Faculty to Select Candidates for the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure

At the beginning of Spring Semester 2020, the Syracuse University Senate will launch an online election to select candidates across the schools and colleges to serve on the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure. Electronic ballots will be sent out on Jan. 13, 2020, to all eligible voters—tenured and tenure-track faculty members—and must be submitted by Tuesday, Jan. 21.

The Provost’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure was created to assist the provost in promoting the highest academic standards across the University and to ensure consistency across the promotion and tenure processes. Its membership is composed of tenured professors drawn from 12 electorates aligned with the faculties of 10 of 11 schools and colleges plus two electorates from the College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences has separate electorates for faculty in the sciences and the humanities.

Interim Vice Chancellor and Provost Zhanjiang “John” Liu will serve as chair, and Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs LaVonda N. Reed will serve as convener. Interim Vice President for Research Ramesh Raina will also serve. The committee works in an advisory capacity to the provost.

“This committee is a vital resource for the provost in two areas of tremendous significance to our faculty—promotion and tenure,” says Reed. “Because of the importance of this work, we need broad participation by our faculty. I urge those faculty eligible to vote in this online election to respond promptly when they receive their ballots in January.”

Under the administration of the Senate Agenda Committee, the online election will be used to identify potential committee members from each of 11 electorates with open seats. The College of Visual and Performing Arts will not participate in this year’s election, as Elisa Dekaney, professor of music education (jointly appointed in the School of Education and the College of Visual and Performing Arts) enters the second year of a two-year term.

All tenure-line faculty are eligible—and encouraged—to vote for candidates from their respective electorate. Only tenured full professors are eligible to serve. Once balloting has closed, a slate of three candidates from each electorate will be forwarded to Interim Provost John Liu who will make the final committee selections.

The members of the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure will be named after final selections.

Committee members are charged with providing the interim provost with a broad range of perspectives. They are expected to serve as Universitywide faculty representatives rather than as representatives of a specific discipline, department, school or college.

Members of the committee will serve staggered two-year terms and will not be eligible to serve two terms consecutively.

The members of the Provost’s Advisory Committee on Promotion and Tenure will be named after the close of the election.