LCPT Annual Report 2020-2021

LFA Committee Final Report

Committee Name: Library Committee on Promotion and Tenure (LCPT)

Committee Chair: Jamene Brooks-Kieffer

Committee Secretary: Michiko Ito

Ad Hoc Reviewers: Amalia Monroe Gulick, Michiko Ito

Members (with terms):

• Betsaida Reyes (Associate Librarian, 2020-2023)
• Jamene Brooks-Kieffer (Associate Librarian, 2018-2021)
• Geoff Husic (Librarian, 2018-2021)
• Michiko Ito (Librarian, 2018-2021)
• Amalia Monroe-Gulick (Librarian, 2019-2022)

Fiscal Year: 2020-2021

Standing Charges

• LCPT is the committee required by Faculty Senate Rules and Regulations Article VI. It reviews the qualifications and performance of all members of the library faculty who are to be considered for promotion, award of tenure, non-reappointment, or probationary review, and makes recommendations to the University Committee on Promotion and Tenure, in accordance with the guidelines accepted by the University of Kansas for granting promotions and tenure for library faculty. Its recommendations, together with those of the Dean of Libraries, are forwarded to the Office of the Provost for consideration by the University Committee on Promotion and Tenure.

• LCPT also acts as the Libraries’ Progress Toward Tenure Review (or equivalent review) Committee. It reviews the qualifications and performance of all members of the library faculty who are scheduled to be evaluated in their progress toward tenure or equivalent review. Once LCPT completes its review, the dossiers for the faculty being reviewed, and the Committee’s recommendations are sent to the Dean of Libraries.

• LCPT annually reviews the Libraries’ Criteria for Academic Ranks of Library Faculty and the Promotion and Tenure Procedures for the Faculty of The University of Kansas Libraries, in accordance with Faculty Senate Rules and Regulations Article VI and recommends revisions of these criteria to LFA. It also recommends procedures used for the preparation of dossiers for library faculty under review for progress toward tenure and consideration for promotion and/or tenure or equivalent review. LCPT presents its recommendations to LFA for approval. Libraries HR should not put out a general voluntary call to past candidates to opt in to sharing their files through the Libraries’ HR office.

Standing Charges Progress Summary (please include progress and/or accomplishments related to Standing Charges):

• Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Provost’s Office delayed by 1 year all PTTR and P&T processes. As a result, LCTP and Libraries HR did not hold a Fall 2020 open meeting prior to the start of the Progress Toward Tenure Review (PTTR) process.
• LCPT reviewed one promotion with tenure file in Fall 2020.
• LCPT reviewed no PTTR files in Spring 2021.
• LCPT and Libraries HR held an open meetings prior to the start of the Promotion & Tenure (P&T) process (May 12, 2021).
• No candidates interviewed for KU Libraries faculty positions.
• Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, LCPT conducted all of its 2020-2021 business remotely, meeting via Zoom, drafting and sharing documents using KU OneDrive, and voting via KU Qualtrics.

Dates of LCPT meetings:

August 3, 2020

August 28, 2020

August 31, 2020 (Ad Hoc only)

October 13, 2020

October 23, 2020

October 30, 2020

November 16, 2020

November 30, 2020

April 26, 2020

Special Charges and Progress Summary:

1. Discuss appropriateness of Libraries HR putting out a general voluntary call to past candidates to “opt in” to sharing their files (candidate-prepared documents only) as examples to help new candidates in preparing their files. LCPT’s discussions should consider potential legal/personnel problems and HR’s responsibility for keeping track of permissions.

Action: LCPT held two meetings in Fall 2020 to discuss this charge and sought input from Mike Broadwell from Libraries HR. The committee’s recommendations were reported to the LFA Executive Committee in December 2020 and subsequently to the LFA Spring 2021 Assembly via a report (Appendix A) and presentation (Appendix B). In summary, LCPT’s recommendations about this charge are:

Instead, Libraries HR should send an annual inquiry to KU Libraries’ tenured faculty, offering an opportunity to add or remove their names from a list of faculty members who are willing to share their files with colleagues via informal, one-on-one contact. This inquiry and list maintenance should be automated through Libraries HR’s existing use of Sharepoint workflows.

Other recommendations addressed to LFA Exec in the report are discussed below in the section on potential charges for future committees.

Based on the 2019-2020 LFSA Web Taskforce Final Report and in consultation with the LFSA webmaster, LCPT should review and recommend procedures for archiving and accessing LCPT documents from previous years.

