PAc-2 Promotion To Professor 

1. ACADEMIC PRINCIPLES

Each department, school, or college will establish standards for promotion of its Associate Professors to Professor consistent with the guidelines established in PAc-35. These standards will appear in the promotion section within the applicable Faculty Evaluation Plan (FEP). If a department or school has multiple FEPs, the candidate should use the one for his or her primary academic program. Promotion is neither an unqualified right nor an automatic consequence of having completed a certain period of service. 

The promotion process will consist of review and judgment by the Department Promotion Committee, the Department Chair/Associate Dean the College Dean, the University Promotion Committee, and the Provost. At each level, the review process will be guided by the standards outlined in the candidate’s FEP. University-level reviews by the Provost and the President will bring broader administrative judgments to bear. 

Only full-time standing faculty members of Morehead State University holding the rank of Associate Professor in an academic program area can be considered for promotion to Professor. 

Annual faculty evaluations and promotion evaluations are separate processes, and consequently, meeting or exceeding annual performance criteria does not automatically ensure a favorable promotion decision.

2. TIME IN RANK

Tenured faculty will be eligible to apply for promotion to Professor after the completion of five years of service at the rank of Associate Professor. 

Faculty hired at the Associate Professor rank may request up to three years of equivalent professional service to be applied to their time in rank requirements for promotion to Professor. Credit for equivalent professional service will be recommended to the Provost by the Departmental Promotion Committee, the Department Chair/Associate Dean, and the College Dean. This decision should be made at the time of the initial appointment at Morehead State University or no later than at the end of the first semester of full-time service. 

A candidate's activities and accomplishments that occurred between initiation of tenure review and the granting of tenure and that were not documented in the tenure portfolio will be treated as if they had occurred during the candidate's time in rank at Associate Professor. Faculty hired at the Associate Professor rank may include material from the last five years in the promotion portfolio.

If a candidate applies previous service at another institution to the time in rank requirement, the previous service must be documented with respect to teaching excellence, scholarship, and service to that institution and community.

3. PROMOTION PORTFOLIO

The candidate's portfolio must document all qualifications, and it must be complete at the time of submission. The promotion portfolio will begin with the following items in order: 

1. a letter of intent, addressed to the Department Chair or Associate Dean, justifying the case for promotion to Professor, 
2. the applicable FEP(s) (see PAc-35) and any Flexible Workload Agreements (see PAc-29) that apply to the candidate, 
3. the annual evaluations during the time in rank at Associate Professor by the Department Chair/Associate Dean (and in the case of faculty hired as Associate Professors without tenure, any evaluations by the College Dean as defined in PAc-27 section 8.4) as well as any responses by the candidate to those evaluations, 
4. if applicable, a statement documenting the number of years of equivalent service at another institution granted, and 
5. a curriculum vitae of activities in the format of or from the approved faculty activity reporting system as per PAc-35 with particular emphasis on the documentation of activities since the initiation of the tenure review.

Materials that support the request for promotion should follow the initial contents of the promotion portfolio. The choice of supporting material should be based on the criteria for promotion to Professor outlined in the candidate’s FEP. The materials must demonstrate growth of the candidate beyond the level of achievement expected for tenure (see PAc-27).

