This does not constitute an employment contract. 

Department of Anthropology Faculty Guidelines for Tenure and Promotion 

Approved by Office of the Provost July 2023 

Criteria for Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor 

Central to the social justice mission of the Department of Anthropology is the production and dissemination of knowledge by its faculty as they engage in high-quality research and teaching as well as service/labor to/for academic and larger communities. The processes of promotion and tenure are two of the most important procedures through which we recognize and reinforce these values. 

To be granted tenure and be promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, a faculty member has to demonstrate that they meet or exceed all criteria in the areas of research and publication, teaching, and university and public service/labor. Superior performance in one area does not lessen the expectations for performance in another. 

Research 

Cases for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure require evidence of the productivity, quality, originality, scholarly reputation, visibility, and impact of the faculty member’s research. In evaluating the candidate’s research record as assistant professor, attention will be given to the quality and quantity of published research, although quality and demonstrated impact will be the most important evaluative criteria. The Department will not assess quality according to subjective and often biased notions of prestige or the historical reputation of journals and presses. It will assess quality primarily by the degree to which works are peer reviewed before and after publication, the amount of research involved, the degree of publication selectivity, citations, and other impact attributed to the work. In files for action, candidates should carefully discuss and provide evidence of the quality and impact of every major piece of scholarly output. As discussed below, the Department will take into account a wide range of qualitative and quantitative indicators of impact. 

In the interest of clarity and transparency, the Department suggests approximate numbers of books, articles, and other scholarly outputs that candidates generally should produce for promotion. The numbers are general guides. The numbers are not prescriptive requirements given the wide variation in size of scholarly publications and other outputs as well as the variation in the amount of work required to produce books, articles, and other scholarly outputs. Again, Department reviewers will consider a candidate’s entire record as a whole. Reviewers will focus on both the quality and quantity of a candidate’s scholarly output, however, quality and demonstrated impact will be valued most. For example, Department reviewers are likely to value the publication of a smaller number of high-quality, highly cited articles reaching and impacting broad audiences over a larger number of articles with limited impact and audience reach. Reviewers similarly will value rigorous, labor-intensive works of collaborative public anthropology with broad public impact over publications with limited scholarly or public impact. 

At the core of the pathway to Associate Professor with tenure will be a research-based book and/or research articles. The Department notes that publishing expectations differ in different anthropological sub-disciplines, along with the implications for a scholar’s visibility and influence within and beyond their field. For instance, scholarship in archaeology and biological anthropology is largely disseminated through research articles in peer-reviewed journals. Furthermore, seminal texts in these subfields include edited volumes with a select number of contributors. Book and/or research article pathways are detailed in the following: 

In some cases, an essential element of promotion will be the publication of a high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarly book with a highly regarded press. That a candidate will produce a book for promotion and which presses a candidate will target for publication should be decided and documented within two years of starting the pathway to Associate Professor by the candidate in consultation with the chair, faculty mentor, and Rank and Tenure Committee. In the tenure and promotion file, a candidate should provide the best possible evidence that fellow academics generally consider a press to be highly regarded, influential, or otherwise significant using any relevant metrics, altmetrics, impact measures, qualitative evaluations, and other indicators. 

In addition to the book, the equivalent of approximately three peer-reviewed journal articles generally should be produced, with at least two of the three being peer-reviewed articles. The exact number of such articles and other scholarly output will vary depending on the research involved, the degree of journal publication selectivity, and the citations and/or other impact attributed to the work,. Quality is again most important. 

The three peer-reviewed articles guideline also can be fulfilled by producing high quality peer-reviewed edited volumes and book chapters, given that they can indicate a candidate’s scholarly influence. The Department also will count diverse forms of scholarship and scholarly activity, including original research and participatory/collaborative work designed to bring anthropological knowledge to broad public audiences. This is in keeping with the Department’s overlapping commitments to public anthropology, advancing equity and social justice within and beyond the discipline, and the decolonization of anthropology and academia. The weight given to such work will vary depending upon the amount and quality of original research of this kind, the degree of peer review before and/or after it reaches the public, the size and importance of the audience, professional and public recognition for the work, and the work’s impact. Such work should clearly relate to the candidate’s long-term research strategy and goals and fit solidly within their AU research trajectory. 

