Thread by @jengolbeck

Hello! I am a full professor at the Univ. of Maryland and chair of our college's committee on Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure. Let me give you a primer on how one receives tenure. There are some *very* bad takes out there right now 1/

These processes are very similar across almost all US universities, but you may find a small variation here or there. I'm sharing the way this works in the vast majority of cases 2/

The entry-level rank for a tenure-track faculty job is an Assistant Professor. In your 6th year, you are required to go up for promotion to Associate Professor which comes with tenure (basically, a permanent contract). You either get promoted or get fired 3/

But you don't have to progress this way. You can be hired and receive tenure when you're hired. You go through the same process I'll describe below whether you get tenure with a promotion or when you get hired. 4/

The candidate for tenure prepares an extensive package. This usually consists of a CV, a statement describing the impact of your work (typically research, though for many fields impact may manifest in other ways), and possibly a teaching philosophy statement 5/

A senior faculty member is working with you to handle your case (we call this the Chair of your Records Preparation Committee at UMD). They will prepare a factual summary document that details your accomplishments and contributions to the field, which you get to see 6/

They also lead the selection of letter writers, probably the most critical part of getting tenure. Universities require your work is evaluated by people OUTSIDE the university. They cannot be people you have ever collaborated with or have any personal connection to 7/

These are senior people in the field who work in generally the same area as you, but who have not worked WITH you. They review your package and write a long, critical letter about how well you meet the criteria for tenure (more on this in a bit) 8/

The candidate creates a list of possible letter writers. Independently, the Records Preparation Committee (senior people in your department handling your tenure case) also prepares a list. Then, the committee unseals the candidate list and selects 6 (3 from each list) 9/

As a candidate, you do NOT get to know who these people are. It's super confidential. Sometimes, after you're promoted, someone will tell you that they wrote for you, but it's rare. I have no idea who wrote for me for either of my promotions 10/

Your letter writers receive your package - all the materials I've mentioned so far, plus samples of your work (for me, that's 3 selected research papers) and the university criteria for promotion and tenure. Writing one of these letters is a very time consuming process. 11/

The letters are also brutally honest. These are not recommendation letters like for a job. They are critical assessments of someone's body work. Letter writers will call out bad scholarship. They will say "we probably wouldn't give this person tenure at *my* institution" 12/

Once those letters are returned, they go into the package. If you're an assistant professor going up, your teaching evaluations from all your classes go in there along with a teaching portfolio you create. For external hires, similar information from their univ is included 13/

Then, your department or college's committee on Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure (the thing I chair) meets to review your case. This includes all the faculty at the rank you're being promoted to. They put together an evaluative statement that judges your package 14/

This statement compares you to the criteria. It has to address every point raised by the 6 external letter writers, especially the negative ones. It explains how one is evaluated in your field and then shows how your case compares to that 15/

These criteria are extensive. Here are UMD's minimum qualifications if you're interested. Basically, you need to show you have a national reputation for excellence in your field. policies.umd.edu/assets/section… 16/

After your department/college reviews your case & creates this evaluative document (a meeting that lasts a few hours), they vote on whether or not to grant you tenure. The results of this vote are included in the evaluative document. It then goes to the campus level APT 17/

The campus-level APT does a similar review. They're a check on the lower level both ways. They make sure someone unqualified doesn't get tenure just because their colleagues like them AND they make sure you're not unfairly denied tenure bc your department doesn't like you 18/

While the campus-level APT generally agrees with the college assessments, they certainly override them and will often come back to the college level asking for more justification for the decision 19/

Note that I'm describing this as a 2-level process (college then campus) because I'm in a stand alone college. If you're in a department within a college, this happens 3 times (department, then college, then campus) 20/

After you've been approved for tenure at all levels, the case goes to the provost and President of the university. The provost brings their recommendation (which can differ from the lower levels) and they and the President decide if you get tenure. 21/

This whole process usually takes around 9 months for an assistant professor, including time to prepare the documents. For a new hire coming in with tenure, it's more like 3 since they already have their materials as part of their application for the job 22/

Once a senior person is hired, the tenure case prep immediately begins, letter writers are recruited quickly, and the APTs meet off their normal schedule to get the process done. But it's the exact same process with the same standards as someone being promoted internally 23/

One final note is that people say often that tenure is a guaranteed lifetime job where you can't get fired, but this isn't really true. If you do Very Bad Things or just stop doing your job, you can totally get fired. 24/

Anyway, I hope this primer on tenure is helpful both for you assistant professors & those of you outside academia who are dealing with some very uninformed takes on the process by which other people have been awarded or denied tenure recently. Happy to answer any questions! /end