This page clarifies the promotion process for faculty in the Academic Professional track in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech. The ranks of the Academic Professional at Georgia Tech include: Associate Academic Professional, Academic Professional, Senior Academic Professional, and Principal Academic Professional.
Please see the faculty handbook section 3.2.2 on the minimum requirements, including time in rank, for promotion in the Academic Professional track. Additionally, please find additional details on the Institute’s memo (from the Office of Graduate Education and Faculty Development).
General Timeline of the Promotion Process
Summer
The promotion package is submitted to school administrators sometime in summer so that the package can be sent to external reviewers. School administrators will provide candidates deadline for receipt of the documents that the candidate submits.
Fall
The promotion package is sent to the Dean’s Office, including external review letters, generally by mid to late fall. It will go through a college-level committee review.
Spring
The package is submitted to Faculty Affairs, where it goes on to an institute-level review. Promotion decisions are announced by late spring.
The Review Process
In the College of Sciences, the committee review will be conducted at the college level, thus a committee review is not required at the school level. The sequence of reviews is in the following order:
- Supervisor/chair
- College committee
- Dean
- Institute committee
- Provost
Preparing the Promotion Package
Once eligibility for promotion has been established (by the dean’s office and school administrators), the supervisor and candidate should meet to discuss the candidate’s readiness for promotion. If both eligibility and readiness are determined, the candidate should begin preparing a list of potential external reviewers.
Reviewers should not be chosen if they have acted as a supervisor (doctoral and post-doctoral advisors and/or employers), or from past and current collaborators. Letter writers external to Georgia Tech should not have had prior employment at Georgia Tech.
- For promotion to Senior Academic Professional, the candidate should provide their supervisor a list containing four individuals external to the College, where two are also external to GT.
- For promotion to Principal Academic Professional, the candidate should provide their supervisor with a list containing four individuals external to the College, where three are also external to GT.
The supervisor selects and using PROMOTE, reaches out to individuals on this list. Letters may also be solicited from individuals other than those on the candidate’s list.
Candidate’s Responsibility
All of the following are required elements in the candidate’s portion of the promotion package:
- Biosketch
150 words or less summarizing the candidate’s background, including education, a description of the individual’s role, and accomplishments in the current position, including awards.
- Position Description
Max. two pages, one-inch margins, single spaced, 12-point font. The position description is developed in consultation with the supervisor. The description should discuss current professional responsibilities in a small set of broad areas (classroom instruction, instructional support, advising, supervision of GTAs, program management, etc.) The candidate should provide the percentage of time dedicated to each area.
If duties are to change after promotion, these changes should be outlined in a separate paragraph.
- Personal Narrative
Max. five pages, one-inch margins, single-spaced, 12-point font. This statement is the candidate’s voice in the promotion package and should provide perspective on, and context for, the candidate’s instructional, service, and scholarly accomplishments at Georgia Tech with regard to the criteria, which are listed about halfway down the page
- CV
Must be in the Institute standard format for Academic Professionals.
- Examples of Relevant Work (Portfolio)
A compilation of work that represents the candidate’s administrative, instructional, and/or scholarly accomplishments. Examples of portfolio items include curricula and co-curricula materials, software, patents, published papers, reports to sponsoring agencies, and other relevant items that reflect superior performance and which will be recognized as such by the candidate’s peers. Please note, any student information included in portfolio items must be redacted in accordance with FERPA.
This document is an example of a coversheet
Please note, the College of Sciences requests that all documents, from both the school and candidate, be in a serif font, such as Times New Roman.
The candidate will need to log into PROMOTE to sign the waiver of right of access as well as submit their dossier before the dossier can be sent to external reviewers.
School’s Responsibility
Through PROMOTE, the school sends the candidate’s documents to the selected external reviewers for review.
The school administrator will
- Supervisor’s Letter
The direct supervisor and/or Chair will provide a letter of evaluation addressed to the dean. This letter should provide an analysis of the candidate’s experience and performance using the relevant criteria, a summary of external letter feedback, and a recommendation for or against promotion. Additional professional responsibilities to be undertaken upon promotion should also be described.
- External Reviewer Biosketches
If the external reviewer does not provide this via PROMOTE, the school will need to write 150 words maximum per biosketch on for each external reviewer that submits a letter.
- External Letters
External reviewer names must not appear in the supervisor’s letter, only reference to their reviewer number.
- CIOS Table with Normative Data
The template for CIOS scores is on OFA’s website, but CoS has constructed an example, which requests weighted averages of multiple sectioned lectures be calculated. All lecture and lab classes (where candidate is instructor of record) should be included on CIOS table. Include normative data (from the Office of Academic Effectiveness’ website).
- DOTE Report
This report is a summary of teaching, utilizing CIOS data as well as classroom visit surveys. Please note, this is one report/summary, not multiple separate teaching observations. The candidate should see this report so that any areas of concern can be addressed in the candidate’s personal narrative.
The DOTE report will be joined with the CIOS table (in landscape orientation) as one PDF and uploaded to PROMOTE in the Teaching Effectiveness component.
Criteria
Besides the requirement of a terminal degree and time in rank, promotion to the rank of Senior Academic Professional “requires evidence of superior performance in the chosen field, recognition by peers (whether national, regional, or local), and successful and measurable related experience.”
Promotion to the rank of Principal Academic Professional requires, in addition, “successful and measurable related experience including but not limited to supervision of others’ work, significant responsibility and authority within program area, and demonstrated impact.”
The following are examples of activities that have been recognized as valuable contributions by recent review committees. This is not a checklist of requirements. The specific ways in which individuals demonstrated some of these characteristics varies widely, which is understandable given the broad scope of duties of non-tenure-track academic faculty.
Some of the characteristics of recent packages for promotion to Senior Academic Professional were:
- excellence in instruction (required for all non-tenure track faculty who have an instructional role).
- successful execution, and emerging independent leadership, in areas related to assigned duties.
- contributions in areas beyond those in the original job description; an expanding scope of responsibilities.
- external engagement (e.g., participation in regional/national workshops/conferences that are relevant to the position).
- a record of bringing evidence-based instructional approaches to the role at GT (e.g., from workshops/conferences/literature) and influencing others in the unit to adopt these practices.
- a record of disseminating work at GT to internal and external constituencies (e.g., through conferences, publication).
For promotion to Principal Academic Professional, packages had some of the following characteristics:
- excellence in instruction (required for all non-tenure track faculty who have an instructional role).
- a record of initiating and sustaining programs that have a high impact on student- learning/advising/experiences at a variety of levels and which are central to, and expand on, the mission of the unit. Candidates had obtained significant funds to support these programs (programs included, for example, lab instruction, student financial aid, undergraduate research, other experiential learning, etc.)
- institute-level or external recognition of service, advising, teaching and/or scholarship (through, for e.g., awards, peer-reviewed papers, peer-reviewed nationally-competitive grants, etc.)
- extensive service engagement in campus-wide initiatives with evidence of growing leadership.
- a strong record of supervision (which may include non-tenure track faculty and classified staff, as well as extensive supervision of teams of graduate teaching assistants).
