EP 57 What Promotion Committees Actually Evaluate: The Faculty Misalignment Problem
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[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to the Academic Medicine Strategy Podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about promotion committees and what they actually evaluate. And I'm gonna tell you, it may not be what you think it is. Now, when you look at a faculty promotion packet, it starts with the assumption that the committee will evaluate what you've assembled.
That makes sense, right? But committees oftentimes are looking for something else. They want to know whether you're ready, whether you meet the criteria, but also if what you're doing is actually bringing the national reputation or regional reputation of the institution forward. And these things are often not the same.
The readiness is not a list. And I will tell you, many of us, myself included, our CVs look like a fantastic list. I've been on this many committees. I've done this many publications. I've given this many talks. But most criteria document categories are looking at things like research and clinical activity and teaching and service, and so we're just check-marking our way through it, and it seems like what we're supposed to be doing.
How many publications? How many [00:01:00] medical student reviews? How many committees? I'm gonna give you some examples of a couple institutions' criteria. The University of Buffalo's policy is a list of traditional criteria like scholarship and teaching and service, and they include an explicit note for clinical faculty that service extends beyond the usual participation on university committees to encompass patient care.
So they're opening that up, right? They're giving you an opportunity. Now, if you look at the Indiana University of Medicine, it adds that for promotion to associate professor on a non-tenure track, candidates have to demonstrate a reputation beyond the institution that's regional or emerging nationally, while full professors are required to have a sustained national reputation.
Sounds clear, but what does a national reputation mean? What do I need to do in order to meet their criteria? What is sustained? How long is that? And some of that information is not gonna be clear to you unless you talk to people who've done this before or who are interpreting those criteria. Now, these categories are real, and the thresholds [00:02:00] leave a little bit to the imagination.
But when there's this level of interpretation, it makes a difference if you understand what's happening locally or not. So you may have forty publications in three unrelated areas, and that might be much less convincing than twenty publications in a very singular niche that's clear there's a coherent line of work, and there's a narrative that'll help them understand that you went from here to here to here, especially if your committee and your national work dovetails with whatever your niche is.
And a faculty member with extensive committee involvement may present less convincingly than one with deep visibility in a specific domain, even if there are fewer committees, even it's clear that they were interested in something specific, whether that was, you know, gut microbiome or sleep medicine.
Now, a cohort study found that the variables most strongly associated with promotion were not publication count, surprisingly, but factors that signaled coherent investment, like identifying a career mentor, devoting [00:03:00] at least thirty percent of effort to research, and meeting with supervisors about promotion at least yearly.
So those meetings with your supervisor, your department chair, your promotion committee, they're very important, so please don't put those off. And they were not arbitrary judgments. They reflect what institutions are actually rewarding. A faculty member who has become someone of renown in their field, whether it's regional or national, is not merely somebody who's busy.
Now, the narrative problem I talk to a lot of people about, especially if you start a career doing research about things that are interesting, but maybe not all moving in the same direction, or they don't all clearly fit together. And it's one of the things I love doing is helping people figure out how to fit some of those things together.
I will tell you, I talked to somebody the other day who's interested in craniofacial care, and they had something about a particular syndrome that's associated with craniofacial disease and another syndrome and an anatomic thing, but they were all in the craniofacial space. So we were able to tell a coherent story about how these all came together and made a difference and told a story.
And then in order to reinforce that, we talked about the committees they [00:04:00] wanted to be on. So what journal do they wanna be a part of? What, local organization do they wanna be part of? Do you wanna be on the board of the craniofacial group? Do you wanna be on the craniofacial committee and this syndrome committee?
And I'm making these up. But think about what makes sense when you raise your hand so that you go to the places that reinforce the story you're trying to tell. And many people, when they look at their promotion packet, argue, "It should tell my story," like it should do it on its own, and it sounds great, but that's not oftentimes how it works.
It's really only trying to say we're ready for the next rank, not that we have a coherent narrative, not that we have structure and intentionality. And so they require each piece of evidence to contribute to the conclusion that the reader is prepared to draw. Because they're not looking at your busyness, they're looking at your story.
