Discussion on the Memorandum of Understanding, April 2008

The Tentative Agreement being voted upon (Apr 22-23):

• Tentative Agreements: memo and tentative agreements.
• Memorandum of Agreement Implementing Contract Provisions (April 14, 2008)
• Details on pages 3 and 5 of Article 20: Promotion (signed Sept. 7, 2007)
• and pages 7 and 10 of Article 19 Tenure (signed July 20, 2007)

• Here are a few excerpts for your consideration (the underlining and bold font are not in the original but are emphasized by the Faculty Council):

  1. The following articles, appendices, and related provisions, which the UFBOT and the UFF have agreed to, shall be implemented immediately and shall remain in effect pending final ratification of the complete UFBOT-UFF Collective Bargaining Agreement by the Trustees and by the bargaining-unit faculty:

  (35 Articles and Appendices, totaling 201 pages, including Articles 19 and 20 on Tenure and Promotion which state):

  Letters of Evaluation: The Trustees shall solicit evaluation of the candidate's research/scholarship/creative activities so that the promotion dossier contains no fewer than five and no more than six letters from qualified scholars outside the University. ... If the extraordinary situation ever arises where more than six letters are received, the chair must include all the letters, along with an explanation why an additional letter exists.

  2. Any articles or appendices still under negotiation (including Intellectual Property, Conflict of Interest, and Salaries plus any other proposal made or to be made by the parties) shall be implemented if agreed upon by the UFBOT and the UFF pending ratification of the completed UFBOT-UFF Collective Bargaining Agreement by the Trustees and by the bargaining-unit faculty.

Email dialog:

If you'd like to skip this rather lengthy dialog, just go to the final bullet point which summarizes the motivation behind this 'max 6' rule.
• Original email from Council to College sent by Tim Davis on behalf of the Council (Apr 18, 12:51pm, also forwarded then to Dr. John Biro, UFF President)

• John Biro's reply to the Council (Apr 21, 10:33am)

• Tim Davis' reply to John Biro's email (Apr 21, 12:47pm)

• John Biro's 2nd reply (Apr 21, 5:57pm)

• I was at first confused, thinking that John Biro was saying, above, that the administration was the source of the upper bound on the number of letters. A phone call to John Biro, and an email dialog with Joe Glover, brought clarity to the issue.

• Motivation behind the rule: The UFF is the source of this 'max 6' rule. The motivation behind the rule is to provide some kind of indirect guard against arbitrary inclusion of additional letters if a chair or dean didn't like the letters obtained so far (and decided to seek after negative letters to sink a tenure/promotion case). Note that as far as I know, this has not happened in our college; see our extensive survey in the Faculty Council report below. The UFF doesn't actually want an upper bound on the letters, but was unable to find an alternative that both guarded against this arbitrary practice and which was acceptable to the adminstration bargaining team. The administration also does not want an upper bound to be stated in the bargaining agreements.

  The proposed rule is still viewed as problematic by the College of Engineering Faculty Council. The UFF is open to discussing this proposed rule. The UFF and the College of Engineering Tenure and Promotion Best Practices Committee will try to work together during the summer to reach a resolution, regardless of the outcome of the Apr 22-23 vote.

Other relevant resources:

• Report of the Faculty Council ad hoc Committee on Tenure and Promotion Best Practices (Sept. 26, 2007).
  Note that no mention of the number of letters (currently 8 to 10) was made in the survey of those faculty who went through the T and P process in the past 3 years in the college.

• Report of the Faculty Senate ad hoc Committee on Tenure (Oct 19, 2004) recommends a minimum of 5 external letters but does not recommend any maximum. No maximum number is reported from any peer institution. It is possible (but perhaps unlikely) a few exist but were not requested.

• Comparisons with other universities:
  • Reply from Mike Heath, in the Computer Science Department at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign. UIUC is ranked well above us:
    In a nutshell, the minimum number of external letters is five. I don't know offhand if there is a maximum, but I've rarely seen more than seven. Whatever the number, a majority must be chosen by the department rather than the candidate. I don't think the number of letters depends on the level of the promotion. For all the gory details, see Provost's Communication #9 at http://www.provost.uiuc.edu/communication/

  • Reply from Ahmed Sameh, Purdue University, which is a peer institution. Ahmed Sameh is currently Chair of Purdue's Computer Science Department:
    For tenure cases, UIUC, Minnesota, and Purdue require between 6 and 8 letters from experts in the field mainly in highly ranked U.S. CS departments. For promotion to Full Prof rank, these universities require between 8 and 12 letters some of them from international experts in the field to find out whether the candidate has established both national and international visibility of his/her research activities.

  • University of Minnesota is also a peer institution. If you believe the rankings, its College of Engineering is tied with us in the US News and World Report. According to Pen-Chung Yew (former Computer Science chair, but still at Univ. of Minnesota) the Univ. of Minnesota College of Engineering solicits 10 to 12 letters and requires a minimum of 8 letters in the packet (same as we do). Each unit sets their own standards.

    Pen Yew writes: According to our college rules, the number of letters required is set by each unit. Currently, we solicit about 10 to 12 letters and try to have at least 8 letters in the file. 2/3 of the letters should be from folks not directly related the candidate (i.e. collaborators, advisers, etc). We also identify which ones are recommended by the candidate and which ones are selected by the dept. I think it should be very similar to what you have at UFL. For more info, you could visit the following web sites:

    • http://intranet.it.umn.edu/policies/PandT.html
    • http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/faculty/pdf/procedures101207.pdf

  • According to Gil Strang, the MIT Math Department requires 10. This is slightly higher than what we require.

    Gil Strang writes: For tenure and for promotion to full professor I would estimate 10 letters from outside and 3 inside -- less for non-tenure promotion but still quite a few...

  • According to Walter Murray, the Stanford Computer Science Department requires 12 letters, but recent packets have all had at least 15 letters. This is quite a bit higher than our standards.
    Walter Murray writes: I think we have a minimum of 12 but looking at the recent cases they all have 15. It does not differ much by rank if at all. There is considerable restraints on who we get letters and a bio of the letter writer is given. A key part of tenure cases is the list of peers with whom we want comparisons. A bio is given of these and they all have to be tenured.