HCDE promotion and tenure information

Policy approved June 2023

The HCDE criteria for promotion and tenure stem from three sources:

The UW Faculty Code (FCG, Faculty Code, Chapter 24, Appointment and Promotion of Faculty Members)
The College of Engineering Standards and Criteria for Promotion
The HCDE policy below (an amplification and customization of UW and CoE guidelines for HCDE)
- Tenure-track criteria
- Teaching-track criteria

The criteria for promotion and tenure in HCDE comprise three categories: teaching, scholarship, and service. Since the activities and expectations within these categories may differ between tenure-track and teaching-track positions, and teaching, scholarship, and service may inform each other in ways that are not mutually exclusive to each category of work, this document will describe each in separate sections but they may overlap in specific cases.

Regardless of academic track, however, some definitions of each category may be articulated.

Teaching: Effectiveness of teaching is a fundamental criterion for promotion and tenure within the department. Examples include regularly scheduled courses in our programs, special topic courses, directed research groups, independent studies, and supervising graduate and undergraduate students in research or other educational activities. Directed research groups, independent studies, and supervising research may in some cases be better described as scholarly contributions.
Scholarship: Scholarship is the measure of intellectual achievement in academic fields. It includes research activities of all kinds. This includes empirical research with human subjects, speculative and theoretical work, creative synthesis of previous research, and the creation of innovative systems and technologies. Scholarship may also be demonstrated by publishing articles, papers, and books; giving conference talks and other presentations; developing new courses; and other scholarly contributions as outlined in the specific promotion criteria below.
Service: Professional service is valued as a significant contribution to the department, the college, the university, and to the field at large. It includes mentoring students and faculty; serving on committees (within and outside of the university); service to local, national, and international professional organizations (e.g., guiding conferences, meetings, forums); teaching professional development seminars and workshops; consulting activities, etc.

It is important to note that the department is expected to define the fraction of FTE a faculty member should spend on each of these categories. This is normally specified in the annual “Chapter 24” meeting between the faculty member and the department chair. Ideally, it should also identify some activities within the service and teaching load that may productively contribute to their portfolio of scholarly activities that are within the resources and workload provided by the department. It is recognized this may vary across ranks and even year-to-year for a given individual, but the expectations should be clearly articulated at least on an annual basis.
In addition to the specific accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, and service, HCDE values contributions to DEI efforts across all of these categories and ranks.

The remainder of this document describes specific criteria for promotion and tenure for all ranks within teaching and tenure tracks.

2: Tenure-track Criteria

Promotion criteria for each rank generally correspond to scope of impact. Assistant Professors should demonstrate impact within the department. Associate Professors should demonstrate impact beyond the department at the broader university level. Professors should demonstrate impact beyond the university at the national and international level.

2.1: Promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor

2.1.1: Teaching

Assistant Professors seeking promotion to Associate Professor should have demonstrated sustained success in teaching. Their teaching contributions within the department must be highly significant and recognized by students, colleagues, and peers. Evidence of teaching effectiveness may include, but is not limited to the following items.

Expected:

Teaching courses at multiple levels (undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level).
Leading Directed Research Groups
Positive peer-teaching evaluations and meritorious peer reviews
Record of strong or continuously improving student course evaluations, recognizing the research that demonstrates inherent bias in these evaluations
Chairing PhD student committees, demonstrating ability to mentor students past various milestones (preliminary exams, generals, dissertation proposal, dissertation defense)
Serving on PhD student committees/other PhD student mentorship

Encouraged:

Advising independent studies for undergraduate or graduate students
Developing new courses, especially courses that end up in the permanent curriculum
Record of strong or continuously improving external course assessments (e.g. mid-term assessments from Office of Engineering Teaching & Learning)
Participating as a planner or facilitator in educational programs, committees, and institutes. Facilitating and planning programs of all kinds is encouraged
Teaching awards, nominations, and other recognition

2.1.2: Scholarship

Scholarship is an explicit expectation of tenure-track faculty roles. Through their scholarship, tenure-track faculty members can make contributions to the department, college, university, and discipline.

Evidence of scholarship for Assistant Professors seeking promotion to Associate Professor includes, but is not limited to, the following types of activities:

Expected:

A strong publication track record that includes one or more of the following:
- Peer-reviewed publications in top-tier conference proceedings and/or journals
- Books published with a university press with reviews in relevant academic journals
Demonstrated further engagement with the field such as:
- Other conference and journal publications
- Book chapters
- Juried articles, e.g., in academic magazines
- Talks / presentations
- Workshop position papers
- Posters, demos, abstracts, exhibitions
- Technical reports
- Patents
- Datasets, code repositories, designs
- Systems, architectures, tools, and toolkits
Broad support for their research agenda, demonstrated by the ability to attract necessary funding for one’s research

Encouraged:

Visibility of research impact with the broader public, e.g., media, news articles, documentaries, podcasts, technical books
Fundraising from other grant-giving organizations such as private philanthropy, foundations, industries, or internal university grants
Participating in large research projects as a PI/co-PI

2.1.3: Service

Service to the department, college or university, and/or discipline may serve as evidence of a faculty member’s contribution beyond the classroom. Assistant Professors seeking promotion to Associate Professor should build a case for sustained and substantive contributions to service at the department, university, and/or discipline

Expected:

Leadership role within relevant academic organization or conference
Program committees and/or editorial boards for relevant academic conference or journals
Participation in departmental committees

Encouraged:

Proposal and article peer reviews
Community and other forms of outreach

2.2: Promotion from Associate Professor to Professor

The criteria for promotion to full Professor are differentiated from the promotion to Associate Professor essentially in scope and impact. Examples of this principle follow for each of the three categories in the criteria.

