2019 Annual Conference

CPAE CoConference : Professional Development Workshop

CPAE CoConference Only: Professional Development Workshop (90 minutes)

This workshop supports faculty thinking ahead to their tenure and promotion packets and the common elements of a personal narrative and external letters. We will discuss approaches to the narrative, how those narratives and packets are assessed by external letter writers, and the typical components of external letters.

The target audience for this workshop is assistant professors or other faculty who are preparing to submit for tenure and/or promotion. Advanced doctoral students or anyone wanting a better understanding of the tenure process are welcome.

As a result of this session, participants will be able to:
Develop a strategic approach to writing the narrative for a promotion or tenure package.
Identify important qualities and considerations regarding the selection of external letter writers.

The tenure and promotion process is one of the most stressful professional experiences for many academics. While much of the experience is specific to a particular institution’s policies and procedures, some elements are shared across most, if not all, colleges and universities. The purpose of this session is to demystify and build strategy around some of the shared components, namely the external letters of evaluation and personal narrative statement.

This session brings together senior faculty who have extensive experience evaluating tenure cases and writing external letters, faculty who have recent success with achieving tenure, and junior faculty preparing for the tenure and promotion process. Senior faculty will discuss what they consider and expect to see when they write T&P letters as outside reviewers, how they incorporate a specific institution’s guidelines, and qualities of an effective narrative statement. Faculty who have recently and successfully navigated the T&P process will then share their approaches to writing the narrative statement and provide guidance on how one might structure a narrative or packet to cultivate stronger letters.

This session is designed specifically for the CPAE workshop series on Professional Development. The workshop will begin with a discussion of what external letter writers look for in a tenure and promotion package, including how they work through the provided materials and make decisions about what to address in a letter. The workshop will then transition to a discussion of approaches to writing the personal narrative statement. This session is designed to be highly interactive, with ample time for discussion and Q&A.