Consultation in RPT Review
REG 05.20.5
Authority: Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor
History: First Issued: Fall 2000.
Additional References:
RPT Process Description
Contact Info: Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs (919-515-9770)
1. The strength of the evaluation of faculty accomplishment rests on the quality of consultation with peers in the review process. The peers involved are the departmental voting faculty and the college reappointment, promotion, and tenure committees. That consultation is undertaken by heads and deans in an environment in which the peers are cognizant of the appropriate criteria and expectations and are well informed as to the accomplishments of the candidate. It is also undertaken in a fashion that demands full and mutual participation by the members of each group. That participation, at the department and college levels, includes both contributing to an assessment of the quality and impact of the candidate's accomplishments and voting on the proposed action.
2. The formal documented basis for the consultation should be the candidate's dossier augmented by external evaluation letters and written assessments, votes, and recommendations produced at preceding levels in the review. It is important that all participants have full and convenient access to these materials. No content summaries, extracts, or abstracts of the dossier should be prepared for formal distribution and presentation to the group without the candidate's advance knowledge.
3. While participation in reviews by peers is a responsibility of every member of the departmental voting faculty and of the college committee, it is recognized that conditions sometimes make physical presence at consultative meetings by all members impossible. The following guidelines address assuring full participation while recognizing that the demands of faculty professional life may require creative approaches to enable the participation:
3.1. Department heads and deans set date(s) of departmental voting faculty and college committee meeting(s) and communicate the schedule early in the academic year
3.2. Department heads and deans facilitate convenient access to dossiers for review
3.3. When members are unable to participate in person, department heads and deans shall facilitate, where possible, confidential arrangements for receiving their consultation using practical means. In such cases, absentee votes are permitted and are to be combined with the votes of those present at meetings
3.4. Normally, those eligible to vote are the members of the departmental voting faculty appropriate to the category of action (tenured professors only for considerations to promote to professor, tenured professors and tenured associate professors for all other considerations) for departmental consultation, and the members of the college committee for college consultation. However, in those cases where a member of either of these groups bears a relationship to the candidate that is covered by the Board of Governors' Policy on Employment of Related Persons (Page III-D-5 in http://www.ga.unc.edu/publications/admin_manual/chapter_iii.pdf ) the effected faculty member shall be not participate in the review and shall be recused from voting.
On each RPT case, each member eligible to vote shall vote "Yes," "No," or "Abstain." Members eligible to vote who do not enter one of these three votes will be considered as not participating and their votes will be considered as missing.