2.2.1: Teaching

The promotion case must provide evidence of the faculty member’s sustained excellence and impact in instruction by the faculty member’s department, college, university, and/or discipline. Recognition of sustained teaching excellence and impact may include, but is not limited to, the same types of evidence as for promotion to Associate Teaching Professor but should also demonstrate greater scope and impact, as below.

Expected:

Teaching courses at multiple levels (undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level)
Leading Directed Research Groups
Positive peer-teaching evaluations and meritorious peer reviews
Record of strong or continuously improving student course evaluations, recognizing the research that demonstrates inherent bias in these evaluations
Chairing PhD student committees, demonstrating ability to mentor students past various milestones (preliminary exams, generals, dissertation proposal, dissertation defense)
Serving on PhD student committees/other PhD student mentorship

Encouraged:

Advising independent studies for undergraduate or graduate students
Developing new courses, especially courses that end up in the permanent curriculum
Record of strong or continuously improving external course assessments (e.g. mid-term assessments from Office of Engineering Teaching & Learning)
Participating as a planner or facilitator in educational programs, committees, and institutes. Facilitating and planning programs of all kinds is encouraged.
Teaching awards, nominations, and other recognition outside of the department.
Leadership in curriculum development in the department and outside of the department.
Leadership and recognition of teaching excellence outside of the department (i.e., at the college, university, and national or international level of the discipline)

2.2.2: Scholarship

The promotion case regarding scholarship should clearly demonstrate that the impact of the faculty member’s work is recognized internationally at the discipline level.
It is expected that an Associate Professor will likely have multiple forms of evidence of scholarly activities. Possible activities are listed in the section above for promotion to Associate Professor. For promotion to Professor, these activities should be visible or demonstrated at the national and international level.

Additional activities may include:

Scholarship with impact beyond academia.
Demonstration of leadership in the research community
Achieving an international reputation as a researcher and scholar.
Leading initiatives that create opportunities for colleagues (e.g., center-level funding or initiatives, mentoring programs, new initiatives in scholarly communities, diversifying existing initiatives)

2.2.3: Service

It is expected that an Associate Professor will likely have multiple forms of evidence of service activities. Possible activities are listed in the section above for promotion to Associate Professor. For promotion to Professor, these activities should be visible or demonstrated outside of the university at the national and international level.

Additional activities may include:

Leadership of departmental, college, and university level committees.
Mentoring of junior faculty.

3: Teaching-track Criteria

Promotion criteria for each rank generally correspond to scope of impact. Assistant Teaching Professors should demonstrate impact within the department. Associate Teaching Professors should demonstrate impact beyond the department at the broader university level. Teaching Professors should demonstrate impact beyond the university.

3.1: Promotion from Assistant Teaching Professor to Associate Teaching Professor

3.1.1: Teaching

Assistant Teaching Professors seeking promotion to Associate Teaching Professor should have demonstrated sustained success in teaching. Their teaching contributions within the department must be highly significant and recognized by students, colleagues, and peers. Evidence of teaching effectiveness may include, but is not limited to the following items.

Expected:

Teaching courses at multiple levels (undergraduate, masters, and optionally at the doctoral level)
Positive peer-teaching evaluations and meritorious peer reviews
Record of strong or continuously improving student course evaluations, recognizing the research that demonstrates inherent bias in these evaluations

Encouraged:

Leading Directed Research Groups
Record of strong or continuously improving external course assessments (e.g. mid-term assessments from Office of Engineering Teaching & Learning).
Teaching awards, nominations, and other recognition

3.1.2: Scholarship

Scholarship is an explicit expectation of teaching faculty roles. Through their scholarship, teaching faculty members can make contributions to the department, college, university, and discipline.

Unlike the Teaching category above, there are no required elements for demonstration of effective scholarship. It is expected that an Assistant Teaching Professor will have evidence of scholarly activities. Evidence of scholarship for Assistant Teaching Professors seeking promotion to Associate Teaching Professor includes, but is not limited to, any of the following types of activities.

