English Department Personnel Review

Recommendations for Collecting and Formatting Materials

February 2020

In compiling binders for renewal, tenure or promotion, candidates should include:

PRIMARY MATERIAL (in first binder)

Curriculum Vitae

  • CV should follow the formats provided on the A&H website: https://artsandhumanities.buffalostate.edu/ah-personnel-information
  • All publications listed should have full bibliographical citations in MLA or APA format.
  • All individual courses you have taught should be listed by name, with the semesters in which you taught them (e.g. Introduction to Poetry, Fall 2018 & Fall 2020). Indicate whether the course is a senior seminar or a graduate class.
  • Listings of committee or service work should include the dates of service and the relevant program or department (for example, “School of Arts and Humanities Bylaws Committee, 2020-2021”; “English Department Writing Committee [Chair], 2019-2020”)

For faculty applying for renewal or tenure:

  • Letter of Expectation

For faculty who serve as program coordinators:

  • Department description of coordinator position (unless covered in letter of expectation)

[NB The Personnel Committee recommends that the Department draft a job description for each coordinator/director appointment.]

Personal Statement

  • Format should parallel the College’s required review of Teaching Effectiveness, Scholarship/Creative Activity, and Service to Department, College, and Community, in that order. The Statement should specifically reference the requirements for renewal or promotion cited in DOPS (https://academicaffairs.buffalostate.edu/personnel-policies-dops)
  • Faculty applying for renewal or tenure should discuss how their work has developed since graduate school and/or appointments elsewhere; they should formally respond to any recommendations or advice from previous Personnel reviews. The Statement should reference the letter of expectation, to explain how its requirements are being met or exceeded. The Statement should demonstrate that the applicant is in dialog with the department about their professional development.
  • Candidates applying for promotion are strongly advised to quote and cite relevant passages from DOPS when explaining how their activities fulfill the requirements for promotion. (https://academicaffairs.buffalostate.edu/personnel-policies-dops)
  • Tenured faculty applying for promotion to full professor should discuss how their post-tenure accomplishments in teaching, scholarship/creative activity, and service differ from and are more substantial than the work they submitted for tenure; they should explain how they have achieved national or international status in some or all areas, as required by DOPS.
  • Tenured faculty applying for promotion to full professor should contextualize their work according to the ranking and statements on the Arts and Humanities website, paying particular mind to the specific School standards, as well as the departmental statement (https://artsandhumanities.buffalostate.edu/scholarship-and-creative-activity-statements).
  • Teaching Effectiveness section should include a summary of and response to course survey feedback.
  • Teaching Effectiveness section can include a discussion of your work as a faculty adviser, including how many students you advise (roughly) and how many and what kinds of letters of recommendation you have written.
  • If you teach online or in a hybrid model, explain how and why you teach some courses in that format.
  • Describe any unusual teaching commitments (i.e., summer courses, study-abroad programs, advising work-study students, directing theses or projects, supervising independent studies or courses-by-contract, humanities or honors courses, EOP or McNair courses, etc.).
  • Scholarship/Creative Activity section should describe the status of any journal or press that publishes your work.
  • In the section on service, faculty who serve as coordinators should provide a narrative section of their work as a coordinator, including information on course releases and indicating what committees they serve on ex officio. They should separately discuss other service unrelated to being coordinator.
  • Describe any awards received (mini-grants, discretionary, college, SUNY, learned society). Awards from community organizations can be listed if they relate in some way to your scholarship or teaching.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL (in second and, if necessary, third binder)

Faculty applying for renewal or tenure should include all material gathered in Personnel reviews since first appointment. Material provided in earlier reviews can be marked as such in the binder and placed in a separate section (i.e., transferred intact from the previous review binder) but should still be included.

Faculty applying for promotion to full professor should provide complete supplemental material for scholarship, teaching, and service for every year since receiving tenure.

Teaching Effectiveness Supplemental Material

  • All syllabi for all courses taught since appointment (for junior faculty) or since receiving tenure. Ideally, include a version with marginal commentary on what went very well, where you innovated and why, or what you plan to change, to show you are actively working on your teaching. If your syllabus is unchanged from year to year, include just the most recent copy, but it would be advisable to explain how you reached your present state of satisfaction with the class.
  • All course surveys since last review. Junior faculty should provide both departmental course survey data and School of Arts and Humanities survey data. An overview of the data, and your response to it, should be included in your personal Statement.
  • Other course materials, such as student abstracts of theses or independent studies you have advised.
  • If there is a course you teach occasionally, and not in a year you are up for review, the department encourages you to ask a colleague to visit your course, review your teaching materials, and write an assessment of your pedagogy, for you to include in your binder.
  • Materials relating to advisement or mentorship such as thank-you letters from students or photocopies of conference programs that include papers written by your mentored students.

Scholarship/Creative Activity Supplemental Material

  • Copies of all publications since appointment, with context on the publication (i.e. peer-reviewed, edited collection, conference proceedings, book review; whether the article was blind-reviewed, solicited, etc.)
  • Copies of any books, special journal numbers, or other publications that you have edited, with a description of the work your editorial role entailed
  • Copies of any conference papers given since appointment (for untenured faculty) or since tenure (for faculty seeking promotion to full professor)
  • Copies of any circulating pre-publication work (not work in progress, but completed work currently under review by a journal or press)
  • Copies (or summaries) of non-refereed, non-edited scholarship (blog posts, etc.)
  • Documentation of any forthcoming publication or presentation (letter of acceptance from editor, invitation to submit work, give a lecture or reading, present at a conference, etc.)
  • Documentation of republication of any previously published work
  • Copies of pages from conference programs indicating participation on panels or roundtables. Include the page of the program or website screen shot giving the date and location of the conference.
  • Flyers advertising lectures or public presentations, if any
  • Copies of applications for fellowships or travel grants; descriptions of awards or grants you have received (e.g. downloaded from a library’s or foundation website)

Service to College, Community and Profession

  • List or chart with a brief description of each committee on which you served, frequency of meeting, any specific work you did for that committee (e.g. chaired subcommittee, wrote report)
  • Faculty are encouraged to request from committee chairs a letter describing the committee’s work and their own contributions; letters are especially useful in describing service on non-departmental committees, committees on which you performed an unusual amount of work, or organizations outside Buffalo State.
  • Other letters from colleagues, students, or community members thanking you for service or assistance
  • A list of students for whom you wrote recommendation letters for jobs, fellowships or graduate school (e.g. Jane Smith, English major, library school recommendation)  
  • A descriptive summary of academic service you performed such as reading manuscripts, serving as a reader for a tenure or promotion review in another department or at another institution, serving on a learned society’s prize or fellowship committee. Indicate the number of submissions reviewed, length of manuscripts, etc.
  • Description of any work as an elected or appointed officer of a learned society or community organization connected to your scholarship or teaching, including duties, time commitment, and whether you receive compensation
  • Description of any conferences, workshops, lectures, readings or other events you organized or coordinated, including number of attendees, number of participants, and any materials (programs, flyers) related to that event. Indicate whether and from whom the event received funding or other support.

Professional Development (this material can be included under whichever of the three categories above it best describes)

  • Formal professional development training completed, including trainings offered at Buffalo State (e.g., Applied Learning workshops, technology in teaching, Drupal for web page maintenance, online teaching), and any certifications earned.
  • Any outside professional development awards or grants, including those offered through scholarly societies (MLA, CCC, WPA, ACLS, etc.) or governmental agencies (NEH); describe the content of the professional development (attended a workshop; created a new program or course, etc.)