Mindful of differing scholarly expectations in different anthropological subfields, biological anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as others when appropriate, will have the option of pursuing a pathway to tenure and promotion based on producing the equivalent of approximately eight peer-reviewed journal articles, with at least five of the eight being peer-reviewed articles. As in the first pathway for promotion, candidates also can fulfil this guideline by producing high quality peer-reviewed edited volumes and book chapters and the diverse forms of scholarship and scholarly activity described above. 

A candidate should decide and document the decision to pursue this non-book path to Associate Professor in consultation with the chair, faculty mentor, and Rank and Tenure Committee by the end of their second year as a tenure-track professor. The amount of research and other work involved in producing these publications should be comparable to that involved in producing a significant book and additional peer-reviewed articles (i.e., the first pathway to tenure and promotion). Quality and impact, as outlined above, will be the most important indicators of a strong publication record. 

The following also will be accorded weight by Department reviewers: 

• A clear and developed research agenda, which should include plans for future scholarship. 
• Independent intellectual contributions and robust contributions to collaborative scholarly outputs: Collaborative publications are valued no less than individual ones so long as there is evidence of the candidate’s individual intellectual contribution to the work. The Department indeed highly values and encourages the pursuit of participatory and collaborative research methodologies. Collaborations in which the candidate is a minor contributor are less valued. 
• Winning competitive externally funded research awards, which is a form of evidence of the quality of the candidate’s research. Given the complexities, politics, and biases of grantmaking institutions, submitting applications to competitive externally funded research awards will provide evidence of a clear and ambitious scholarly agenda. 

To allow Department reviewers to assess the quality of a candidate’s research record, the candidate should present a range of multi-dimensional qualitative and quantitative impact indicators for each major scholarly output. Candidates should not rely exclusively on traditional impact metrics, which have tended to exhibit and reinforce existing societal biases. The Department urges candidates, as they prepare their files, to consult with AU librarians about the state-of-the art qualitative and quantitative metrics, altmetrics, and impact evaluation tools for scholarly, quasi-scholarly, and non-scholarly audiences. As the “American University Tenure, Promotion, and Reappointment Guidelines Updates” (n.d. [2021]) explains, 

Regardless of the metrics or altmetrics used, an academic unit’s ability to equitably evaluate the impact of the full range of faculty scholarship and creative works requires multiple indicators and increased appreciation for the role of qualitative assessment. Use of multiple indicators allows for variation to appropriately contextualize individual faculty accomplishments within a broad range of fields and manners of discourse. This should include room for qualitative information in addition to, or in place of, quantitative research metrics in order to recognize and minimize the systemic and self-reinforcing biases that often accompany quantitative scoring systems. [p. 21] 

A far-from-exhaustive list of the many indicators of impact includes: 

• Evidence of the quality and influence of the journals and other major outlets that have published the individual’s work, including, if possible, acceptance rates, impact factors, and any other evidence of scholarly quality and impact. 
• The quality of the press that publishes a book based on the press’s reputation, its strength in publishing in the candidate’s research area, and/or evidence of the press’s impact. 
• Assessments of the candidate’s scholarship by leading scholars in the candidate’s field, as provided primarily but not necessarily exclusively in external promotion review letters. 
• Evidence of the impact of the candidate’s research as measured by citations in the work of scholars and others (e.g., Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar). Downloads, views, and other usage data can also help demonstrate a work’s impact. Qualitative indicators of impact also will be important, including, for example published reviews by academics and others. 
• Open access publishing and other efforts to make one’s scholarship, research results, data, and other dimensions of scholarly practice transparent and freely available to the public, in keeping with Department commitments to public anthropology, equity, and the decolonization of anthropology and science. 
• Other significant contributions to scholarship and to the public, such as compilation of data or provision of other public research goods. Examples include op-ed pieces in popular media outlets; public lectures for non-academic audiences; significant contributions to public displays in museums and similar venues; scholarly translation; significant contributions to publicly accessible films, video, and artistic productions; professional conference papers and presentations; the production of and contribution to technical reports on research; publication of Open Educational Resource materials; book reviews; expert testimony in courts and similar contexts; scholarly consulting; and other efforts related to the public dissemination of one’s scholarship. 
• Winning professional awards. 

The Department and university will consider a book, article, or other work published if an editor’s letter confirms that a publisher has accepted the final manuscript, including all revisions, by the time the Rank and Tenure Committee reviews a candidate’s file. Candidates should note that the Department will need to send manuscripts to external reviewers at an earlier date, usually in May before the submission of a file in the fall. Work under review or in the process of revision will not constitute publication. The Rank and Tenure Committee will consider works at other stages of the publication process as signs of scholarly productivity. 

