External Review

2025 – 2026 Promotion & Tenure Cycle

All recommendations for promotion and/or tenure forwarded to the provost must include confidential evaluations by external reviewers, as prescribed in the UW Faculty Code Section 24-54 B. The specific selection process for external reviewers is determined at the local level.

Criteria for Soliciting External Reviewers

External Letters of Evaluation

A minimum of 3 external letters that can provide an arm’s length assessment of the candidate’s scholarly achievements are required. Additional letters, either arm’s length or conflicted, are permitted.

Qualifications of External Reviewers

All external reviewers should be recognized contributors to their field, as indicated, for example, by tenure and/or an academic rank senior to the candidate at a major research university, as well as frequent citation of their work or notable awards. In some circumstances, members of the professional or governmental community may also serve as appropriate external reviewers if they are able to speak fully to scholarship and other criteria important to the candidate’s role at the university.

• Evaluating Assistant Teaching Professors and Related Roles
  When evaluating assistant teaching professors, assistant professors of clinical practice, or artists in residence, it may also be appropriate to solicit letters from experts who are external to the candidate’s academic unit, but who are internal to the UW. It is expected that if faculty members internal to UW are providing evaluation the individual can provide an arm’s length review.
• Promotion Considerations
  For promotion considerations of candidates from associate teaching professor or associate professor of clinical practice to professor rank within their respective title, reviewers must be external to UW.

Arm’s Length Assessment

External reviewers should be able to provide an arm’s length assessment of the candidate’s scholarly achievements. Arm’s length reviewers should not have recently collaborated on scholarly work (this includes in-progress work or unfunded grant proposals) or have been in a supervisory role (e.g., former department chair) over the candidate.

Postponed Promotion/Tenure Recommendations

If a promotion/tenure recommendation has been postponed for one year, new external review letters must be obtained for the following year’s consideration.

Materials Provided to External Reviewers

Each external reviewer should be provided with the same representative set of the candidate’s scholarly or artistic materials.

External Reviewer’s Role

The external reviewer should not be asked to assess whether the candidate should be promoted/awarded tenure (but a reviewer may, of course, volunteer such an opinion). They should be asked to evaluate based on the unit criteria that are shared with them.

Contextual References

References to the UW Faculty Code (e.g., Faculty Code Section 24-32 and Section 24-34) and Executive Order 45 may be helpful for providing more context for external reviewers.

 

Once you have the external reviewers selected and the letter template complete, send the letter of solicitation to the external reviewers through Interfolio RPT. Additional information about RPT’s external reviewer functionality can be found on Interfolio’s help page.