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CAP AND ACADEMIC ADVANCEMENT
WHAT IS CAP?
CAP---the Council on Academic Personnel---is a committee of the
Academic Senate. CAP is charged with reviewing the scholarly,
teaching and service activities of faculty seeking certain
academic advancements, and persons seeking appointment to the
faculty. The primary goals of CAP are to ensure equity and
to maintain standards of scholarship, teaching and service
across the campus.
CAP’s fourteen members, including its Chair and Vice Chair, are
selected by the Senate’s Committee on Committees and confirmed
by the Legislative Assembly. The members of CAP are chosen on
the basis of their desire to serve, their seniority, enthusiasm
and industry, and their expertise in the scholarly fields that
require representation on CAP.
HOW DOES CAP WORK?
CAP meets every Tuesday from 8:30 am to approximately 4:30 pm,
from September through July. The Academic Personnel Office
(APO) receives a case from a dean and sends it to CAP for
review. If the case arrives at the APO after the deadline for
its submission, it is placed at the rear of the line, behind all
of the other cases awaiting review by CAP, further delaying its
outcome.
Each CAP member is assigned homework, according to his or her
expertise in a particular area of scholarship, consisting of one
or more faculty dossiers to be presented to the CAP membership
the following Tuesday in the form of a case specialist report.
With the exception of extremely emergent cases, CAP business
that is not completed by July 30th is re-scheduled
for September.
WHAT CASES DOES CAP CONSIDER?
The bulk of CAP’s work deals with Appointments at the Associate
and Full Professor levels, advancements to Associate
Professor I, to Professor I, to Professor VI, to Above Scale and
to Further Above Scale, and Accelerations or Decelerations of
more than 1 year. CAP also issues Fourth Year
Appraisals for Assistant Professors to alert them to any
weakness that may hinder their advancement to tenure if
uncorrected. CAP strives to supply feedback that is helpful and
that provides direction to the candidate.
CAP considers as its top priorities Fourth Year
Appraisals, tenure actions (Eight-Year Limit Reviews),
Appointments, and retention cases. Advancements to Tenure, to
Professor VI and to Above Scale ranks require a career
evaluation. Advancement to an Above Scale salary is reserved
for scholars of the highest distinction who have continued to
work at an exceptional level of achievement.
Acting Appointments:
It is CAP’s policy not to approve an Acting Appointment
that has been proposed merely to allow the candidate to receive
benefits (e.g., housing allowance) while awaiting CAP’s decision
on the Regular Appointment. Instead, CAP will attempt to hasten
the process for the Regular Appointment, including expediting
the work of an RC if one is deemed necessary.
WHAT IS REQUIRED FOR ACCELERATION?
Accelerated advancement requires evidence of unusual
achievement since the last advancement. The greater the
acceleration, the more extraordinary must be the achievement
that is required to obtain it.
At their discretion, deans can grant one-year accelerations
in especially meritorious cases. If an acceleration
of more than one year is requested, the case must go to CAP. In
other words, a series of judicious one-year accelerations
granted by a dean would allow a worthy member of the faculty to
advance at a moderately rapid pace and still fly beneath CAP’s
radar.
WHEN DOES THE DEAN VISIT CAP?
If CAP’s view of the outcome of a case is at variance with that
of the dean or the department chair, a brief summary of
CAP’s deliberations and preliminary decision is provided
orally to the dean by the chair or vice chair of CAP. If
the dean wishes to discuss the case with CAP, a letter
outlining the dean’s argument in no more than a few paragraphs
is requested, and a visit is scheduled.
In order to prevent a delay in the outcome of a case, a time
limit has been set for deans to determine whether or not
they wish to visit CAP: If CAP has received no response from the
dean within one week of the dean being informed of the
preliminary outcome of the case, a letter issuing a one-week
deadline will be sent to the dean. If CAP has received no
response by the deadline, it will close the case. In
exceptional circumstances, such as a dean’s necessary absence or
additional time required for the dean to seek consultation, an
extension may be granted by the chair or vice chair of CAP.
Following oral communication of a CAP decision to a dean, the
dean will be given one month to visit CAP. If the dean has not
visited CAP by then, CAP will close the case.
The dean is allowed to bring one other person, usually the
department chair. They are permitted a total of 15 minutes to
make oral arguments, and may choose to furnish CAP with
additional supportive materials. This is followed by a fifteen-
minute question and answer period. The following week, CAP
votes on whether or not to reopen the case. Finally, CAP
makes a recommendation to the Vice Chancellor for
Academic Affairs who makes the final decision. CAP severely
restricts deans’ visits from May through July when its workload
often assumes epic magnitude. Except for the most compelling
cases, deans’ visits that would normally occur during those
months will be postponed until the fall.
In the rare instance when a dean’s view of the outcome of a case
is negative and CAP’s view is positive,
and the dean wishes to urge a more negative result for the
candidate than CAP has tentatively reached, CAP has decided to
eliminate the dean’s visit, and instead provide
the dean an opportunity to present a written statement
containing the objections to what he or she regards as too
favorable a decision by CAP. The reason for this policy is that
some members of CAP have questioned the fairness of a procedure
in which the dean makes oral arguments to CAP that are adverse
to the candidate, without providing the candidate an opportunity
to hear those arguments or to respond to them. Alternatively,
CAP’s members have given thought to allowing the candidate to
participate in the discussion, but this would inhibit candor and
would be awkward for both the dean and the candidate.
