Enhance Your Leadership Impact
At APF, we remain deeply committed to holistically supporting faculty growth and success. This leadership development initiative is one of several efforts we are undertaking to ensure that our academic personnel processes are transparent, equitable, and aligned with the University’s mission.
Designed for academic leaders—including deans, chancellors, divisional deans, associate deans, and associate vice chancellors—this program provides tailored support and professional growth opportunities. It focuses on critical issues faced by department and unit leaders while fostering collaboration, insight, and practical strategies for success.
Core Themes of Leadership Development
This initiative explores essential topics that reflect the challenges and opportunities of academic leadership at UW, including:
- Navigating the research enterprise and fostering innovation
- Promoting campus and community safety
- Budgeting strategies across schools, colleges, and campuses
- Advancing teaching excellence and its evolving status
- Practical leadership insights, ethics, and governance at UW and within Washington state
- Strategies for faculty recruitment, promotion, development, mentorship, retention, and tenure
- Understanding ethics, risk management, and compliance in leadership roles
- Strengthening advancement, development, and endowment efforts
- Examining the scope and impact of undergraduate and graduate education
- Enhancing global engagement, research, and societal impact
- Embedding inclusive excellence in higher education
- Exploring the Faculty Code and shared governance principles
QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE FOR DEANS & CHANCELLORS
Revising Promotion and Tenure Criteria
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