As indicated in the Faculty Manual (Section 10.a.iii), scholarship completed since degree completion, including at prior institutions, can be included in the evaluation of the quantity and quality of a candidate’s research. As with evaluating other research, the value and significance of this work will be determined in light of the candidate’s independent contributions, its placement, its impact, and its relevance to the candidate’s research agenda. 

Teaching 

The Department values effective and high quality instruction and mentoring of its students. Therefore, aspects of a candidate’s work at AU that generally fall within the domain of “teaching” will be assessed. 

Evaluations of faculty teaching will be based on various aspects of the candidate’s record including teaching portfolios, student evaluations, syllabi, a history of meeting departmental teaching needs, the implementation of inclusive and antiracist teaching strategies within and beyond the classroom, forms of teaching and engagement outside the classroom (discussed below), and participation in faculty development activities, which might include peer observation of teaching. 

In all tenure and promotion cases, the Department will employ its “New Guidelines for Evaluating Teaching” (May 2020; appended below). Candidates should follow the instructions for preparing a teaching portfolio found in the Guidelines. The Department will use the Guidelines in assessing a candidate’s teaching record. 

Teaching portfolios are an important way to provide a multi-dimensional assessment of teaching that gets beyond the biased limitations of student assessments of teaching. The “American University Tenure, Promotion, and Reappointment Guidelines Updates” (n.d. [2021]) explains, “The portfolio approach aims to recognize multiple pathways to excellent teaching and move away from past practices that disadvantage colleagues of color, women colleagues, LGBTQ+ colleagues, and others. Teaching portfolios also offer opportunities to acknowledge various forms of invisible labor” such as mentoring of students from historically underrepresented groups and special efforts to improve one’s teaching praxis (p. 7). 

In this spirit and given the Department’s commitments, the Department encourages the adoption, development, and promotion of “inclusive and antiracist teaching strategies to enhance classroom climate” (“AU Plan for Inclusive Excellence,” Goal 1, Action Step 2). Such strategies may include various types of antiracist pedagogies and inclusive course design to account for learners from diverse backgrounds. Following the AU “Guidelines Updates,” the Department notes that “inclusive excellence in teaching may be applied not only in the classroom, but also in office hours, independent studies, student research supervision, recommendations of students for merit awards, career advising, and other teaching-related settings” (p. 9). 

In addition to any syllabi provided in the portfolio, candidates should include in their Action Files 3-5 syllabi that represent their teaching areas and foci during their time at AU. These syllabi will be used as one tool to evaluate the quality of teaching by the faculty members. 

Candidates should demonstrate an ability and willingness to teach courses of varying sizes, at different levels (introductory, upper division undergraduate, and graduate), and in various special programs (e.g., AU CORE, University College, Honors, and certificate programs) depending on the needs of the Department. 

The Department of Anthropology values and expects faculty to pursue opportunities in teaching outside the classroom. Candidates will demonstrate solid non-classroom teaching efforts in the forms of, for example, supervision of senior theses, serving as a capstone advisor, serving on Ph.D. dissertation committees, and advising Master’s research projects, Significant Research Projects (our non-thesis option), and independent studies. 

Service 

Every member of the faculty at American University is expected to perform “service” (aka labor beyond research and teaching). Active faculty involvement in the life of the Department, school, and university is essential for effective faculty governance and is a responsibility of every member of the faculty. Service/unpaid labor outside the university, to the discipline of anthropology and its several sub-disciplines and to the scholarly profession and the broader community is also valued. 

In keeping with the Department’s commitments, the Department especially values service/labor that contributes to promoting equity and social justice at all university levels, across academia, and beyond (aka Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work). These efforts include, for example, mentoring and broader activities that support and advance opportunities for students, faculty, and others from historically underrepresented groups; membership, and especially leadership, on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion-related committees; work on processes, policies, and tools that promote equitable and inclusive practices in the Department, the College, AU, academia, and beyond; and a range of public service work helping to advance equity and social justice. 

The Department expects some service of junior faculty but recognizes that research and teaching should be the priorities of tenure-track Assistant Professor colleagues. 

