Dean and Chancellor Leadership Development

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WHY IT MATTERS

All units must review and update P&T guidelines by March 21, 2026 to align with evolving faculty work and institutional values.

THE CHARGE

Goal: Ensure clarity and inclusivity — not to expand requirements, but to recognize the full range of faculty contributions.
Key areas to address:

• Research, scholarship & creative works (including open science)
• Teaching effectiveness (innovative pedagogy, mentoring, student success)
• Service (department to global, including advocacy)
• Interdisciplinary research & collaboration
• Changing funding landscape realities
• Entrepreneurship & innovation
• Community engagement & global partnerships
• Mentoring of students and colleague

WHAT SUCCESSFUL REVISIONS LOOK LIKE

The School of Public Health, recently highlighted at the Promotion and Tenure Criteria workshop hosted by the Office for Academic Personnel & Faculty, broadened its criteria to include community-engaged and educational scholarship grounded in institutional equity values. Meanwhile, the Foster School of Business refined teaching-track expectations through iterative, Faculty Code–aligned revisions.

PROCESS ESSENTIALS

1. Governance first
   • Work through faculty elected councils with clear charge statements
2. Be inclusive
   • Focus groups and town halls
   • Department-level input
   • Transparent feedback loops
3. Get expert help
   • Faculty Code experts (Secretary of Faculty)
   • Office for Academic Personnel & Faculty, Development and Operations support staff
   • Peer institution examples
4. Allocate resources
   • Dedicated staff support for writing/editing
   • FTE consideration for equity-focused work
   • Timeline: Start now for March deadline

WHAT TO AVOID

• Vague language (“interesting research,” “team player”)
• Biased terminology that disadvantages certain groups
• Overly narrow definitions that exclude valid scholarship
• Criteria that don’t reflect current funding realities
• Avoid developing guidelines in a prescriptive, top-down manner; instead, aim for an inclusive process that incorporates input from all levels within the unit.

IN SUMMARY

Your P&T guidelines should be specific enough to answer “What do I need to do to get promoted?” yet broad enough to recognize diverse contributions. APF provides workshops, expert consultation, and resources to support your revision process. Workshop facilitators are willing to provide their expertise in support of any unit upon request

Contact & Resources:

• Current unit promotion and tenure criteria
• Submit updates to: vpap@uw.edu
• Faculty Code sections: 24-32, 24-34, 24-57C | Executive Order 45

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The University of Washington is revising promotion and tenure guidelines to ensure they reflect the full range of faculty contributions, including community-engaged scholarship (CES). This effort aligns with UW’s mission, vision, and values, and responds to the Provost’s October 2025 charge to update policies for clarity, equity, and inclusivity.

WHY IT MATTERS

• CES advances public impact and supports diverse scholarly activities.
• A 2024 survey revealed that over half of faculty and staff do not feel fully supported in CES work under current criteria.
• Updating guidelines strengthens tri-campus capacity for community engagement and affirms CES as scholarship.

KEY COMPONENTS

• Toolkit Development:
  • Institution-wide affirmation that CES is scholarship (now in Faculty Code).
  • Unit-level criteria with discipline-specific examples and peer review pathways.
  • Reviewer support (rubrics, templates, inclusion of community partners).
  • Faculty resources (dossier templates, impact measurement tools, sample narratives).
  • Iterative assessment to refine criteria over time.
• Evaluation Criteria:
  • Scholarly rigor, partnership quality, product diversity, evidence of impact, and integration across mission areas.
• Recognizing Diverse Scholarly Products:
  • Academic: Peer-reviewed articles, books, grants, exhibitions.
  • Applied: Policies, reports, designs, educational materials.
  • Community: Co-created projects, public forums, creative works.

NEXT STEPS 

• Development of a web-based CES resource page and toolkit (Winter 2026).
• Faculty development materials, mentoring programs, and anti-bias guidance.
• Examples from peer institutions and professional organizations.

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Open access and open scholarship are rapidly reshaping the research landscape. As federal agencies, publishers, and institutions expand expectations for transparency, accessibility, and data sharing, faculty must understand evolving practices — and units must consider how these practices appear in promotion and tenure (P&T) guidelines.

Growing pressure on library budgets, rising publication fees, and increasing public demand for access to research make open-access literacy critical for all academic units.

WHY IT MATTERS

Support faculty in navigating open access, open data, and open scholarship — and ensure P&T criteria reflect contemporary research realities without adding unnecessary burden.

Key considerations:

• Recognizing open science, open scholarship, and open pedagogy as legitimate scholarly contributions.
• Addressing equitable access to publishing options across disciplines (especially humanities & social sciences with fewer grant-supported APCs).
• Understanding data security, privacy, and compliance in open-data environments.
• Evaluating responsible data management and reproducibility practices as elements of research quality.
• Reducing reliance on journal prestige and proxy metrics in faculty evaluation.

