Our project includes two phases to address our aims:
Using a consortium approach, the Center for Excellence in Faculty Advancement (CEFA) aims to address validity in the P&T process. The intention is to accomplish aims through two phases.
First, CEFA plans to determine the theoretical mechanisms leading to the higher likelihood of negative P&T outcomes that some faculty experience in the P&T process based on criteria beyond institutional policies and formally evaluated P&T criteria. Within this phase, the team intends to collect P&T data from five institutions, including voting outcomes, external review letter (ERL) data, and the composition of P&T committees. Supplementing the P&T data, the team plans to distill other metrics related to scholarly output (e.g., citation and paper counts) from online repositories. Research questions include examining the composition of P&T committees and departments, choice architecture, informal/formal P&T policies, P&T portfolios, COVID tenure clock extensions, and ERLs.
The design is for the second phase to be guided by (a) insights from the first phase on the mechanisms perpetuating invalid practices and (b) authentic partnerships - including collaborative workshops - with a broad set of faculty within the consortium universities and national networks of faculty. Specifically, phase two of the project aims to develop evidence-based interventions, including training and policy recommendations for each of the four key groups in the P&T process: 1) P&T Candidates, 2) P&T Committee Members, 3) External Review Letter Writers, and 4) University Policy Makers.
Nationally available toolkits for targeting the full breadth of P&T stakeholders to reduce and eliminate invalid practices and advance meritocratic faculty in P&T processes are anticipated project outputs.
Our project addresses ten research questions:
(1) Are more diverse (a) P&T committees and (b) P&T committee chairs, linked to more positive P&T outcomes for racial minority P&T candidates in STEM disciplines?
(2) How does the representation of Black/Hispanic faculty and women (a) in leadership positions within the department and (b) in a field (e.g., biology) relate to P&T outcomes for Black/Hispanic faculty and women P&T candidates in STEM?
(3) Does added structure in P&T portfolio (e.g., CV) improve outcomes for minority STEM faculty?
(4) Does having a standard solicitation letter or rubric as part of the solicitation for letters increase ERL validity by weakening the relationship with writer characteristics and providing less gender and racial differences between ERLs?
(5) Does committee or department discussion lead to different outcomes than decision making in the absence of consensus building discussions?
(6) Does framing a training as “improving validity in P&T” have a stronger effect than a training focused on “improving diversity, equity, and inclusion”?
(7) How does providing relevant, structured information - (a) process debriefing sessions (b) information on past decisions, and (c) a P&T decision making rubric - effectively influence P&T decisions.
(8) Are health-related extensions, including COVID-related ones, treated differently in P&T decisions for minority STEM candidates?
(9) Are minority STEM candidates (e.g., women or URM faculty) “coached out” of the P&T process before even submitting materials?
(10) How do institutional and geopolitical policy related to DEI affect racial disparities in P&T outcomes?