Similarly, the presence of an attorney to represent the
candidate would transform CAP’s deliberative process into an
adversarial one, while a faculty representative selected by the
candidate would lead to a breach of confidentiality. The
question was raised: is not the unfairness to the candidate
associated with a negative dean’s visit equally unfair for a
positive visit? The answer is no! The candidate may benefit
but cannot be harmed by a positive dean’s visit; even if a
dean’s positive argument is ineffective, it leaves the candidate
no worse off than if the dean’s visit had never occurred. CAP
believes that its new policy, seemingly only marginally
favorable to the one or two faculty members per year that are
affected by it, will avoid potential unfairness while enhancing
the transparency of the academic personnel process.
WHAT HAS CAP DONE TO SPEED-UP THE PROCESS?
In order to expedite the academic advancement process, the
members of CAP have been subdivided into various
subcommittees which make determinations regarding Joint
Appointments, and advancements of faculty in the Lecturer,
Professional Research or Project Scientist series,
Adjunct or Clinically Compensated series, with problem or
negative cases going to the full CAP.
CAP recognizes that the recruitment of Senate members to serve
on a Review Committee (RC), and their subsequent deliberations,
produce a significant delay in the advancement process. With
this in mind, CAP has chosen to dispense with Campus
Review Committees whenever a case is clearly positive, including
promotion to tenure.
WHEN DOES CAP APPOINT A REVIEW COMMITTEE?
CAP uses its discretion in determining whether or not a Review
Committee (RC) might assist in the evaluative process. For
Promotion to Tenure, to Professor I, to Professor VI or to Above
Scale, an RC might be appointed if there were weak letters of
evaluation, if the quality of scholarship, research,
teaching or competitive funding (if appropriate) was marginal,
if the faculty vote was badly split, if the dean
or department does not support the proposed action, or if
the dean requests the appointment of an RC.
For Appointment to the faculty, an RC might be convened if the
case were hampered by any of the aforementioned weaknesses, if
the Search Report was inadequate, if the candidate had never
held a tenured faculty position, or if the level of
Appointment was not commensurate with the quality of the
candidate’s record. An RC would also be appointed if
expertise on CAP were inadequate to evaluate the work of the
candidate.
A case will go to an RC when requested by two or more members of
CAP.
HOW IS A REVIEW COMMITTEE FORMED?
The respective dean has first crack at recommending the
membership of the RC, and CAP complies with those
recommendations whenever possible. The RC consists of four
members of the Academic Senate who are, whenever possible,
at least at the same rank and at a higher step than the
candidate under review. Since RC service is usually
limited to one RC per year, the use of high-level faculty
for low-level cases should be avoided, as they may be needed
for subsequent high-level cases. The members of
the RC must all be from different departments, and they
must include a representative from the candidate’s department.
Department chairs should not be used.
There are several caveats regarding the choice for
departmental representative: Disqualified from serving as
departmental representative are colleagues who have written a
personal letter of evaluation for the candidate, who have
participated as coauthor of a recent paper, or who have
been co-PI of a recent grant. On the other hand,
a representative of the department RC or a
department member of a search committee may have the best
knowledge of the candidate’s field of interest and can be
appointed as the departmental representative. No two members of
an RC may have voting rights in the candidate’s department. No
two members of an RC may have an appointment fifty percent or
greater in the same department. Because emeriti faculty
may not be familiar with the recent work of the faculty in
their departments, they should not be appointed as
departmental representatives.
The Chair of the RC is designated by CAP, and must be
from a department other than that of the candidate. In Tenure
Cases, an Assistant Professor from a department other than that
of the candidate is nominated by CAP to serve as a non-voting
observer. An alternate slate of RC members is also
selected in the event that one or more members of the original
slate is unable to serve.
In order to encourage service on review committees, RC service
is recorded in the faculty member’s dossier.
WHAT DOES CAP LOOK FOR IN THE DOSSIER?
1. CAP seeks evidence of independent and innovative
research, scholarship, creativity and, if appropriate for
the discipline, competitive funding.
2. Teaching evaluations for all courses should contain
scores and ratings compared to department averages and should
include students’ comments. Peer evaluations of teaching
are particularly important.
3. Letters of evaluation should be analytical
and should offer comparison with other scholars of
similar age in the same field. Most important, the number of
external respondents should total between six and
eight, and should strike an even balance between the number
chosen by the candidate and the number chosen by the
department. To be specific, at least three or four
letters should be received from external evaluators
not suggested by the candidate, and who have not had a close
association with the candidate. In exceptional
circumstances this goal may not be attained, and an explanation
should be provided
4. Publications in the bibliography should be
organized according to category. Research articles should be
separated from review articles and peer-reviewed articles from
non-peer-reviewed articles. Books, chapters, editorials,
abstracts and other types of publications should be listed in
separate categories.
5. Grant support should clearly indicate the role
of the candidate and the dates the grant was active.
6. CAP recommends that the candidate’s Personal (Self-)
Statement address the particular academic advancement being
sought. The candidate should bear in mind that the Personal
Statement is read by reviewing bodies with varying degrees of
expertise in the candidate’s field of scholarship. If the
Personal Statement is long or complex, it should be accompanied
by a simplified summary of no more than three pages
ADDITIONS TO THE DOSSIER AFTER IT HAS LEFT THE DEPARTMENT
1.
The candidate must be notified of any new material placed in the
dossier, and must be provided an opportunity to view it and to
respond to it in writing.
2. Should new material of substantial importance become
available, CAP may provide the department faculty with the
opportunity to re-vote on the case. |