WHAT SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION LOOKS LIKE

Peer institutions provide emerging examples of how open practices can be incorporated into evaluation systems:

• University of Oregon includes open data, code, and protocols directly alongside publications within research expectations.
• Virginia Tech and Thomas Rivers University have added explicit recognition of OER and open educational practices within teaching and applied research criteria.
• DOERS3 Network provides a matrix for integrating OER into P&T criteria, linking values to evidence and indicators.

These models demonstrate how institutions can acknowledge open practices as core research and teaching contributions — not peripheral activities.

WHAT FACULTY SHOULD KNOW 

The Publishing Environment is Shifting

• Market consolidation fuels higher subscription costs and limits library negotiating power.
• Bundled content forces institutions to pay for unwanted materials (“rabbit food with dog food”), burdening budgets.

Open Access Has Many Models

• Green OA: Self‑archiving accepted manuscripts, often with embargoes, and usually free.
• Gold OA: Publisher makes article open; may require APCs.
• Diamond/Platinum OA: No fees to authors or readers; often run by societies or university presses.

Open Doesn’t Always Mean “Free to Reuse”

• Creative Commons licenses signal how others may use, adapt, or mine the content.

IN SUMMARY

Open access and open scholarship are essential components of contemporary academic work. They expand research reach, support public good, strengthen reproducibility, and align with institutional values of transparency and equity.

UW Libraries provide extensive tools — ResearchWorks, Dryad, OJS, digital scholarship platforms, and research impact services — to support faculty in sharing their work openly.

As units revise P&T guidelines, the focus should be on valuing quality, contribution, transparency, and impact, not on where work is published or its associated metrics.

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In 2025, the Faculty Senate approved a major update to the Faculty Code, establishing five core elements of effective teaching and requiring all units to incorporate them into assessment practices. These elements are now the university-wide framework for evaluating, supporting, and developing teaching across diverse instructional contexts.

The intent of this work is to shift from narrow, end-of-cycle evaluation toward holistic, formative, and equitable teaching assessment that reflects the full range of what instructors do to support student learning.

WHY IT MATTERS

Integrate the five core elements of effective teaching into student evaluations, collegial review, instructional support, and P&T documentation — consistently and equitably across all units.

Key areas to address:

• Adopt the five core elements across all review processes (cannot “pick and choose”).
• Build unit-level policies that align with the Faculty Code and support continuous improvement.
• Update student evaluations to reduce bias and elevate formative insights.
• Strengthen collegial review (peer observation) with structured, reflective processes.
• Ensure applicability across diverse teaching contexts: classroom, lab, clinical, community-engaged, and online instruction.

THE FIVE CORE ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE TEACHING

1. Aligned
   Teaching is intentionally designed and organized to help learners meet learning objectives. Evidence: aligned syllabi, assignments, course materials.
2. Inclusive and Equitable
   Teaching creates conditions where all learners can participate, see themselves in course content, and thrive. Evidence: community agreements, accessible materials, diverse content.
3. Active and Engaged
   Learners have structured opportunities to engage ideas and each other. Evidence: group work, discussions, polls, peer interaction.
4. Growth-Oriented
   Teaching fosters learning through practice, feedback, and opportunities to learn from mistakes. Evidence: low-stakes assessments, feedback that prompts revision.
5. Relevant
   Teaching helps students understand why learning matters — connecting course skills to future courses, careers, and community life. Evidence: real-world examples, student-selected topics, applied assignments.

WHAT SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION LOOKS LIKE

Across UW, units are embedding the elements into key teaching assessment tools:

• Teaching at UW Network provides centralized resources, examples, and evidence types instructors can use to demonstrate each element.
• Form T (student evaluations) introduces formative questions aligned to each core element. Early pilots show strong promise but adoption remains low — a key area for growth.
• Collegial Review Pilot provides a streamlined, adaptable review template emphasizing pre-review and post-review conversations and growth-oriented feedback.
• Chair Letters & P&T Documentation increasingly reference core elements directly, using qualitative evidence (not just numerical SET scores) to demonstrate growth and impact.

IN SUMMARY

The new UW teaching effectiveness framework centers growth, inclusivity, relevance, and alignment — and requires units to evaluate teaching holistically and formatively. Incorporating the five core elements into student evaluations, collegial review, and P&T documentation ensures consistency, transparency, and equity across the university.

This work is iterative and collaborative. Tools, pilots, and updated guidance are already underway, and units are encouraged to adapt, test, and provide feedback as UW moves toward a coherent, values‑aligned approach to teaching effectiveness.