Each Department or free-standing Division of the College shall have a committee of senior faculty members whose job it is to review the requests for promotion and/or tenure put forward by individual faculty members within the Department or Division. The Department
Chair may be a member of this committee. After careful study of an individual’s promotion and tenure packet, the committee shall vote as to whether the individual has met the criteria for promotion and/or tenure, and shall inform the candidate (and the Department Chair, should that person not be a member of the committee) about the results of the vote(s). Pursuant to University of Arkansas Board Policy 405.1, the University President will not consider awarding tenure to a faculty member without obtaining the prior recommendations of the faculty member’s departmental promotion and tenure committee and the department chair. Therefore, a faculty member’s promotion and tenure packet must include documentation of the outcome of the departmental promotion and tenure committee’s voting as well as documentation of the department chair’s support, or lack of support, for the request(s). If the department does not have an internal promotion and tenure committee, the department chair recommendation will suffice. It is typical that an individual will seek promotion and/or tenure with the approval of the departmental committee and the Department Chair, but it is permissible for an individual to request promotion and/or tenure from the College Promotion and Tenure Committee without that approval.
Processes that support faculty members’ requests for Promotion and/or Tenure
The processes that support these promotion and tenure guidelines are specified and periodically updated in a document titled “UAMS College of Medicine Promotion and Tenure Committee Process: How the COM Promotion and Tenure Committee does its Work,” available at https://faculty.uams.edu/compromotionandtenure/ – click on P&T Committee Process. Faculty members who anticipate requesting promotion are advised to study this document and attend the promotion and tenure workshops hosted by the UAMS Faculty Center no later than in the spring prior to the fall when they intend to request promotion and/or tenure.