Action: In consultation with the LFSA Webmaster, LCPT reviewed the new Sharepoint- based mechanism for sharing public committee documents with LFA/LFSA and making them available on a public website for web archiving. The committee agreed that its public documents consisted of membership, meeting minutes (with any confidential information removed), and the annual report. The LCPT Secretary, with assistance from the Chair, is responsible for submitting these documents to the LFSA Webmaster via the Sharepoint page (https://kansas.sharepoint.com/teams/lib/collaboration/lfsawebmaster) as they are approved by the committee.

In addition to this action, LCPT undertook some cleaning and documentation for the contents of the LPAT shared network drive (i.e.: “the O drive”). Specific tasks included creating README documentation for directories (folders) and documents on the drive, rearranging files, deleting duplicated files, and creating some documentation specifically for an incoming LCPT chair.

Recommendations for LCPT (2021-2022):

• Continue any needed cleanup of the LPAT shared network drive and maintain or extend documentation put in place by LCPT 2020-2021.
• Communicate with any ad hoc group charged by LFA Exec with investigating and/or piloting professional development about promotion and tenure topics.

Potential Charges for Future Committees:

In its report on 2020-2021 Special Charge 1 (see Appendix A for the full report), LCPT recommended that LFA Exec:

• Consider addressing some means of strengthening the Libraries’ P&T mentoring program
• Consider addressing some means of strengthening education programs about promotion and tenure for pre-tenure faculty

With regard to these recommendations, the 2020-2021 membership of LCPT recognizes that this committee already has a substantial workload. Furthermore, KU Libraries has no group or unit with clearly defined responsibility for organizing sustained internal professional development about promotion and tenure topics. In recent years, such professional development has been organized by Libraries HR and LCPT in the form of the annual P&T and PTTR open meetings. The Organizational Development (OD) group has also occasionally organized sessions on topics related to promotion and tenure. During the LFA 2021 Spring Assembly (see Appendix B for the presentation slides and notes), members of the faculty body expressed support for these two recommendations and specifically mentioned topics including:

• Professional development for mentoring, including “mentoring in place”
• Creating an effective match between mentor and mentee
• Receiving mentoring around the research program
• Developing a cohort model for pre-tenure faculty to crowdsource advice and build accountability
• Supporting supervisors of faculty in guiding their direct reports through the PTTR, P&T, and promotion processes and writing the supervisor’s letter for the dossier

LFA Exec could charge an ad hoc group with investigating options and/or with piloting programming and structures for meeting these needs. If constituted and charged, this ad hoc group should coordinate its work with LCPT and Libraries HR and should seek to clarify and document the roles for each group.

Prepared by: Jamene Brooks-Kieffer (chair LCPT 2020-2021) 05/10/2021

LCPT Special Charge 1 2020-2021

Text of Special Charge 1:

Discuss appropriateness of Libraries HR putting out a general voluntary call to past candidates to “opt in” to sharing their files (candidate-prepared documents only) as examples to help new candidates in preparing their files. LCPT’s discussions should consider potential legal/personnel problems and HR’s responsibility for keeping track of permissions.

Recommendation from the committee:

LCPT discussed the substance of this special charge over two meetings on 2020/11/16 and 2020/11/30. With input from Mike Broadwell (KU Libraries Human Resources), the committee recommends the following:

