Tenure-Track Faculty Promotions and Tenure Information for 2024-2025

Memorandum

To: Academic Deans, Department Chairs/School Directors, and Unit Tenure and Promotion Committee Chairs

From: Mary Anne Fitzpatrick, Dean of the Faculty and Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs

Date: October 14, 2024

Subject: Tenure-Track Faculty Promotions and Tenure Information for 2024-2025 [pdf]

Please note the following new information and reminders regarding tenure and promotion for the upcoming cycles:

Website Information: The Office of the Provost tenure and promotion website includes a great deal of supporting documentation. These pages are updated periodically, so please reference them and refer others as well. Please refer to the Resources section at the end of this letter for the full URL for all links embedded here.
Covid-19 Effects on Faculty: Covid-19 policies regarding extensions and faculty evaluation processes remain in effect; these can be located on the website linked above. Candidates are encouraged to include Covid impact statements in their files; units are urged to continue conversations about how unit criteria might, without formal modification, reasonably accommodate pandemic impacts, particularly with respect to the quantity and timing of research output. All candidate portfolios should be considered thoughtfully in the evaluation of the candidate’s achievement relative to opportunity. See below for additional information regarding teaching during the pandemic.
Tenure-Clock Extensions: Faculty with approved tenure-clock extensions, whether related to the pandemic or for other reasons, “shall be evaluated as if they had been in probationary status for the normal probationary period, not longer.” Please emphasize to unit voters and to external reviewers that faculty should not be held to a higher standard because they received extensions.
Teaching Information: Please ensure that candidate primary files in your college/school include the teaching information required by the documents below:
- The section “Evaluation of Teaching” in the current edition of the Faculty Manual, approved June 19, 2024, page 25-26
- The UCTP Guidelines for Units: Preparing Criteria and Files, updated May 15, 2023, pages 7-11
- The Office of the Provost’s Candidate File Preparation Guide

Peer reviews of teaching and the teaching summary must be included in the primary file. Please ensure that the teaching summary includes comparative data, and that the comparative data is also in the primary file. We have been seeing numerous problems with difficulty assessing the teaching record due to an absence of this required information.

Due to the ongoing challenges posed by the pandemic, faculty have the option to voluntarily withhold student course evaluations from any faculty evaluation process from Spring 2020 through Spring 2021. For the duration of that same period, units may also choose not to provide comparative data, given the difficulties of collecting reliable data. Teaching summaries must still include teaching modality, regardless of whether evaluation data and comparative data are available for this time period. The absence of comparative evaluative data should not be interpreted by reviewers as indicating a weakness in a candidate’s file.

External Reviewers: Please be sure that those selecting external reviewers abide by the provisions of the Faculty Manual. In particular, reviewers must disclose their relationship, if any, with the candidate. Close relationships with external reviewers have been a major cause of difficulty in assessing faculty members’ scholarship, so reviewers must be chosen carefully. They should be chosen from peer or peer-aspirant institutions unless expertise in a relevant area can be shown. Also, co-authors, collaborators, colleagues, former professors or mentors should be excluded, as the Faculty Manual states on page 26.
Clarification of Grant Documentation: In the Research section, under Grants and Contracts, in the table where funded contracts and grants are listed, please include the total amount of the award as well as the candidate’s share of the funding.
Presentation Order of Information in the Primary File: Please ensure that files are assembled according to the guidelines and using the bookmarks given in the Candidate File Preparation Guide.
- Please note that the candidate primary file template at the link immediately above has been recently updated. Candidates should use the new cover sheet and voting form. These two pages can simply be copied and pasted into the candidate’s files to date, as the only other changes are simply dates in the teaching, scholarship, and service summaries, which candidates have already likely updated. The cover sheet includes a candidate integrity affirmation in accordance with the ideals of the Carolinian Creed.
- Due to the diverse nature of disciplines and in order to best present candidates’ scholarship, sub-headings under the standard headings used in the tenure and promotion form template may be created, or alternate headings may be used if those better describe the scholarly activities. It is always up to candidates to decide how to best present their file in a way that demonstrates fulfillment of unit criteria.
Tenure and Promotion Calendar: The Office of the Provost tenure and promotion calendars provide university-wide deadlines. Each unit should also publish a tenure and promotion calendar with internal deadlines for use by candidates and committee members.
- Files for candidates seeking tenure with or without a concurrent promotion typically should be submitted according to the tenure start date. Typically, faculty with a tenure start date of August 16 will apply for tenure in a fall cycle, faculty with a tenure start date of January 1 will apply for tenure in a spring cycle, and faculty applying for promotion to professor will apply in a spring cycle.
- Units must notify potential candidates for tenure and promotion in writing by no later than April 1 for both the upcoming fall and spring tenure and promotion cycles. Units report candidate names to the Office of the Provost by May 5 for the fall cycle and October 20 for the spring cycle. All candidate names for the Fall 2024 cycle should have already been reported, but please be aware of the upcoming October 20 deadline for submitting candidate names for the Spring 2025 cycle.
Rank Promotion Raises for Tenure-Track Faculty: Effective July 1, 2013, the Office of the Provost authorized the establishment of the following minimum salary increases to reward and recognize promotions in rank for tenure-track faculty only:
- Promotion from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor: $6,000
- Promotion from Associate Professor to Professor: $8,000

The promotion raises will apply to the nine-month base salary. Units have the flexibility to provide a salary increase above the minimum recommended. Units are responsible for processing the appropriate paperwork in a timely manner to ensure the increase takes effect as planned.

International Faculty Promotions and H-1B Visa Status: If you have any faculty candidate for promotion who is still in H-1B visa status, you must submit a request to the DHR Office for International Scholars for a prevailing wage determination for the anticipated rank. This follows the guidance from OIS that “any material change to the terms and conditions of authorized employment” should be communicated to OIS 6+ months in advance for best results. Some promotions can necessitate preparing/filing an amended H-1B petition, but at a minimum we can practice “safe harbor” by requesting a prevailing wage determination from USDOL (6+ month lead time) to ensure that the proposed salary accompanying the promotion is compliant with the H-1B program.

Please contact Dr. Lisa Hammond (lhammond@mailbox.sc.edu) in the Office of the Provost at 803-777-2808, or the Office of the Faculty Senate at 803-777-6073, with any questions or concerns about the tenure and promotion process.

Best wishes to all for an excellent new academic year.

cc: Donna K. Arnett, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
Lisa Hammond, Director of Faculty Affairs
Wayne Outten, Chair, Faculty Senate
Lauren R. Sklaroff, Chair, University Committee on Tenure and Promotions