4. STRUCTURE OF THE PROMOTION COMMITTEES 

1. All full-time Professors in a department will serve on the Department Promotion Committee unless they are serving on the University Promotion Committee. If a department has five or more Professors available, only these individuals will serve on the committee. If a department has three or four Professors available, then the tenured faculty will invite enough Professors from outside the department to constitute a five-member Department Promotion Committee. If a department has fewer than three Professors available, the tenured faculty will select one Associate Professor from the department to serve and will invite enough Professors from outside the department to constitute a five-member Department Promotion Committee. In the event that an Associate Professor from the department is required and there is not one, the tenured faculty will fill the vacancy by inviting Professors from outside the department to serve on the Department Promotion Committee. In all cases, the majority of Department Promotion Committee members will be Professors, and members from outside the department should be from the college that the department is in, if possible.
2. The University Promotion Committee will consist of two Professors from each college and one at-large Professor, all selected by the Faculty Senate. If there is an insufficient number of available Professors in a college to serve on the committee, Professors from another college should be chosen to serve. No two committee members will be from the same department. The committee shall include both males and females, and members of various racial and ethnic groups if possible. The term of service will be three years, with one-third of the committee members replaced each year. A member may not hold successive terms. Because the University Promotion Committee membership is determined by the Governance Committee of the Faculty Senate during the prior academic year, it will be the first committee to be staffed.
3. The chairperson of each promotion committee will be elected by the committee from the membership. 
4. No candidate for promotion, candidate's spouse, immediate family (as defined by PG-22), domestic partners, Department Chairs/Associate Deans, or Deans will serve on promotion committees. 
5. A faculty member may not serve on the Department Promotion Committee and the University Promotion Committee during an academic year. A faculty member serving on the University Promotion Committee shall neither engage in discussions about a candidate nor vote on the candidate at the department level; this parallels the procedure in PAc-27 for tenure voting.
6. A faculty member cannot serve on more than one of the following committees during an academic year—University Tenure Committee, University Promotion Committee, and Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee.

5. THE PROMOTION REVIEW PROCESS

Promotion committee deliberations must be treated confidentially.

Each promotion committee must evaluate the candidate's promotion portfolio and produce a written evaluation of the portfolio using the candidate’s FEP as the criteria for evaluation. As part of the evaluation, each committee will recommend, in the form of a vote by secret ballot, promotion or non-promotion of the candidate. Abstentions are not allowed. Any sealed ballots submitted by absent faculty members shall be included in the vote tally with all ballots opened and counted at the same time during the committee meeting. If the vote is split, the letter must reflect the balance and substance of the entirety of the vote. No separate minority report may be submitted. The letter must also address how the candidate’s performance does or does not meet the requirements of the candidate’s FEP. A recommendation for promotion requires an affirmative vote by 50% or more of the committee membership. Each committee's written evaluation will show the vote tally and will be signed by all committee members. A copy of the written evaluation will be placed in the portfolio and also delivered to the candidate. 

The Department Chair/Associate Dean and the College Dean will each produce a written evaluation of the promotion portfolio and the written evaluation will recommend promotion or non-promotion of the candidate. A copy of the written evaluation will be placed in the portfolio and also delivered to the candidate. 

Promotion review proceeds as follows: the Department Promotion Committee will evaluate the candidate's promotion portfolio and then forward the portfolio to the Department Chair/Associate Dean. The Department Chair/Associate Dean will evaluate the portfolio and then forward the portfolio to the College Dean. The College Dean will evaluate the portfolio and then forward the portfolio to the University Promotion Committee. The University Promotion Committee will evaluate the portfolio and then forward the portfolio to the Provost. 

At every level of review, the candidate will receive a copy of his/her evaluation and will have five working days to respond, in writing, to the evaluation. The candidate's response, if any, will be placed in the portfolio and submitted to the next level of review. 

The Provost will review all evaluations from the department, college, and university levels, including any responses to the evaluations provided by the candidate and will produce a written evaluation of the promotion portfolio. The written evaluation will recommend promotion or non-promotion of the candidate. The Provost will meet with the University Promotion Committee to discuss his or her recommendation. A copy of the evaluation will then be placed in the portfolio and also delivered to the candidate. The Provost will then forward his or her evaluation to the President. 

The President will make the final recommendation regarding promotion to the Board of Regents. The President will inform the candidate, in writing, of the recommendation at least two weeks prior to the Board of Regents meeting with copies of the recommendation delivered to the Department Chair/Associate Dean, College Dean, and Provost. A candidate not recommended for promotion may request a meeting with the President prior to the Board of Regents meeting.

6. ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Faculty and Administration will observe the conditions on academic freedom and responsibility for teaching and research as outlined in PAc-14.

7. GENERAL DATES FOR THE PROMOTION REVIEW PROCESS 

Specific dates and deadlines for the promotion review process in each year will be set and distributed to the faculty in a timely manner by the Office of the Provost.