Thread by @hollybik

The hardest thing I've done in 2022 was prep and submit my Tenure & Promotion dossier, which is now happily moving thru dept + uni committees. This took me ALL of spring semester (as big a time suck as writing a new grant), so here a 🧵 illuminating the T&P process #academiclife

First, I had to write my T&P dossier entirely *from scratch* since I never had a 3rd year review due to UCR->UGA lab move. Every uni has its own format/system for T&P dossiers, so your 3rd year review is usually "practice" for this process (+ forces you use correct formats, 2/n)

Importantly, when I moved to UGA I negotiated three years of "credit" towards T&P, so I didn't have to completely restart the tenure clock here (get this in writing!). But, any CVs/documents/annual review materials I had from the UC system were basically useless at new uni (3/n)

At UGA, my T&P dossier could only be 27pg TOTAL, divided up between what we call "Section IV" (your CV + candidate statement + up to 2pg COVID impact statement) AND "Section V" (which lays out evidence for your "success" as faculty, highlighting specific info from your CV (4/n)

For my T&P dossier the only thing with a firm page limit was the overall packet (27pgs total) and the COVID impact statement (2pg max). Surprisingly, your CV + candidate statement + evidence for success had no page limits so you could flexibly lengthen/shorten these parts (5/n)

YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO FIT EVERYTHING IN YOUR T&P DOSSIER - I ran out of space and couldn't list all the things I've done since my PhD began (in 2007!!). So I had to cut out less important grad school stuff from my CV to save space (e.g. conferences I attended pre-2010) (6/n)

Also it is so very important to GET EXAMPLE DOSSIERS from other people who recently went through the T&P process at your uni - both *within* your department and *in other depts* - example dossiers saved my sanity, helped build evidence & find useful formats for sections (7/n)

Asking people for example T&P dossiers is just like asking people for a PDF of funded grant proposals. Most will be very happy to share on request, but you NEED TO ASK DIRECTLY. Keep confidential of course, but definitely obtain several examples (8/n)

Next, be prepared to work closely with your department chair in preparing your T&P dossier. My chair set deadlines for different sections, and would review + send back LOTS of edits and questions. This process literally took 5 months before we had a final draft (9/n)

Different Dept Chairs may be more hands on/off (mine was very involved in the process, even changing my font from sans serif Ariel to serif Times😅) - but they WILL ask you to document lots of nitty-gritty evidence: impact factors, citations, specific dates, # of reviews.. (10/n)

I am a super organized with tracking things on my CV but the T&P documentation was so far beyond even some of my tracking systems. I was often digging deep through my inbox to figure out dates when things happened and tally up numbers of things (11/n)

Also my dept had me obtain "contribution statements" for all peer-reviewed papers where I'm middle author. I had to email each paper's first/senior author with a blurb stating my contributions, & get a written reply confirming my contribution was accurate (cc'ing dept chair 12/n)

Most surprising thing for me was writing my entire "evidence for success statement" (Section V) - UGA T&P Zoom workshops told me my chair would write this, but the norm in our department/uni is to have candidate write themselves. Which I didn't realize at first (more work!! 13/n)

2nd most surprising thing was how GOOD my T&P dossier prep made me feel! I was super stressed before I started, but documenting everything on paper made me feel like a *badass scientist*. Especially (weirdly) tallying up grant $$ + papers/citations/IFs + writing statements (14/n)

Honestly the absolute worst part was reading my undergraduate teaching evaluations - I had to pull verbatim quotes from these as "evidence" for successful teaching. I procrastinated doing this until it was the only thing left to do, because my brain works like this cartoon (15/n)

For the COVID impact statement we were not allowed to talk about any "personal stuff" that impacted our productivity since 2020 (which I have OPINIONS about, grr...because yeah not traveling to conferences was *definitely* more disruptive than >5mo without childcare 🙄🙄🙄 (16/n)

For COVID impacts I did mention lab bandwidth/burnout/lack of wet lab access/lost fieldwork/lost travel & anything else that could drill the point home. Wanted to tackle this issue head on rather than not mention anything - I'm happy to share my text with anyone who asks! (17/n)

Anyways, I hope this T&P thread is useful for early-career and junior folks - there is NOT ENOUGH info on #midcareer issues and #academiclife and I wish we talked more about this behind-the-scenes stuff, especially to benefit #firstgen and URM faculty (18/18 end 🧵)