And most of us are not trained to construct that narrative, so this is where a coach can be very useful, or a division director or a chair or the promotion committee. But that packet that results is often adequate, but not convincing. So what you need to understand is how to just put that throughput in there so the committee can read it, [00:05:00] and then see an emerging academic leader instead of somebody who's just busy.
The translation from here's what I've done to here's what I've built and this is why it matters is not automatic. But it is one thing I wanna help you do today. What changes what faculty understand is when they understand this and they know how to present themselves, and over time, it changes what they do.
Now, some of this can be reflected in the letters that you're writing. I don't know about you, but I had to write a lot of the letters from my submitters, people who were supporting me, as well as the personal statement that you're putting together. But some of it can also come together in the committee you choose to do next or in the paper you choose to write, the words you include in all the titles of all the presentations you give.
And you wanna make sure that all of your presentations and papers have that word so the whole world understands what your story is, when they wanna invite you to be on the panel, when you should be on their podcast, when they want to say, "This is a person who's national reputation I understand Now, oftentimes people understand which publications came together and why they are telling a [00:06:00] narrative story.
They understand your committee positions build the kind of visibility that results in the national reputation that they care about and makes sense. Now, that committee means such and such, it's that you're an established scholar in a specific area, that you have a promotion strategy. So that's what I'm recommending here today.
Instead of a really long list of very important things that you can spend your time on, and maybe lead or don't lead in the right direction so the promotion committee understands the work you're doing, I want the role of dedicated support to feel clear. The informal knowledge of what committees respond to lives inside every department and every promotion committee.
So talk to your chairs, talk to your senior faculty, talk to people who just got promoted, but more importantly, talk to your promotion committee. Now, the AAMC's 2022 survey of faculty appointments, promotion, and tenure policies looked at one hundred and fifty-one LCME-accredited schools, and they got responses from one hundred and eighteen, which for anybody who has done any kind of survey research is unheard of and fantastic.
It's incredible, and it's great data. And they confirmed that while formal [00:07:00] promotion and tenure policies are highly variable, the informal practice of the committee varied even more. So what gets a faculty member promoted at one institution is not always what gets you promoted at another, even when the written criteria looks similar.
And this makes it a challenge for all of us, and that's why you need to make sure you're talking to the people in your institution so they have structured, individualized guidance in order to understand how to move you ahead. Faculty development infrastructure means making this transition available to every faculty member in your department, not just the ones who happen to ask the right question to the right person at the right time.
And this is why I'm so emphatic about the fact that infrastructure in your departments is important, that annual meetings, that regular conversations about promoting, that actually looking at your CV and your work and your busyness will help you understand whether it's actually moving you in the right direction or not.
So what can you do this week? Talk to someone who's been promoted recently at your institution. Aim for someone promoted in the last two or three years, and ask what they wish they had understood earlier about how the committee actually [00:08:00] evaluated their packet. Read your promotion criteria.
They're almost always online. And pull it down and look at the question: what does a coherent academic identity look like in order to meet this criteria? What's the story my packet needs to tell? Then look at your CV as a narrative, not a list. I want you to see if there's a clear story. What can I do to make it more clear?
What committee should I be on instead? What could I be intentional about instead of sort of slap shot trying to figure out what's next? Or just saying yes to the things that walk in the door. And some of us will do a CV summary that's three or four pages that sits at the beginning of our CV, and it gives even more evidence, and it tells a better story than a traditional CV.
It's like a fancy biosketch version. I want to make sure you've identified your niche. If I could ask you in one word or what phrase what it is that I should put you on a panel for and you would be known for, and the promotion committee should say, "That's what she does." It's one phrase or topic that should connect all your publications and your committee work and your national reputation, so it's visible in the current record.
And make sure it's the [00:09:00] throughput in your letters, which you're probably gonna be writing. And make sure in your personal statements at the top of that and your CV. Now, our faculty excellence and retention initiative exists to provide the dedicated capacity that makes promotional strategy accessible to every faculty member, not just the ones with the right connections or the right questions.
So if you're a chair or a dean, or if you're just somebody who wants your department to move in that direction, please learn more under department coaching at our website at www.amedsg.com, A-M-E-D-S-G. And you can look department coaching or anything else you find interesting. Now, I really appreciate you listening all the way to the end.
If you found this useful, please share it with somebody else who might benefit from it, also. And I look forward to talking to you next week