Advising undergraduate and graduate projects (e.g. honors projects, independent studies, or directed research groups)
Publishing/presenting research (not necessarily peer-reviewed) that advances the field, including but not limited to pedagogy
Publishing/presenting research on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) at the department, college, university, or field level
Adoption of curricular materials by instructional units outside the University of Washington
Authoring/co-authoring textbooks
Authoring/co-authoring resources for students and/or faculty to support teaching/learning
Developing new or substantially revising current courses
Demonstrating integration of new pedagogical methods or new evidence into course objectives, content and/or evaluation
Serving as a peer reviewer for disciplinary or education journals and conferences
Developing or re-envisioning curriculum in HCDE or in collaboration with other units
Presentation at national or international meetings of teaching in specialty or the faculty member’s area of research
Participating as principal investigator or co-investigator on grants focused on education in specialty or the faculty member’s area of research
Invited presentations (individual and/or panel) on pedagogy or the faculty member’s area of research or practice
Serving as a conference or event planning committee member for disciplinary teaching or the faculty member’s area of research or practice
Writing professional journal articles on pedagogical or translational scholarship in their discipline
Invited talks or consultation at other educational institutions
Developing reports, white papers in their field
Developing and leading study abroad and other scholarly programs for UW students.
Advising PhD students and/or serving on PhD student committees

3.1.3: Service

Service to the department, college or university, and/or discipline may serve as evidence of a faculty member’s contribution beyond the classroom. Using the faculty code description of the Teaching Professor position, these contributions are both distinctions (in the sense of distinctive contributions) and major contributions to service and leadership to the department, college, university, and/or discipline. Assistant Teaching Professors seeking promotion to Associate Teaching Professor should build a case for sustained and substantive contributions to service at the department, university, and/or discipline or other national level.

Unlike the Teaching category above, there are no required elements for demonstration of effective service. It is expected that an Assistant Teaching Professor will likely have multiple forms of evidence of service from the list below.

Service that indicates contributions at the department level may focus on curriculum development, coordination, and/or oversight or other types of issues, and may include, but is not limited to, the following types of activities:

Membership in committees charged with curriculum development or other departmental and cross-departmental issues
Serving as director for undergraduate or graduate curriculum
Participating in department-level TA training and mentorship
Serving as faculty advisor for student associations
Developing student services related to teaching and learning (e.g., study centers, design labs)
Participating in academic advising and counseling
Developing and leading workshops on pedagogy and educational practices
Serving on or chairing search committees for the department or other units on campus

Service that indicates contributions at the college or university level may include, but is not limited to, the following types of activities:

Membership or chairing of faculty councils, university or college level advisory groups, selection committees, etc., related to teaching or other university or college level issues
Participating as a planner or facilitator in programs, committees, councils, institutes, etc. related to teaching or other university or college level issues.
Membership in the faculty senate
Mentoring students and capstone advising outside of HCDE
Engaging in community and educational outreach beyond the university

3.2: Promotion from Associate Teaching Professor to Teaching Professor

The criteria for promotion to full Teaching Professor are differentiated from the promotion to Associate Teaching Professor essentially in scope and impact. Examples of this principle follow for each of the three categories in the criteria.

3.2.1: Teaching

Expected:

Teaching courses at multiple levels (undergraduate, masters, and optionally at the doctoral level)
Positive peer-teaching evaluations and meritorious peer reviews
Record of strong or continuously improving student course evaluations, recognizing the research that demonstrates inherent bias in these evaluations
Leadership and recognition outside of the department (i.e., at the college, university, or national level of the discipline) is expected

Encouraged:

Advising independent studies for undergraduate or graduate students
Developing new courses, especially courses that end up in the permanent curriculum
Record of strong or continuously improving external course assessments (e.g. mid-term assessments from Office of Engineering Teaching & Learning)
Participating as a planner or facilitator in educational programs, committees, and institutes. Facilitating and planning programs of all kinds is encouraged.
Teaching awards, nominations, and other recognition outside of the department.
Leadership in curriculum development in the department and outside of the department.
Leadership and recognition of teaching excellence outside of the department (i.e., at the college, university, and national or international level of the discipline)

3.2.2: Scholarship

The promotion case regarding scholarship should clearly demonstrate that the impact of the faculty member’s work is recognized beyond the university, i.e. nationally or internationally at the discipline level.

Unlike the Teaching category above, there are no required elements for demonstration of effective scholarship. It is expected that an Associate Teaching Professor will likely have multiple forms of evidence of scholarly activities. Possible activities are listed in the section above for promotion to Associate Teaching Professor. For promotion to Teaching Professor, these activities should be visible or demonstrated outside of the university.

3.2.3: Service

As in the teaching and scholarship categories, the promotion case regarding service should clearly demonstrate that the impact of the faculty member’s work is recognized beyond the university, i.e. nationally or internationally at the discipline level.
Unlike the Teaching category above, there are no required elements for demonstration of effective service. It is expected that an Associate Teaching Professor will likely have multiple forms of evidence of service activities. Possible activities are listed in the section above for promotion to Associate Teaching Professor. For promotion to Teaching Professor, these activities should be visible or demonstrated outside of the university.

Additional activities may include:

Leadership of departmental, college, and university level committees
Mentoring of junior faculty