A record of service/labor may include the following: 

Service to the Department. This may include membership on Department committees, administrative appointments, student mentoring and advising, mentoring of other faculty, and participation in Department conferences and special events. Evaluation should account for the time burden on individual faculty members. 

Service to the School and the University. This may include election to or service on school or university-level deliberative bodies or committees. This may also include other service that benefits the faculty or the student body as a whole, such as serving as faculty adviser for alternative break trips or clubs and participation in CAS’s Robyn Mathias Research Conference, teaching conferences, and similar school and university events. 

Service to the Community. AU is “deeply committed to service to a wider community” (Faculty Manual, Section 10.a.iv). The Department likewise highly values, but does not require, public engagement with the community outside the University, including anthropological work that engages with the public. Such work may include public service, public education, public lectures, expert testimony before government committees or courts of law, participation in public fora, media appearances, and similar forms of public engagement or activities. 

Service to the Profession: This may include significant work related to professional committees, professional organizations, conference committees, editorial duties, and peer review activities for journals, presses, and granting bodies. As with service to the community, service to the profession cannot replace service to the Department and university. 

Criteria for Promotion to Full Professor 

Central to the social justice mission of the Department of Anthropology is the production and dissemination of knowledge by its faculty as they engage in high-quality research and teaching as well as service to the academic and larger communities during their post-tenure period. The process of promotion to Full Professor is the most important procedure through which we recognize and reinforce these values. 

To be granted the rank of Full Professor, a faculty member has to demonstrate that they meet or exceed all criteria established by the Department in the areas of research and publication, teaching, and university and public service. Superior performance in one area does not lessen the expectations for performance in another. 

Research 

Cases for promotion to Full Professor require evidence of the continued productivity, quality, originality, scholarly reputation, visibility and impact of the faculty member’s research. In evaluating the candidate’s research record as Associate Professor, Department reviewers (i.e., current full professors) will value the quality and quantity of published research, although quality and demonstrated impact will be the most important evaluative criteria. Department reviewers will not assess quality according to subjective and often biased notions of prestige or the historical reputation of journals and presses. It will assess quality primarily by the degree to which works are peer reviewed before and after publication, the amount of research involved, the degree of publication selectivity, and citations and/or other impact attributed to the work. In files for action, candidates should carefully discuss and provide evidence of the quality and impact of every major piece of scholarly output. As discussed below, reviewers will value a wide range of qualitative and quantitative indicators of impact. 

In the interest of clarity and transparency, the Department suggests approximate numbers of books, articles, and other scholarly outputs that candidates generally should produce for promotion. The numbers are general guides. The numbers are not prescriptive requirements given the wide variation in size of scholarly publications and other outputs as well as the variation in the amount of work required to produce books, articles, and other scholarly outputs. Again, Department reviewers will consider a candidate’s entire record as a whole. Reviewers will focus on both the quality and quantity of a candidate’s scholarly output, however, quality and demonstrated impact will be valued most. For example, Department reviewers are likely to value the publication of a smaller number of high-quality, highly cited articles reaching and impacting broad audiences over a larger number of articles with limited impact and audience reach. Reviewers similarly will value rigorous, labor-intensive works of collaborative public anthropology with broad public impact over publications with limited scholarly or public impact. 

At the core of the pathway to Full Professor will be the publication of at least one additional research-based book and/or research articles. The Department again notes that publishing expectations differ in different anthropological sub-disciplines, along with the implications for a scholar’s visibility and influence within and beyond their field. For instance, scholarship in archaeology and biological anthropology is largely disseminated through research articles in peer- review journals. Furthermore, seminal texts in these subfields include edited volumes with a select number of contributors. Book and/or research article pathways are detailed in the following: 

In some cases, an essential element of promotion will be the publication of at least one additional high-quality scholarly book with a highly regarded press. In the promotion file, a candidate should provide the best possible evidence that a press is highly regarded, influential, or otherwise significant using any relevant metrics, altmetrics, impact measures, qualitative evaluations, and other indicators. Candidates publishing an additional book with a non-academic press should explain why the press is an adequate substitute for and preferable to an academic press. 

In addition to an additional book, the equivalent of approximately three peer-reviewed articles generally should be produced. The exact number of such articles and other scholarly output will vary depending on the research involved, the degree of journal publication selectivity, and the citations and/or other impact attributed to the work. Quality is again most important. 

