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Brief Guide to FAS Tenure Reviews

The new FASTAP system established July 1, 2007, guarantees every Associate Professor on term a review for tenure that includes external evaluations of his or her research and scholarship.

As FASTAP has developed, some questions have emerged about tenure reviews, including questions about reviews before and after the penultimate year of appointment and about review procedures.

The principles below describe Provost Office understandings about the timing and implementation of tenure reviews. (Please note that the "penultimate year" is timed differently depending on the date on which a non-tenured appointment ends. For non-tenured faculty whose appointments end June 30 [the most common appointment], the penultimate year begins July 1; for faculty whose appointments end December 31, the penultimate year begins January 1.)

1. An Associate Professor on term who has not previously received a tenure review has an unencumbered right to an external review by the end of the penultimate year of appointment. This review cannot be refused by the department, but the faculty member may decline to be reviewed.

2. An Associate Professor on term in a pre-penultimate year may present a written request for a tenure review, but the department has the right to decline the request. If the department does not approve the request, it should inform the faculty member through a brief letter that outlines the reasons for its refusal.

3. If an Associate Professor on term has undergone a tenure review, whether in the penultimate appointment year or earlier, the University will have fulfilled its obligation to provide such a review. Another tenure review would occur only at the discretion of the department upon a written request from the faculty member. Such a request must be submitted to the department no later than October 1 of the final academic year if the faculty member's appointment ends the next June, or February 1 if the faculty member's appointment ends December 31.

4. The review for tenure should normally be undertaken in the first semester of the faculty member’s penultimate year, and ideally it should be completed before the end of that semester. It must be completed before the end of the penultimate year, except in situations described below. The faculty member should be notified in writing by the Chair that the review will take place and should invite the candidate to provide the review committee with copies of all of his or her publications and other materials, including unpublished manuscripts, that the faculty member would like to be considered in the review. The Chair should identify the date by which these materials must be made available to the committee, and the committee should begin its review on that date using whatever materials have been provided by the faculty member. The review committee has the right to consider other materials, even if not provided or requested by the faculty member.

5. An Associate Professor on term may request that his or her tenure review be postponed until the final year of appointment, but such postponements require approval by the FAS Steering Committee and are granted only in exceptional circumstances, usually involving medical hardships or other factors beyond the faculty member’s control that have caused a significant disruption of scientific or scholarly work. When a delay has been approved, the faculty member should be notified in writing by the Chair of the department by the end of the penultimate year (June 30 or December 31) that his or her appointment at Yale and time in the non-tenure ranks at Yale will end at the end of the following year unless the review results in promotion to tenure.

February 9, 2009