a list of the faculty being considered for reappointment. Students are invited to write confidential, signed letters to the Advisory Committee regarding any of the candidates. In addition, 20 randomly-chosen current students who have studied with the candidate will receive letters from the dean, inviting them to comment on the candidate.
- Dean of Studies and Student Life
The Advisory Committee will write to the Dean of Studies and Student Life to ask for any information that they and/or their staff may be able to provide about the candidates as a result of interactions that the Dean of Studies Office may have had with the candidates or their students.
- Registrar's data
Course enrollments, list of donnees, evaluations for students, record of dates of submission of candidate’s student evaluations and grades
- Internal review of scholarly or artistic work
Candidates will be asked to identify representative pieces from their body of scholarly or artistic work to be reviewed. For the reappointment review, only an internal review of the representative work is required.
Advisory Committee suggests to the candidate, for their approval, the names of several faculty members who might be asked to review a representative sample (or samples) of scholarly or artistic work submitted by the candidate. Advisory Committee will choose one of the approved faculty members to review the work. The candidate does not know which faculty member has been chosen. The reviewer is asked to send their confidential comments on the work to the Provost.
Note: As stated in section IV, review of scholarly or artistic work is part of the reappointment process, but is not a criterion for the reappointment decision. Consideration of scholarly and artistic work allows the Advisory Committee to guide candidates, post reappointment, towards the tenure review.
- Interview
Following the confidential meeting between the candidate and the faculty group chair, the candidate meets with the Advisory Committee.
Consideration for reappointment provides both the candidate and the institution an opportunity for reflection. As the institution evaluates the individual’s record, it is also evaluating its commitment to the area of initial appointment, and the evolving development of the area as it relates to institutional priorities.
The Decision
At the end of the process, the Advisory Committee makes a recommendation to the president. By November 1 the candidate will be told one of two things:
- The candidate may receive a positive decision from the President about the granting of reappointment.
When the review is positive, the candidate will receive a letter from Advisory Committee which includes areas of concern that may have surfaced during the review. The candidate may write a letter to the Advisory Committee or have a meeting with the Provost to request that factual errors in the letter be corrected. They may also write a response to the final letter for the permanent record.
The letter will be followed by a meeting with the Provost.
- The candidate may be told that there are serious questions about their candidacy that need further exploration. In that case, the process is as follows:
- The candidate will meet with the President and the Provost to be informed of the questions.
- The candidate will have the option of a second meeting with Advisory Committee to discuss the questions. For that second meeting, the candidate is given the choice of meeting with the full Advisory Committee or with only the elected members of the committee (i.e. without the President and the Provost).
The final decision will be communicated to the candidate by November 15.