The three peer-reviewed articles guideline also can be fulfilled by producing high quality peer-reviewed edited volumes and book chapters, given that they can indicate a candidate’s scholarly influence. Department reviewers also will count diverse forms of scholarship and scholarly activity, including original research and participatory/collaborative work designed to bring anthropological knowledge to broad public audiences. This is in keeping with the Department’s overlapping commitments to public anthropology, advancing equity and social justice within and beyond the discipline, and the decolonization of anthropology and academia. A few of many examples include the publication of trade press books, conducting oral history projects, producing work on film and video, curating museum exhibitions, preparing major reports for government agencies or significant non-governmental organizations, directing community-based public anthropology projects, and other similar anthropological work. 

The weight given to such work will vary depending upon the amount and quality of original research of this kind, the degree of peer review before and/or after it reaches the public, the size and importance of the audience, professional and public recognition for the work, and the work’s impact. Faculty wishing to have such public anthropology work recognized for promotion should carefully document the nature and scope of the project, the scholarly process involved, the project’s intellectual significance, its impact on audiences, and, importantly, the research and specific contributions made by the individual faculty member. As with other scholarly output, Department reviewers will gauge a work’s value especially by the degree to which professional peers value it. Faculty are encouraged to submit evidence of academic and other peer professional review and assessment from a variety of external sources. Faculty seeking promotion also should discuss how such work fits within their AU research trajectory and their long-term research strategy and goals. 

Mindful of differing scholarly expectations in different anthropological subfields, biological anthropologists and archaeologists, as well as others when appropriate, will have the option of pursing promotion through a pathway based on producing the equivalent of approximately eight peer-reviewed academic research articles, with at least four of the eight being peer-reviewed articles. As in the first pathway for promotion, candidates also can fulfil this guideline by producing high quality peer-reviewed edited volumes, book chapters, articles for public or other non-academic readerships, and other diverse forms of scholarship and scholarly activity described above.. The amount of research and other work involved in producing these publications should be comparable to that involved in producing a significant book and additional peer-reviewed articles (i.e., the first pathway to tenure and promotion). Quality and impact, as outlined above, will be the most important indicators of a strong publication record. 

The following also will be accorded weight by Department reviewers: 

• A clear and developed research agenda, which should include plans for future scholarship. 
• Independent intellectual contributions and robust contributions to collaborative scholarly outputs: Collaborative publications are valued no less than individual ones so long as there is evidence of the candidate’s individual intellectual contribution to the work. The Department indeed highly values and encourages the pursuit of participatory and collaborative research methodologies. Collaborations in which the candidate is a minor contributor are less valued. 
• Winning competitive externally funded research awards, which is a form of evidence of the quality of the candidate’s research. Given the complexities, politics, and biases of grantmaking institutions, submitting applications to competitive externally funded research awards will provide evidence of a clear and ambitious scholarly agenda. 

To allow Department reviewers to assess the quality of a candidate’s research record, the candidate should present a range of multi-dimensional, qualitative and quantitative impact indicators for each major scholarly output. Candidates should not rely exclusively on traditional impact metrics, which have tended to exhibit and reinforce existing societal biases. The Department urges candidates, as they prepare their files, to consult with AU librarians about the state-of-the art qualitative and quantitative metrics, altmetrics, and impact evaluation tools for scholarly, quasi-scholarly, and non-scholarly audiences. As the “American University Tenure, Promotion, and Reappointment Guidelines Updates” (n.d. [2021]) explains, 

Regardless of the metrics or altmetrics used, an academic unit’s ability to equitably evaluate the impact of the full range of faculty scholarship and creative works requires multiple indicators and increased appreciation for the role of qualitative assessment. Use of multiple indicators allows for variation to appropriately contextualize individual faculty accomplishments within a broad range of fields and manners of discourse. This should include room for qualitative information in addition to, or in place of, quantitative research metrics in order to recognize and minimize the systemic and self-reinforcing biases that often accompany quantitative scoring systems. [p. 21] 

A far-from-exhaustive list of the many indicators of impact includes: 

