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Reappointment, Tenure, and Promotion Consideration for Tenure-Track Faculty

The quality of a candidate’s scholarship, teaching, and service is of central importance in personnel decisions. Criteria for assessing this quality for candidates for promotion, tenure, and reappointment are developed departmentally and collegially, and appear in their respective departmental handbooks. Guidelines used to weigh those criteria in reappointment, tenure, and promotion reviews are developed by KSU at Tuscarawas and appear in this handbook. Information regarding minimal expectations of performance and years in rank are described or referenced in the original appointment letter, in the University Policy Register, and procedural guidelines and timetables circulated annually by the Provost’s office.

Reappointment, tenure, and promotion decisions regulate the terms and conditions of Faculty employment. All three (3) decisions are made based on an assessment of a Faculty member’s performance in three areas:

  • Teaching, including the act of teaching as well as the planning and examination of pedagogical procedures;
  • Scholarship, defined broadly to include research, scholarly and creative work; and
  • Service/Citizenship, broadly defined to include administrative service to the University or to the Faculty member’s Campus, academic college, academic unit (department/school/independent college), or community; professional service to the Faculty member’s discipline; and the provision of professional expertise to public and private entities beyond the University.

Although different disciplines may vary in their interpretations of scholarship, the following criteria for assessing the merit of a scholarly project are applicable across diverse fields:  Are the scholar’s goals clear and worthwhile?  Has the scholar adequately prepared for the project?  Does the scholar use appropriate methods?  Does the scholar communicate effectively?  Does the scholar engage in reflective critique of his/her work?  Has the scholar disseminated the work to other scholars?

Evidence of teaching, scholarship, and service may be demonstrated by self-evaluation, peer evaluation, student evaluation, client evaluation, external colleague evaluation, and/or adjudication (See Section V: SUGGESTED RTP FILE CONTENTS).  In preparation for their review, candidates for reappointment, tenure, or promotion are expected to provide a file of documented evidence that may include such evidence as:

  • demonstrated significant involvement in curricular development and/or review;
  • measures of student achievement such as student performance on nationally standardized examinations;
  • publications such as professionally-reviewed and refereed articles, monographs, and books in the candidate's field;
  • invited participation in programs or presentations of papers at professional meetings at the state, regional, national, or international level;
  • significant creative activity, such as invited/juried exhibitions, performances, compositions, etc;
  • participation and leadership in professional or learned societies;
  • significant public service to a Faculty member's profession;
  • evidence of outstanding achievement, such as awards, patents, and copyrights;
  • seeking and securing professionally-reviewed research and/or service training grants, especially extramural awards;
  • outstanding service to the University, academic college, Campus, academic unit and/or community.