Cinema and Media Studies adheres to the criteria and procedures for tenure and promotion as stipulated by The College of Arts and Sciences Principles and Policies on Tenure and Promotion and the revised College Tenure and Promotion Guidelines approved February 2021 (parts included here in Section III).
It is highly advisable for faculty seeking tenure and/or promotion to follow the IU Bloomington eDossier checklist.
In line with Media School policy, in nearly all cases Cinema and Media Studies expects tenure-track faculty to earn tenure based on excellence in research and also, at a minimum, effectiveness in teaching and satisfactory service. This document emphasizes the markers of success in earning tenure on the basis of excellence in research or creative activity. Cinema and Media Studies will follow the Media School and Campus guidelines for those seeking tenure on the basis of teaching, service, or a balanced case. Cinema and Media Studies recommendations on tenure cases will take into account the accomplishments as well as the future promise and likely progress of the candidate. The unit will evaluate research, teaching, and service in the context of standards expected for scholars in Cinema and Media studies who have recently received tenure or who will soon be considered for tenure at major research universities. The unit’s evaluation of performance areas will adhere to the new College Promotion and Tenure Guidelines. See Appendix D on rating performance areas.
A ranking of Excellent in research requires the publication of substantial scholarly works that constitute significant and innovative contributions to the candidate's field or fields of expertise. In addition, the candidate must show some progress in and well-articulated plans for future research that promises to lead to other significant scholarship. In most cases, scholarship should take the form of a refereed book-length study, published or accepted for publication by an academic press, supplemented by refereed articles in scholarly journals. Article-length contributions to refereed edited volumes are also recognized, as well as significant editorial work on edited books and special issues of journals. Other forms of research and creative activity may also demonstrate a comparable degree of intellectual depth, originality, and professional accomplishment. In keeping with IUB Tenure and Promotion Guidelines, consideration is given to new forms of digital scholarly communication, interdisciplinary scholarship, and/or impact on diverse communities. In all cases, the book-length study and other scholarship should be judged by tenured colleagues, publication referees, book reviewers, and other specialists as significant contributions to the field. Faculty in Cinema and Media Studies sometimes work at the intersection of multiple disciplines; therefore, external reviewers may be considered not only for their status within a specific discipline, but also for their expertise on specific aspects of the candidate's interdisciplinary work.
Junior faculty are expected to be thoroughly engaged in teaching across the curriculum and demonstrating effectiveness in small and large class settings. Faculty are expected to maintain rigorous academic standards and incorporate pedagogical practices that stimulate thought, raise student aspirations and guide them to excellent performance. To this end, faculty are encouraged to make full use of university resources designed to enhance the quality of instruction in all our classrooms. When necessary, faculty should be able to develop new courses. In Cinema and Media Studies serving on graduate student committees also falls under the category of teaching.
Junior faculty are expected to fully participate in and contribute to the intellectual life and governance of Cinema and Media Studies the Media School, and the Campus. They are also expected to provide service to their profession and, as appropriate, to the community at large. Certain types of publications, like book reviews and brief reference articles, are considered to be part of professional service.
Faculty members normally are evaluated for tenure and concurrent promotion to associate professor at the beginning of the sixth year of their probationary appointments. Once a candidate elects to be considered for tenure, she or he submits a list of six names of potential reviewers external to the university and prepares copies of publications and other relevant material to be sent to external reviewers. The unit director, in consultation with the unit’s advisory committee, appoints an ad hoc tenure and promotion committee for each candidate that consists of at least three tenured faculty members. This committee compiles a list of six external reviewers and forwards the candidate’s and the committee’s lists, along with copies of the candidate’s curriculum vitae, to the Dean of the Media School by the specific date set by the School in any given year. The list of external reviewers contains information about the expertise of the reviewers and specifies their relationship to the candidate. The candidate’s packet of materials to be sent to the external reviewers is delivered to the Dean of Media School by the specific date set by the School in any given year. The director of Cinema and Media Studies solicits the unit’s proportion of letters from external reviewers.
The director of Cinema and Media Studies designates a member of the ad hoc tenure and promotion committee to collaborate with the candidate in preparing an appropriate dossier for review (all materials are to be uploaded to edossier). The dossier should include items such as a complete curriculum vitae with refereed publications clearly identified, the candidate’s own statement on teaching, research, and service, student evaluations, peer evaluations, commentary from graduate students advised and/or supervised by the candidate, copies of the candidate’s publications, and copies of course syllabuses and assignments. Dossier checklist appears as Appendix A.