• Evidence of the quality and influence of the journals that have published the individual’s work, including, if possible, the acceptance rates, impact factors, and other evidence of scholarly quality and influence. 
• The quality of the press that publishes a book based on the press’s reputation, its strength in publishing in the candidate’s research area, and/or evidence of the press’s impact. 
• Assessments of the candidate’s scholarship by leading scholars in the candidate’s field as provided primarily but not necessarily exclusively in external promotion review letters. 
• Evidence of the impact of the candidate’s research as measured, for example, by citations in the work of other scholars (e.g., Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar). Downloads, views, and other usage data can also help demonstrate a work’s impact. Qualitative indicators of impact also will be important, including, for example published reviews by academics and others. 
• Open access publishing and other efforts to make one’s scholarship, research results, data, and other dimensions of scholarly practice transparent and freely available to the public, in keeping with Department commitments to equity, public anthropology, and the decolonization of anthropology and science. 
• Other significant contributions to scholarship and to the public, such as compilation of data or provision of other public research goods. Examples include op-ed pieces in popular media outlets; public lectures for non-academic audiences; significant contributions to public displays in museums and similar venues; scholarly translation; significant contributions to publicly accessible films, video, and artistic productions; professional conference papers and presentations; the production of and contribution to technical reports on research; publication of Open Educational Resource materials; book reviews; expert testimony in courts and similar contexts; scholarly consulting; and other efforts related to the public dissemination of one’s scholarship. 
• Winning professional awards. 

The Department and university will consider a book, article, or other work published if an editor’s letter confirms that a publisher has accepted the final manuscript including all revisions by the time the Rank and Tenure Committee reviews a candidate’s file. Candidates should note that the Department will need to send manuscripts to external reviewers at an earlier date, usually in May before the submission of a file in the fall. Work under review or in the process of revision will not constitute publication. The Rank and Tenure Committee will consider works at other stages of the publication process as signs of scholarly productivity. 

Teaching 

American University and the Department value effective and high quality instruction of undergraduate and graduate students. 

Teaching assessments will be based on various aspects of the candidate’s record including teaching portfolios, student evaluations, syllabi, in-class teaching observation, a history of flexibility in helping meet departmental teaching needs, the implementation of inclusive and antiracist teaching strategies within and beyond the classroom, forms of teaching and engagement outside the classroom (discussed below), and/or participation in faculty development activities. 

In all promotion cases, the Department will employ its “New Guidelines for Evaluating Teaching” (May 2020; appended below). Candidates should follow the instructions for preparing a teaching portfolio found in the Guidelines. The Department will follow the Guidelines in assessing a candidate’s teaching record. 

Teaching portfolios are an important way to provide a multi-dimensional assessment of teaching that gets beyond the biased limitations of student assessments of teaching. The “American University Tenure, Promotion, and Reappointment Guidelines Updates” (n.d. [2021]) explains, “The portfolio approach aims to recognize multiple pathways to excellent teaching and move away from past practices that disadvantage colleagues of color, women colleagues, LGBTQ+ colleagues, and others. Teaching portfolios also offer opportunities to acknowledge various forms of invisible labor” such as mentoring of students from historically underrepresented groups and special efforts to improve one’s teaching praxis (p. 7). 

In this spirit and given the Department’s commitments, the Department encourages the adoption, development, and promotion of “inclusive and antiracist teaching strategies to enhance classroom climate” (“AU Plan for Inclusive Excellence,” Goal 1, Action Step 2). Such strategies may include various types of antiracist pedagogies and inclusive course design to account for learners from diverse backgrounds. Following the AU “Guidelines Updates,” the Department notes that “inclusive excellence in teaching may be applied not only in the classroom, but also in office hours, independent studies, student research supervision, recommendations of students for merit awards, career advising, and other teaching-related settings” (p. 9).In addition to any syllabi provided in the portfolio, candidates are required to provide 3-5 syllabi that represent their teaching areas and foci during their entire time at AU. These syllabi will be used as one tool to evaluate the quality of teaching by candidates. 

Candidates should demonstrate an ability and willingness to teach courses of varying sizes, at different levels (introductory, upper division undergraduate, and graduate), and in various special programs (e.g., AU CORE, University College, Honors, and certificate programs) depending upon the needs of the Department. 

Candidates must demonstrate a trajectory of increased graduate advising and mentoring outside the classroom. Evidence of this work will include supervision/chairing of MA theses and doctoral dissertations, being advisor of record for graduate students, serving as a member of MA thesis and PhD dissertation committees, acting as main or second reader on comprehensive exams and MA Significant Research Projects (our thesis alternative), and other substantial mentoring engagements with graduate students (e.g., co-authoring conference papers and organizing events and scholarly panels, among many others). 

