Dear Colleagues:
As you prepare academic personnel review files for 2010-11, we wish to share information and to make some requests to help ensure smooth and prompt review. The current information builds on the June 2010 letter from former Campus Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor Kliger and former Senate Committee on Academic Personnel (CAP) Chair Callanan, which provided excellent observations and reminders for how to deal with ladder-rank review files.
Ladder-rank Faculty Salaries
This is the third year of the campus effort to raise ladder-rank faculty salaries at UCSC through a more generous merit process. The revised salary practice for greater-than-normal merit increases and accelerations continues in 2010-11 and will be considered for review files as described in the October 2009 memo. We wish to clarify that assistant and associate professors who are on a two-year review cycle and who were reviewed in 2008-09 under the revised salary practice are eligible again in 2010-11 for the more generous merit process.
At the end of this academic year, we will assess our efforts to increase ladder-rank faculty salaries relative to the other UC campuses and determine if the current revised salary practice should remain in place or what other efforts should be taken.
Justification for Salary Recommendations
For all academic personnel actions reviewed by CAP, the department letter and the dean’s letter should contain a justification for the proposed salary. This applies to Senate and non-Senate actions, including appointment, advancement, promotion, and retention. Per policy, a recommendation for off-scale salary must be accompanied by a justification for that salary (CAPM 404.220, 406.220, 410.220). For advancements and promotions, the justification should include a discussion of the candidate’s exceptional performance; retention actions should present documentation of the competing offer; and appointment actions may address competing offers or special issues concerning hiring within the discipline. The justification for off-scale salary for ladder-rank faculty is particularly important in light of the current more generous merit process.
Annotating Biobibliographies
Please check that all biobibliographies (biobibs) are annotated correctly to reflect which publications/creative works were submitted by the candidate and considered by the department, and which were forwarded with the file. It is important to confirm that any publication/creative work that was submitted for a previous personnel action is clearly marked as such, and that an explanation is provided of when it was submitted and in what form. (See the biobib format outlined in CAPM Appendix 9.) Although it is the candidate's responsibility to ensure that these notations are made, we request that the department and the division review the biobibs to verify compliance, especially for previously submitted works.
Compliance with these requests and with the guidelines in the June 2010 memo will reduce the number of review files that are returned for additional information and clarification. That will speed the review process. We also wish to remind you that the Calendar of Academic Personnel Actions sets deadlines for the submission of personnel files to the department, division, and CAP. Adherence to these deadlines also helps to insure that files can be processed in a timely manner.
We look forward to working with you on academic personnel actions during 2010-11. It is inspiring to review the accomplishments of our faculty and researchers. We are also pleased to see that five recruitments, and possibly more, for ladder-rank faculty are underway, and we welcome the opportunity to review the appointment files and to meet the new faculty who are hired.
Best regards,
Alison Galloway
Campus Provost and
Executive Vice Chancellor
Dana Takagi
Chair
Committee on Academic Personnel