The candidate’s dossier must be assembled by August 1 in order to allow the ad hoc committee sufficient time to examine the dossier and prepare a recommendation to the tenured faculty by September 1. The committee’s recommendation consists of a written evaluation of the candidate’s research, teaching, and service. This recommendation should include separate sections evaluating in detail the research record, the stature of journals and other publication outlets, the contribution made by the candidate to any co-authored work, the quality of teaching, and the quality and quantity of service.
The tenured faculty members in Cinema and Media Studies are given access to the candidate’s dossier and a copy of the ad hoc committee’s written recommendation by September 1. The tenured faculty assemble by September 10 to discuss the candidate’s case for tenure/promotion. Within two days of the tenured faculty’s meeting, each tenured faculty member (including the members of the ad hoc committee) submits a ballot to the unit director indicating a vote of yes, no, or abstain and rating the candidate as excellent, very good, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory in the categories of research and service, and excellent, very good, effective, and ineffective in the category of teaching. The results of the ballot are reported in the dossier along with a statement by the unit director describing the tenure/promotion procedures followed and characterizing the discussion among the tenured faculty at the meeting where the candidate’s case is evaluated. The unit director’s vote is reported separately in the dossier as a part of the director’s recommendation and summary evaluation of the candidate’s teaching, research, and service. The tallied votes of the ad hoc committee members are recorded separately from the votes of the remainder of the tenured faculty as part of the director’s report. The ad hoc committee’s written recommendation and the director’s written recommendation are submitted as part of the dossier. The director’s statement, unit ad hoc committee report, and recorded unit vote are presented to the candidate by the director in a timely fashion. The candidate may respond to these reports by adding a statement to the dossier, if warranted.
The candidate and Cinema and Media Studies will follow the Media School procedures and timeline for preparing and delivering the tenure dossier. The spring semester before going up for tenure the candidate is responsible for the following:
All candidates will be evaluated with regard to their contributions to research, teaching, and service as stipulated in the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs’ Academic Guide. It is expected that the candidate should normally be deemed excellent in research and at least satisfactory in service and effective in teaching. In exceptional cases the candidate may present evidence of excellence in teaching or service, or in a balance of strengths (balanced case). In all cases, the candidate’s record should be assessed by comprehensive and rigorous peer review. Evaluations of research, creative activity, and teaching are to be made in comparison to individuals who have recently received promotion to Full Professor or who will soon be considered for such promotion at major research universities There should be strong indications in the dossier that the candidates will maintain and enhance the level of performance on which the awarding of promotion is to be based. Cinema and Media Studies will follow the criteria established by the Media School in evaluating the relevant categories.
In all cases, the dossier must merit a ranking of at least Satisfactory in research and Effective in teaching. It is also expected that all candidates will have made significant service contributions to Cinema and Media Studies, the Media School, and Campus, as well as to the profession more generally.
If research is the primary criterion for promotion, we expect the candidate to have achieved a position of scholarly leadership. This must be demonstrated by evidence of letters, both internal and external, and by other pertinent documentation. Normally the candidate will have produced—at a minimum—a refereed book after tenure. In some cases a series of interconnected refereed articles in recognized journals or influential edited volumes may be viewed as an equivalent body of work. Other forms of scholarly and/or creative activity may constitute a recognized contribution to cinema and media studies and thus merit promotion. In keeping with IUB Tenure and Promotion Guidelines, consideration is given to new forms of digital scholarly communication, interdisciplinary scholarship, and/or impact on diverse communities. Faculty in Cinema and Media Studies sometimes work at the intersection of multiple disciplines; therefore, external reviewers may be considered not only for their status within a specific discipline, but also for their expertise on specific aspects of the candidate's interdisciplinary work.
If the primary criterion for promotion is teaching, the teaching record should be comparable to that of the most effective teachers at this institution. The faculty member must have demonstrated a superior ability and interest in stimulating a desire for study and creative work in students (at all levels). Candidates should also provide evidence of a significant educational impact on their particular discipline, both inside and outside Indiana University. Evidence of excellent teaching might include: indications of the success of students, student evaluations, publication of textbooks or teaching materials, active participation in organizations devoted to teaching, and so forth. (See the College of Arts & Sciences Policy on the Evaluation of Pedagogical Practices).