In cases where graduate mentoring and advising is limited in scope (e.g., relatively low numbers of advisees relative to other associate-level colleagues in the department), candidates are expected to have offset the impact by working on the Graduate Committee or another significant graduate-related and regularly active group or program. 

Service 

Every member of the faculty at American University is expected to perform “service” (aka labor beyond research and teaching). Active faculty involvement in the life of the Department, school, and university is essential for effective faculty governance and is a responsibility of every member of the faculty. Service outside the university, to the discipline of anthropology and its several sub-disciplines and to the scholarly profession and the broader community is also valued. 

The Department expects a significant increase in faculty service during their period at the Associate Professor rank. 

A record of increased service/labor may include efforts in the following areas: 

Service to the Department. This may include membership on Department committees, administrative appointments, student mentoring and advising, mentoring of other faculty, and participation in Department conferences and special events. Evaluation should account for the time burden on individual faculty members. 

Service to the School and the University. This may include election to or service on school or university-level deliberative bodies or committees. This may also include other service that benefits the faculty or the student body as a whole, such as serving as faculty adviser for alternative break trips or clubs and participation in CAS’s Robyn Mathias Research Conference, teaching conferences, and similar school and university events. 

Service to the Community. AU is “deeply committed to service to a wider community” (Faculty Manual, Section 10.a.iv). The Department likewise highly values, but does not require, public engagement with the community outside the University, including anthropological work that engages with the public. Such work may include public service, public lectures, public education, expert testimony before government committees or courts of law, participation in public fora, media appearances, and similar forms of public engagement or activities. 

Service to the Profession: This may include significant work related to professional committees, professional organizations, conference committees, editorial duties, and peer review activities for journals, presses, and granting bodies. As with service to the community, service to the profession cannot replace service to the Department and university. 

AMERICAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING TEACHING 

MAY 2020 

Based on recommendations of the Beyond SETs Task Force established by the Faculty Senate, the Department of Anthropology is adopting the following guidelines for evaluating teaching for the purposes of reappointment and promotion. Beginning in fall 2020, we will follow the Senate’s recommendation to use the methodology the Senate refers to as a “defined portfolio with constrained use of SETs” (student evaluations of teaching). This document clarifies how the Department of Anthropology will proceed in evaluating teaching for the aforementioned purposes. (Portions of the text below are directly taken from the Task Force recommendations.) 