1. KU Libraries HR should not put out a general voluntary call for past Promotion & Tenure candidates to opt in to sharing their files through the Libraries’ HR office. This recommendation is informed by:
   • HR’s concerns about protecting confidential personnel information, as required by Faculty Senate Rules and Regulations (FARR), Article VII, Section 2 (https://policy.ku.edu/governance/FSRR#art7sect2). Specific examples of possible violations of this policy are included in LCPT meeting minutes from 2020/11/16 and 2020/11/30.
   • HR’s inability to match the interests and needs of a pre-tenure faculty member with a specific promotion & tenure file. This match is more appropriately done by faculty members with more information about individual research interests and specialties among Libraries faculty. Specific people in position to assist with this match include the pre-tenure faculty member’s supervisor and mentor.
2. KU Libraries HR should send an annual inquiry to KU Libraries’ tenured faculty, offering an opportunity to add or remove their names from a list of faculty members who are willing to share their files with colleagues via informal, one-on-one contact. This inquiry should be inserted into HR’s Spring 2021 faculty workflows.
   • This inquiry can be automated via SharePoint and incorporated into HR’s regular P&T workflows.
   • This inquiry would produce an annually-updated list of names for Assistant and Associate Librarians to consult when looking for example P&T or Promotion files.
   • The list of names could include other relevant information, such as whether the file is for tenure and promotion to Associate Librarian or promotion to Librarian, and what year the file was submitted.
3. LFA Exec should consider addressing some means of strengthening the Libraries’ P&T mentoring program. Discussions related to this special charge revealed that:
   • The process of matching pre-tenure faculty with P&T mentors is very informal.
   • There is no known orientation, training, or good practice recommendation for mentors; thus it is difficult to know whether pre-tenure faculty are accessing equitable and sound advice on their journey to promotion and tenure.
4. There is no mentoring program for Associate Librarians on their journey to promotion to Librarian.
5. Previous educational opportunities for tenured faculty, e.g.: the workshop on writing external review letters offered through Organizational Development, have been helpful. However, these workshops are intermittent and it is unclear what group should be responsible for sponsoring/staffing them. Such workshops may play a role in supporting mentors.
6. LFA Exec should consider addressing some means of strengthening education programs about promotion and tenure for pre-tenure faculty. Discussions related to this special charge revealed that:
   • The Libraries’ internal Promotion & Tenure and PTTR open meetings are frequently not attended by pre-tenure faculty until the year that they engage in the process. Many current LCPT members believe that this is too late to begin receiving this information.
   • Current and former LCPT members as well as other faculty members have valuable experience and advice about when to start working on a file and how to organize the work to maintain a sustainable pace during the pre-tenure period.
   • While much of this information is suggested in tips documents, available upon request during a one-on-one conversation, and often imparted during the ad hoc review, the discussion indicated that these are insufficient for equitably supporting pre-tenure faculty through the entire process.
   • Any educational opportunities offered, either as part of the Libraries’ internal open meetings or as separate events, should be coordinated among HR, LCPT, and any potential educational group and the roles of each contributor clearly defined. As examples:
     1. HR’s areas of expertise about a file include the correct forms, deadlines, required versus optional sections, submission platform, and other mechanical elements.
     2. LCPT and other faculty members hold expertise about what content is appropriate or expected for a file, expectations about relationships with external reviewers, and other content-related elements.

LCPT Special Charge 1 Report

LCPT 2020-2021

Jamene Brooks-Kieffer (chair) | Geoff Husic | Michiko Ito Amalia Monroe-Gulick | Betsaida Reyes

Special Charge 1

“Discuss appropriateness of Libraries HR putting out a general voluntary call to past candidates to “opt in” to sharing their files (candidate-prepared documents only) as examples to help new candidates in preparing their files. LCPT’s discussions should consider potential legal/personnel problems and HR’s responsibility for keeping track of permissions.”

Context of this special charge:

In previous years LCPT has discussed possible ways to remove organizational barriers to P&T candidates’ access to materials that could help with assembling the dossier.

One possible way would be to make it easier for pre-tenure faculty to access the candidate- prepared documents of tenured faculty who agree to share their materials. Asking HR to serve as the clearinghouse for document sharing gives pre-tenure faculty one place to go to locate shared materials, rather than approaching individual tenured faculty members.

LCPT was asked by LFA Exec to explore this scenario this year. LCPT completed its report on this charge in December 2020. This presentation outlines LCPT’s findings and recommendations related to this charge.

The full report was included in the Spring Assembly agenda; I hope you have or will take some time to read it.

Four outcomes

• Collecting and sharing files by HR

Not recommended

• HR maintains a list of tenured faculty who are willing to share files

Recommended

• Strengthen P&T mentoring

Recommended

• Strengthen P&T educational programs

Recommended

LCPT’s discussions about this charge included consultation with Mike Broadwell about HR’s responsibility to protect personnel information and its role in the P&T process.

Our discussions led in several different directions and resulted in a wider consideration of faculty support, pre- and post-tenure, than the charge outlined. Some of our recommendations will probably wind up in LCPT’s annual report to LFA Exec as potential special charges for a future LCPT committee or for one or more ad hoc LFA committees.

I’m going to summarize LCPT’s findings here, and then go into a bit more depth about each one.

Collecting and sharing files by HR

Not recommended

Concerns:

• Protecting confidential personnel information (FSRR Article VII, Section 2)
• Difficulty in matching pre-tenure faculty with files that best fit their work
• Files lose relevance over time as the P&T process evolves

First, LCPT does not recommend that HR collect and share P&T or promotion dossiers, even from tenured faculty who are willing to share their files.

The primary concern is the protection of confidential personnel information, as required in Faculty Senate Rules and Regulations. Having HR serve as a clearinghouse for completed files means that HR would need to track which portions of a file are shareable and which faculty members have opted in (and for how long). LCPT agreed that, overall, this scenario posed a fairly high risk that confidential personnel information would be unintentionally disclosed.