In exceptional circumstances, candidates may be put forward on the basis of balanced strengths that promise excellent overall performance of comparable benefit to the university – their performance in all three areas must be Very Good (“balanced case”). Except for the “balanced case,” candidates must choose one and only one performance area on which to base their case for tenure or promotion (although that choice does not preclude the possibility that performance in one or both other areas will be judged Excellent).
There is no set number of years in rank to be considered for promotion to full professor. In line with university expectations, associate professors will receive annual promotion reviews after seven years in rank. These reviews should serve as a guide assessing progress in rank. Associate professors may ask for a formal promotion review from their unit prior to the mandatory 7-year review. Consideration for promotion to full professor can be initiated by the candidate, the Unit Director, members of the faculty or by Media School deans. Faculty considering promotion to full professor are encouraged to discuss their prospects for promotion with their Unit Director. They also are encouraged to seek input from other full professors in their units. (From: Media School Guidelines for Promotion to Full Professor)
The candidate and Cinema and Media Studies will follow the Media School procedures and timeline for preparing and delivering the promotion dossier, as follows:
The spring semester before going up for promotion to full professor:
Non-tenure track faculty in the Cinema and Media Studies unit are expected to engage primarily in teaching activities and service activities related to undergraduate education. Within the unit, non-tenure track faculty can serve on all unit committees except those concerned with progress towards promotion reviews of tenured and tenure track faculty. In addition, the unit encourages non-tenure track faculty to engage in research and creative activities related to their areas of expertise.
See campus policyAs specified in the media school tenure and promotion guidelines, lecturers are evaluated for promotion on the basis of teaching and service. Candidates for promotion are rated on two different four-option scales. For teaching, the options are excellent, very good, effective and ineffective. For service, the options are excellent, very good, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory. Candidates for promotion must be evaluated as excellent in teaching and at least satisfactory in service at the school and unit level. Lecturers can achieve excellence in teaching solely on the basis of their teaching efforts on the IU Bloomington campus, national impact is not a requirement.
The unit director will work with the candidate to schedule 1 to 2 peer teaching observations each year of the probationary period. It is expected that the observing faculty member will write a report of their observation and meet with candidate to discuss that report by providing insights into the candidate’s strengths and suggestions for areas of improvement.
As required by the Media School tenure and promotion policy, the unit director serves as the lecturer’s official mentor during their first year. Lecturers are evaluated on their progress towards promotion each year in the spring semester. Annual reviews are completed by the unit director and the unit director must meet in-person with the lecturer to discuss the annual review.
It is expected that the lecturer will work with the director to create a mini annual review dossier by March 15th of each year. Included in the mini-dossier must be:
Other types of evidence of excellence in teaching can also be included. Each year all the information collected for the mini-dossier will be saved in a Box folder in preparation for the creation of the promotion dossier.
During the third year, a more substantial review must be completed by the end of the spring semester. Lecturers are expected to prepare a dossier for this review. In addition to materials listed earlier as evidence for excellence in teaching and satisfactory in service, a personal statement on teaching and service contributions at IU must be included. An effective narrative is likely to include broad goals, specific activities and contributions, and an assessment of growth and accomplishments.
The third-year review dossier must contain (at a minimum):
At the beginning of the spring semester, one member of the faculty, in consultation with the candidate, is appointed to serve as the promotion representative for the lecturer. They will work with the candidate to prepare the statements and dossier for the third-year review and for the promotion dossier in year six.
This representative, along with the unit director, will then work with the candidate to expand this third-year review dossier into the promotion dossier required by the first day of classes in the fall semester of the sixth year.
The tenured faculty and senior lecturers will meet to evaluate the third-year review dossier and vote on retention.
Standard annual reviews will be completed by the end of spring semester in the fourth and fifth years.
In the sixth year, the candidate’s promotion representative will present the candidate’s dossier to the unit faculty for evaluation and voting after which they will write the unit evaluation of the dossier. The unit director will then write a recommendation. The completed dossier must be sent to the Media School deans by October 1 of the sixth year.
In the spring semester prior to the year when the tenure or promotion case is to be considered, the Chair of the Department will consult with members of the department and, when appropriate, members of any research institute/center with which the faculty member is affiliated, and prepare a list of external referees who will be invited to evaluate the record of the candidate. Subsequently, the candidate will be asked to submit a list of potential external referees to the Chair of the Department. Each list must include 6 names and should be submitted together to the divisional Associate Dean for approval and selection. The candidate and department lists must be developed independently and chairs must include embedded links to prospective referee web pages on the lists they submit to the Associate Dean. If the department’s list of recommended external referees overlaps with the candidate’s list of recommended external referees, these referees’ names will count as candidate-recommended referees. This process is followed to ensure the department’s list is independent of the candidate’s list. Once the external letters arrive, candidates may request to see them, and departments must oblige by allowing the candidate to read the letters. However, it is generally recommended that the candidate not read the letters at least until after the dossier has left the department.