1. Portfolio When applying for reappointment or tenure or promotion (tenure line faculty) or appointment to a multi-year contract or promotion (term faculty), faculty should submit a teaching portfolio containing at least one item from each of the five categories that follow. Page limits are noted below. [3/2023 amendment: AU’s Center for Teaching Research and Learning (CTRL) has resources for preparing a portfolio at https://edspace.american.edu/ctrl/teachingportfolio/.]
   1. Teaching statement (as currently required in Files for Action - comprehensive narrative): reflect on performance of courses (what worked, what actions to change/improve, etc.), mentoring of graduate students, and address achievements, including other engagement with students beyond the classroom and any new curricular initiatives. 
   2. Self-assessment of pedagogical activities
      1. Annotated syllabus: describe your design and innovation, especially new courses and major course revision. (CTRL guidance on annotating syllabi can be found here.) 
      2. Written self-evaluation of video of teaching a class: video need not be submitted. 
      3. In addition to submitting B.a. and/or B.b. and depending on a faculty member’s previous reviews, they may also elect to submit one of the following:
         1. Short description of professional development related to teaching, including CTRL events attended. (CTRL guidance on professional development reflections can be found here.) 
         2. Examples of feedback to students such as comments on their work. 
         3. Written self-evaluation of teaching outside the classroom, including mentoring and work with research and teaching assistants. 
   3. Peer (faculty) assessment of teaching
      1. Peer classroom observation and follow up conversation at least once before each major review: Reviewers from inside or outside the teaching unit, selected by chair in consultation with faculty member. Use CTRL’s peer observation rubric, skipping questions designed for other disciplines. Faculty member writes reflection in response (half-page maximum). (Suggestions to facilitate this exchange include guest lecturing in another faculty member’s class, having a peer observer attend a significant portion of one’s class before they provide a guest lecture, or doing a joint class with the class of a peer observer.)
      2. Peer observation of classroom video by one or more colleagues and follow up conversation at least once before each major review: Reviewers, templates/rubrics, and response as in section C.a. Video need not be submitted. 
      3. Review of course materials, discussion of teaching, and report by faculty mentor or appropriate standing or ad hoc committee designated by the chair: Materials to be reviewed include syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, or other materials chosen by faculty member to convey pedagogical approach and quality. CTRL guidance on course review can be found here
   4. Student assessment of teaching
      1. Narrative portions of SETs: If any narratives are submitted for a course, all narratives from that course must be included. We recommend including narrative portions for 2-4 courses that the faculty member teaches. Faculty reflections (of up to 1 page) are encouraged for one or two courses to respond constructively to issues raised in the narrative comments with ideas or steps that addressed/will address valid student concerns.
         1. AU does not allow for SET reviews of low enrollment courses. Some faculty teach courses with low enrollments in their areas of specialty, and thus faculty may elect to submit, as one of their 2-4 narratives, a reflective evaluation of their teaching for a low-enrollment course including narrative evaluations or information on how they used student feedback for improvement. 
      2. Faculty designed student assessment: Faculty may submit their own student assessments of teaching (e.g., mid-semester or end of semester assessments) for approximately 2-4 courses. 
   5. SET scores with improvements noted below. 
2. Constraining and Improving Use of SETs
   1. The Department will not use SETs as the sole or predominant indicator of faculty effectiveness. SET scores should count for no more than half of the assessment of teaching within the overall teaching portfolio. When individual faculty receive very low SET scores consistently over time (a “fire alarm” scenario), other components of the individual’s portfolio may provide clues to diagnosing and addressing the problems. 
   2. In their teaching portfolios, faculty may exercise the option to report median scores, frequency distributions, and highest/lowest scores, rather than or in addition to means (averages). Faculty may also eliminate the highest and lowest student score(s) from each course to avoid the potential “one irate student” phenomenon that gives outliers undue influence. (Number of scores dropped may vary by class size, with more for classes with over 20 students.) Faculty must clearly indicate when they have adjusted scores in this manner. 
   3. The Department will take into account course characteristics (e.g., disciplinary field, class size, required/elective, lower division/upper division, new courses, enrollment, class time, TA presence, and other significant factors) when interpreting scores. All course SET scores should be preceded with approximately one sentence outlining this course characteristic information. If necessary, faculty may include up to one paragraph of additional contextual information that may be helpful in understanding scores. 
   4. The Department will only consider score deviations of more than .5 to be a meaningful and significant deviation from unit, school, and AU median scores. Smaller deviations shall not be considered significant.
   5. The Department will use SETs primarily as a way of assessing faculty improvement or lack thereof over time. That is, a consistent upward or downward trend in scores in any one course, type of course, or overall will be deemed significant and an indicator of teaching quality. 
   6. To increase response rate, the Department adopts the following policies: mandatory use of class time to complete SETs; online evaluation period should begin by default during the penultimate class and extend until the exam time for absent students or those without portable devices; and reading aloud the required text (suggested by the Faculty Senate) explaining the purpose of SETs (see Appendix below). 

APPENDIX 

[Based on Washington College of Law student evaluations procedure yielding 80% response rate.] 

Step 1: Notify students one class in advance that they should bring a WiFi-enabled device to the next class. 

Step 2: Reserve approximately 15 minutes to conduct the survey, preferably at the start of class. 

Step 3: Have students open the SET platform (each faculty member should have an independent link.) 

Read the following Statement to Students: 

At American University, student evaluations are a critical component in our assessment of faculty members and courses. They affect salaries, promotions and retention. They are instrumental in curricular decisions including the scheduling of courses and the sequencing of courses from one semester to the next. They are reviewed by academic deans and faculty committees evaluating all faculty. They are NOT made available to professors until final grades are submitted and there is no method by which faculty or administrators can identify the author of a response. We ask that you please take time to fill out the evaluation carefully. A separate evaluation link must be completed for each professor if the class you are taking has more than one professor. 

Please note that a rating of “5” is positive and “1” is negative. 

Responses are not transmitted until the submit button at the bottom of the evaluation is selected. Responses cannot be saved, nor can they be edited, reassigned or retracted after submission. 

Step 4: Depart the classroom while students are completing the evaluations. 

Step 5: Send an all-class email message later that day or evening asking any students who have not yet completed the evaluation to do so ASAP. 

Step 6: Monitor SET response rates. If response rates appear to be far short of the 80% response goal, prompt students to finalize their evaluations.