CON Promotion and Tenure Committee

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Faculty Policies

UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA MEDICAL CENTER COLLEGE OF NURSING
Promotion and Tenure Committee	Policy: 1106 (4.1.1)
Faculty Policies - Committees	Originating Date: September 1979
Responsible Reviewing Agency: Promotion and Tenure Committee General Faculty Organization	Revised: January 1999 Revised: May 2000 Revised: May 2003 Revised: April 2004 Revised: January 2008 Revised: September 2008 (via consent) Revised: May 2010 Revised: April 2011 Revised: November 2011 Revised: February 2013 Revised: March 2014 (changes) Revised: May 2015 (changes) Revised: November 2018 (changes) Revised: November 2019 (changes) Revised: February 2021 (changes) Revised: January 2026 (changes)

Purpose

Establishes standards and procedures for faculty advancement in the College of Nursing (CON), and reviews promotion and appointment applications to make recommendations to the dean.

Scope

This policy applies to all CON faculty.

Functions

1. Develop and recommend standards to be used in making all decisions on academic and clinical promotion and continuous appointment for the faculty of the CON. These standards must conform to those of the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
2. Review the faculty being recommended for academic and clinical promotion continuous and emeritus faculty appointment. Make written recommendations to the dean based on established criteria and deadlines.
3. Develop, implement and disseminate the procedures that CON faculty must follow to achieve academic and clinical promotion, continuous and emeritus faculty appointment.
4. Perform reviews for rank and/or continuous appointment (tenure) recommendation at the request of the dean pertaining to faculty candidates prior to employment offer.
5. Perform 3-year (approx.) preparatory reviews of academic rank/health professions appointed faculty to evaluate progress and provide recommendations for seeking future promotion and tenure.

Membership

The committee is composed of all full-time CON faculty at the rank of associate (academic or clinical) and full (academic or clinical) professor, with and without tenure. Assistant and associate deans who meet these criteria also serve on the committee.

Chair is elected by the committee members before the end of the current academic year. The chair must be at the rank of full professor with continuous appointment (tenure) for the purpose of voting to break ties on all applications reviewed by the committee. Assistant and associate deans are not eligible to be elected chair.

Guidelines

1. Meetings are on call by the chair.
2. The committee serves in an advisory relationship to the dean. Application review and voting privileges are extended to committee members on applications for promotion to the same or lesser rank than themselves. Only tenured faculty may review and vote on recommendations for tenure. Members at clinical rank may only review and vote on applications for clinical promotion.
3. Voting on promotion and tenure applications may be done by secret ballot.
4. Conflict of interest: Any conflicts of interest that create an apparent or actual bias by committee members must be declared and managed. All committee members who have a relationship with an applicant should make that relationship known (e.g., current or past collaborator on grants or publications, mentor-mentee relationship, supervisor). Any committee member may voluntarily recuse themselves or the committee may vote by secret ballot regarding whether the committee member should recuse based on a disclosed or known relationship. Committee members will not be involved in review, discussion, or vote on applicants with whom they have an apparent or actual conflict of interest and must recuse themselves physically from the meeting during discussion and voting on that applicant.
5. Members who seek promotion and/or tenure will not participate in the review of applicants’ dossiers in that cycle nor participate in the review meeting and vote, however they may participate in other committee business (e.g., review for emeritus status, policy revision).
6. The chair will be responsible for assigning dossiers for review by three appropriate committee members based on the above criteria. Each assigned member will review all dossier documents and letters of external review. During the review meeting, the chair will call on the primary reviewer to provide the most thorough summary of the dossier and how the applicant does or does not meet criteria for promotion and/or tenure. The secondary reviewers will verbally add to the review of the primary reviewer, followed by the third reviewers. All will submit documentation of their review to the chair. The chair will call for a motion, a second and discussion by all committee members who have not been recused. All eligible members will vote on the motion. Minutes of the meeting and the review documents of the three reviewers will be used by the Chair to develop a letter of recommendation to the dean by the deadline. The chair will record names of members who abstained or were recused for the discussion and vote, but the manner in which others voted will be held in confidence, or secret ballot used.
7. If an applicant is seeking promotion and tenure, the chair will first call for review for promotion and complete the voting process followed by a report from the reviewing members on the applicant’s meeting of criteria for tenure. A call for motion, second, discussion and vote will be called for by the chair.
8. All dossiers, materials created during the review, minutes, and letters will be now and forever be held in confidence by the committee and housed in a document repository with access only to faculty and staff with a clear need to know. Committee members are not to contact applicants before or after the committee meeting regarding their application, nor are applicants to initiate discussion with committee members regarding the review or process. Committee members are not to contact individuals who have provided external review letters at any time. Committee members will destroy their own copies of documents and notes that they have printed or created in the process of their review following the review cycle.