Criteria for Tenure and 7.12 Documents

Questions concerning the promotion and tenure process in the College of Liberal Arts should be directed to the Office of the Associate Dean for Faculty and Research at 612-624-9839.

Criteria for Tenure

Board of Regents Policy - Faculty Tenure

Section 7.11. General Criteria. What the University of Minnesota seeks above all in its faculty members is intellectual distinction and academic integrity.  The basis for awarding indefinite tenure to the candidates possessing these qualities is the determination that each has established and is likely to continue to develop a distinguished record of academic achievement that is the foundation for a national or international reputation or both [3].  This determination is reached through a qualitative evaluation of the candidate's record of scholarly research or other creative work, teaching, and service [4].  The relative importance of these criteria may vary in different academic units, but each of the criteria must be considered in every decision [5].  Demonstrated scholarly or other creative achievement and teaching effectiveness must be given primary emphasis; service alone cannot qualify the candidate for tenure.  Interdisciplinary work, public engagement, international activities and initiatives, attention to questions of diversity, technology transfer, and other special kinds of professional activity by the candidate should be considered when applicable.  The awarding of indefinite tenure presupposes that the candidate's record shows strong promise of his or her achieving promotion to professor. 

Section 7.12  Departmental Statement. Each department or equivalent academic unit must have a document that specifies (1) the indices and standards that will be used to determine whether candidates meet the threshold criteria of subsection 7.11 ("General Criteria" for the awarding of indefinite tenure) and (2) the indices and standards that will be used to determine whether candidates meet the threshold criteria of subsection 9.2 ("Criteria for Promotion to Professor").  The document must contain as an appendix the text and footnotes of subsections 7.11 and 9.2, and must be consistent with the criteria given there but may exceed them.  Each departmental statement must be approved by a faculty vote (including both tenured and probationary members), the dean, and other appropriate academic administrators, including the senior vice president for academic affairs and provost.  The chair or head of each academic unit must provide each probationary faculty member with a copy of the Departmental Statement at the beginning of the probationary service.

CLA 7.12 Documents ()

All units in the university revised their 7.12 documents in 2007. As new 7.12 documents are approved by the Provost's office, the old documents will be replaced by the new.

• Department of African American & African Studies
• Department of American Indian Studies
• Department of American Studies
• Department of Anthropology
• Department of Art
• Department of Art History
• Department of Asian Languages and Literatures
• Department of Chicano Studies
• Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies
• Department of Communication Studies
• Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature
• Department of Economics
• Department of English
• Department of French and Italian
• Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
• Department of Geography
• Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch
• Department of History
• School of Journalism and Mass Communication
• Institute of Linguistics, ESL, and Slavic Languages & Literatures
• School of Music
• Department of Philosophy
• Department of Political Science
• Department of Psychology
• Department of Sociology
• Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies
• Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences
• School of Statistics
• Department of Theatre Arts and Dance
• Department of Writing Studies

Last updated 15 April 2008