The average time for promotion to professor is expected to drop sharply under a new, streamlined promotion process announced in February by Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier.
Under the revised process, developed by a task force appointed by Flier in July of 2009—and supported by Nancy Tarbell, dean for academic and clinical affairs, and Maureen Connelly, dean for faculty affairs—the majority of professorial promotions should take less than one year from the time of initiation to when a decision is made.
This expedited process consolidates many steps that formerly took place at the hospitals and at HMS into a single, more efficient model. The number of steps will be reduced by approximately 50 percent under the new approach.
“The changes to our promotion process will allow Harvard Medical School to reward our most outstanding faculty with timely recognition of their accomplishments without compromising the thoroughness and rigor of the evaluation,” Flier said.
“The new system will increase collaboration between department leadership and the Dean’s Office, create greater transparency regarding the steps toward promotion, eliminate redundancies and significantly decrease the time from start to finish,” Connelly said.
After reviewing obstacles to the timely completion of promotions, the task force examined current procedures, discussed points of variability and potential delay, and considered alternative models for evaluating faculty. The task force made recommendations that were then reviewed by the Preclinical Chairs Council, the Conference of Department Heads, the Council of Academic Deans and, ultimately, the Governing Boards of Harvard University. While streamlining the promotions process, the task force took great care to maintain its integrity, retaining, for example, the current rigorous standards by which faculty are evaluated.
One change that will accelerate and add transparency to the evaluation process is the implementation of a paperless system of documentation management, the logistics of which have been successfully piloted by the Office of Faculty Affairs (OFA) over the past year, Connelly said. Professorial candidates, department leaders and administrators and members of professorial ad hoc committees will be able to submit and review, where appropriate, all materials electronically.
The OFA has assumed complete administrative responsibility for the new process. Additionally, a secure website introduced last year enables candidates and department leaders to track the progress of their professorial evaluation at HMS, including the dates on which major milestones of the evaluation process are completed. The site also provides contact information for the Dean’s Office representative charged with managing the evaluations.
While gathering a substantial set of recommendation letters remains an essential component of the evaluation process, department leaders will now play a much larger role in informing the selected expert reference pools, including letter writers and ad hoc committee members. Department leaders will have the opportunity to provide input throughout the process, while ad hoc evaluation committees appointed by the dean will continue to review and to provide recommendations independently on proposed appointments.
Thomas Sequist, who was recently promoted to HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and of health care policy, welcomed the prospect of streamlined promotions. “I’m excited that the new process will be more transparent and will foster collaboration between the medical school and the hospitals,” he said.
Broadening Scholarship
As before, every professorial candidate must publish and accrue high-impact scholarship in his or her field of expertise. However, as part of each dossier submitted for evaluation, a candidate may now also submit materials beyond publications traditionally regarded as scholarly.
Depending on a candidate’s area of excellence, scholarship may include nationally recognized educational materials in print or in other media, such as syllabi, curricula and web-based training modules and courses; development of guidelines and/or protocols for patient treatment or the delivery of care that have been adopted nationally; publications reflecting multidisciplinary research that have had a major impact on a field or changed clinical practice; and original works describing novel methods or technologies that have advanced that field.
Faculty members are encouraged to think broadly about what constitutes top scholarship, understanding that each of these examples potentially embodies material that could be considered a critical component of a candidate’s academic legacy. In the coming months, faculty members considering pursuit of a professorial appointment can learn more about the streamlined process by visiting the OFA website.