External referees should generally be from comparable or more highly regarded institutions. Ideally, they should be Full Professors who have the appropriate expertise to evaluate the candidate’s record. Dissertation advisors, close personal friends, collaborators, former students, or other individuals who might be viewed as having a conflict of interest are not to be asked to serve as external referees. The expectation is that there will be six letters in the file: normally three from the candidate’s list and three from the department’s list.
There may not be fewer than six letters. However, all requested letters that are received by the department must be included in the dossier. Thus, on occasion there may be more than six letters if additional letters are requested in an effort to ensure that the six-letter minimum is achieved and more than six ultimately are submitted by the referees. All solicited letters should be included in the candidate’s dossier prior to the departmental vote, so that all voting faculty members have access to this information. External referees are usually asked to submit their letters by mid-August.
The chair of the department may also solicit on-campus letters only from those who have been asked to observe the candidate’s teaching, those who are in a position to comment knowledgeably on the candidate’s contributions to their collaborative projects, and those from outside the department who may comment on the candidate’s service contributions elsewhere (e.g., directors of programs, institutes, or centers). In all other instances, solicited or unsolicited letters from other faculty members (especially those in the home department) are discouraged.
Candidates are required to complete and submit a draft of their personal statements no later than May 15th prior to tenure and promotion consideration. The research statement should embed the listing of publications on the CV in a narrative trajectory, highlighting finished projects, current work, and future plans. A succinct statement is most effective. Candidates’ personal statements also should include a section describing their teaching programs, indicating courses taught, pedagogical objectives and methods, and any past, present, or future course development activity. It should also contain a discussion of service activities for the department, the College, the university, the profession, and the community. The personal statement should be accessible to several audiences, including external referees, fellow department members, other university colleagues, and administrators. Thus, the personal statement should strike a balance between communicating with experts in the field and those who are not members of the discipline and who may not be familiar with the candidate’s area of research. Candidates are encouraged to seek advice on their personal statements from recently tenured and/or senior colleagues. It is recommended that the candidate’s personal statement be included in the information sent to external referees.
Faculty with joint appointments will have a Memorandum of Understanding that identifies the tenure home and describes the procedures for tenure and promotion consideration.
The Chair of the Department is responsible for ensuring that the dossier is compiled correctly; no tenure or promotion candidate should be expected to prepare their own dossier without the assistance of departmental staff or the oversight of the chair. Tenure and promotion dossiers are electronic. Access to the dossier is password-controlled and only eligible faculty and administrators have access to the dossier. The chair of the department is responsible for identifying those in the department who should have access to the dossier once it is uploaded and ready for review.
The dossier must include all materials listed in the General section and all other items under Research/Creative Activity, Teaching, and Service/Engagement that apply to the candidate:
All vote-eligible faculty have the right and responsibility to review the dossier prior to the departmental vote.
The College recommends that during the spring semester prior to the deadline by which the tenure and/or promotion case will be submitted, the Chair works with the candidate and an elected faculty committee as defined by departmental faculty governance procedures to select a review committee that has the appropriate rank and expertise to evaluate the dossier. The departmental review committee should include no fewer than three faculty members. If there are an insufficient number of appropriately ranked faculty members in the department to constitute a review committee, the Chair of the Department should work with the candidate and the elected faculty committee to select appropriate committee members from faculty in other related departments with guidance from the Associate Executive Dean. Departments may propose alternative procedures that must be approved by the Executive Dean’s Office.
The review committee is charged with submitting a written report to the department faculty evaluating the candidate’s case for promotion. In particular, the committee report will include:
The review committee report must conclude with a recommendation to the department regarding tenure and promotion on the basis chosen by the candidate (i.e., research/creative activity, teaching, service) or as a balanced case. The committee report must provide a recommendation in all three areas—research/creative activity, teaching, and service—as well as an overall recommendation. The committee report will be made available to all tenured faculty of appropriate rank for review prior to the department meeting. This is a confidential document that cannot be shared outside the eligible voting members prior to the department vote and it is formally included in the dossier.