Other concerns included:

HR does not feel that it has the discipline expertise to match a pre-tenure faculty member with files that fit their research interests and professional responsibilities. This kind of matchmaking is best left to faculty members, supervisors, and mentors.

As the P&T process evolves (e.g. from paper to electronic format, changes to Provost’s office documents), a file becomes a less relevant example over time. Having a clearinghouse of files hosted by HR raises the possibility of presenting outdated information to pre-tenure faculty without the context provided by a one-on-one conversation.

HR maintains a list of tenured faculty who are willing to share files

Recommended

Advantages:

• Annual opportunity for tenured faculty to opt in or out
• Sharing a list of names poses no disclosure risk
• Inquiry can be automated using existing Sharepoint workflows

Rather than asking HR to distribute tenured faculty dossiers, LCPT recommends an alternate approach in which HR annually asks tenured faculty whether they want their name to appear on a list of faculty members who are willing to share their files with pre-tenure faculty on a one-on- one basis. This list would then be distributed to pre-tenure faculty, who can consult with supervisors and mentors and decide who to approach for advice and examples for assembling their dossier.

This approach maintains a more up to date resource, since tenured faculty have an annual opportunity to opt in or out. This resource also poses no risk of disclosing personnel information.

Mike has indicated that this process can be automated using existing Sharepoint workflows.

Strengthen P&T mentoring

Recommended

Considerations:

• Current mentor match process is extremely informal
• Mentors receive no orientation or guidance on good mentoring practice
• No mentoring program for Associate > Full
• No one group is responsible for mentoring-related professional development

This item and the next emerged out of LCPT’s discussions about tenure and promotion dossiers. These items are indirectly related to the special charge in that they address support for pre- tenure faculty members. Both will end up in LCPT’s annual report as recommendations for action during the next academic year. In this conversation we welcome your input about what kind of actions (if any) you’d like to see.

While access to existing files is an important option that pre-tenure faculty can use to prepare their own files, this is really a small part of the process of getting ready for a tenure and/or promotion review. LCPT is attempting to identify and address potential organizational barriers. This item addresses P&T mentoring.

During discussions, LCPT heard multiple examples of how informal, almost haphazard, the current process is of matching pre-tenure faculty to a tenured mentor for P&T.

Because there is no orientation for mentors or guidance on good practice, it’s very difficult to know if pre-tenure faculty are able to access sound advice as they prepare for P&T, and no way to know if P&T mentoring is equitable. Mentors can develop their skills on their own, but there isn’t robust organizational support or encouragement for this.

Librarians working toward promotion from Associate to Full don’t have access to a formal mentoring program inside the Libraries.

Professional development has been offered in the past by different groups – e.g.: the workshop on writing external review letters offered by OD – but it’s unclear what group should or could be responsible for holding regular professional development sessions on mentoring and similar topics.

The goal of this recommendation is to formalize the mentoring process and support mentors in order to better support faculty engaging in PTTR, P&T, and promotion processes.

Strengthen educational programs about P&T

Recommended

Considerations:

• Encourage attendance at annual PTTR and P&T open meetings before the PTTR or P&T year
• One-on-one conversations aren’t equitable for accessing the organization’s wealth of knowledge about the process
• Clarify roles and expertise for HR, LCPT, and other faculty members in offering any P&T-related educational programs

This fourth item is an attempt to address equitable access to organizational knowledge about the tenure and promotion processes. As with the third item, this fourth one will wind up in LCPT’s annual report as a recommendation for action during the next academic year – in this conversation we welcome your input about what kind of action (if any) you’d like to see.

LCPT notes that the Libraries’ annual PTTR and P&T meetings are not mandatory at any time for pre-tenure faculty, but that those meetings impart information that is helpful well before the PTTR or P&T year.

At the same time, there is a lot of other organizational knowledge about these processes that is not imparted during those annual meetings, or is only accessible through one-on-one conversations or the ad hoc review (at which point, it’s mostly too late).

One-on-one conversations are helpful, but relying on them as a primary means of educating pre-tenure faculty about PTTR and P&T (as well as promotion to full, for tenured faculty) is not equitable.

(Poll the Assembly for current/former LCPT chairs, then LCPT members to demonstrate the wealth of knowledge in the org about PTTR, P&T, and (in some cases) promotion to Full.)

In LCPT’s conversation with Mike, we learned more about what aspects of promotion and tenure HR feels qualified to address. Advice on other aspects is best left to faculty, supervisors, and mentors. This distinction needs clarification, particularly if future action items involve offering P&T related educational programs.

The goal of this recommendation would be to make educational programs available as early as possible during the process and to formalize the availability of institutional knowledge about the P&T process.

Questions and Discussion