The review committee report should not be edited in response to the departmental deliberation and vote. The chair’s letter must describe the discussion and deliberation in the department meeting and vote, capturing the range of assessments presented at the meeting of the voting-eligible faculty, giving later reviewers a better understanding of the grounds for both positive and negative votes (if any).
Both tenured Associate and Full Professors are eligible to vote in tenure and promotion cases, but only Full Professors are eligible to vote for promotion from Associate to Full Professor. Departmental governance documents must establish which faculty members with FTE less than 1.0 are eligible to vote. An overall vote on tenure and/or promotion must be taken, as well as separate votes in each of the three performance areas, using campus-wide evaluative categories.
If a candidate has appointments in multiple units (i.e., a split appointment), one unit is designated as the “tenure home.” For split appointments, the tenure home is now identified in a Memorandum of Understanding. Non-tenure-home units send their review reports and recommendations to the chair/dean of the home unit, who includes them in the dossier for consideration by the home unit.
The Department will hold a meeting early in the fall semester to consider its promotion and tenure recommendation for the candidate, at which the chair presides. Voting members meet and discuss the committee report and the case. Faculty are eligible to vote only if they have been “materially engaged” in the review process, as evidenced (for example) by their familiarity with the dossier or attendance at meetings where the case is discussed. No proxy votes are allowed. The departmental recommendation must be based on the ballots from three or more vote-eligible faculty members, not including the chair.
Following discussion, members vote by secret ballot on whether to recommend tenure and/or promotion on the stated basis (i.e., research/creative activity, teaching, service) or as a balanced case. Prior to the vote, the chair will review campus criteria and requirements for a vote in support of the candidate. For the categories of research and service, the four options on the ballot are excellent, very good, satisfactory, and unsatisfactory. For the category of teaching, the four options on the ballot are excellent, very good, effective, and ineffective. The chair must make clear at the meeting that in order to register a positive vote for tenure and promotion, the ballot must indicate excellence in the primary area of consideration and at least satisfactory/effective in the other two areas (except in a balanced case, in which all areas must be ranked very good). All other votes will register as a negative vote. Faculty members have the right to abstain. Absences and abstentions do not register as a vote on the ballot. The chair’s letter should provide an account of any absences or abstentions.
When all ballots have been submitted, the votes will be tallied by an appropriate senior staff member specified in the faculty governance documents, and the chair will inform the vote-eligible faculty members of the results. The anonymity of the individual votes will be maintained, although the ballots will be kept in a secure location by the Chair of the Department in case they are requested by the Executive Dean or the Provost. The Chair of the Department does not vote on the departmental ballot, but rather records their vote as part of the chair’s review on the vote record in eDossier.
After the department vote, the Chair of the Department writes a separate statement. The statement includes a description of the department’s deliberations, including any unique characteristics of the discipline that may bear on the case (e.g., books versus articles, extent of co-authorship, significance of order of names on publications, etc.) and an accounting of the discussions in the meeting that might explain the vote, particularly in the case of negative votes, abstentions, absentees and faculty who fail to vote. The Chair is responsible for presiding at the meeting and for ensuring that there is ample time to discuss the case; the Chair should remind faculty it is their obligation to express their views whether positive or negative, but it is particularly important if they do not plan to support the case for tenure and/or promotion. The Chair also offers an independent recommendation regarding tenure and/or promotion; this recommendation is not bound by the department vote. The Chair’s statement, the departmental review committee report, and the recorded vote are added to the dossier. It is strongly recommended that the chair meet with the candidate in a timely fashion to discuss the vote. The completed file is then forwarded to the College of Arts and Sciences through the eDossier system. The deadline for submission of the file to the College is generally in the middle of September for tenure cases, and late September for promotion to Full Professor, Clinical Associate and Clinical Full Professor cases, and Senior Lecturer and Teaching Professor cases.
According to Indiana University policy, all dossier materials including external reference letters must be shared with the candidate upon request at any time in the review process. In general, we recommend that candidates refrain from viewing letters until the departmental recommendation is made. Chairs should familiarize themselves with the eDossier interface and work with the candidates, as necessary, to provide them access to the letters. Candidates may also add new material to the dossier at any time during the review process and should do so if new information becomes available (e.g., an acceptance of a manuscript or article) that would improve the case for tenure. Candidates should be aware that, after the dossier has “closed,” new information appears in the supplemental materials section.
Ratified: 3/11/2021
