Chemistry
As a department, we support faculty for tenure and promotion who are outstanding teachers and scholars and are engaged members of the department, College, and professional community. We actively mentor junior colleagues with the expectation that all of our faculty will earn tenure and promotion. In accordance with the Faculty Handbook, candidates for reappointment, tenure and promotion are evaluated in the areas of teaching, scholarship, and service with the first two being of greatest importance. While the exact balance of a candidate’s strengths in these areas may vary, outstanding teaching with inadequate scholarship is unacceptable as is strong scholarship with poor teaching.
Guidelines for Tenure and/or Promotion to Associate Professor
Teaching
We support colleagues for tenure and/or promotion who are excellent classroom teachers and, since chemistry is an experimental discipline, faculty are also expected to excel at teaching students in the laboratory. Furthermore, the department strongly believes that mentoring students in research is a highly effective and high-impact means of teaching that enables students to experience the generation of new scientific knowledge and envision themselves as scientists. As such, the department highly values faculty who involve students in their research programs. Therefore, faculty must engage students in their research program and excel in mentoring students in the Senior Program.
The Faculty Handbook enumerates three characteristics of excellent teaching:
Commitment to Teaching
The core attributes of commitment to teaching in Chemistry are:
- effectively teaching departmental courses at the foundational (100 and 200) and in-depth (300 and 400) levels in both the classroom and the laboratory
- actively mentoring students in the Senior Project (551/552)
- actively engaging in self-reflection to develop and improve courses
- regularly reflecting and acting upon feedback from conversations with and visits by departmental colleagues to improve pedagogy and from students through teaching evaluations
- creating & fostering an inclusive environment in the classroom and laboratory that provides all students the opportunity to succeed
Supporting activities which demonstrate commitment to teaching may also include:
- designing new courses at any level of the departmental classroom or laboratory curriculum
- participating in departmental curriculum development
- participating in team-taught and/or interdisciplinary courses outside of the department
- mentoring students in summer research projects
- facilitating student oral and poster presentations at college, local, state, and/or national professional forums to report on their research
- submitting grant proposals for instrumentation and curricular development
- publishing peer-reviewed papers for innovations in pedagogy
- contributing pedagogical materials to web-based resource collections
- participating in teaching-related faculty development activities (workshops, conferences, webinars, online programs)
Knowledge and Mastery of the Discipline
The department expects that all faculty members have a deep understanding of their sub-discipline of chemistry along with a broad, general knowledge of chemistry. Faculty should stay current with developments and new directions in their field and incorporate new knowledge into their classroom teaching. Faculty should also strive in their classes, as appropriate, to show connections to, and applications of chemistry in a broader context. Examples might include
- updating directions in research and augmenting continuing projects
- introducing new topics to foundational and advanced courses
- introducing or modifying laboratories to update the laboratory program
- engaging in planning of department-wide curricula to reflect new directions in chemistry
The Ability to Communicate with, Engage, and Evaluate Students
Some of the major ways that faculty may demonstrate success in teaching students include
- designing courses that explore the depth and breadth of chemistry, that are rigorous, challenging, and intellectually stimulating, that encourage students to think critically and independently and by conveying enthusiasm for the subject presented
- articulating clear course goals and expectations of how students can succeed
- presenting classroom material in a clear and organized manner
- responding effectively to student questions and encouraging discussion, as appropriate, to maintain a supportive environment in the classroom and to encourage critical thinking
- supplementing formal classroom teaching with small group or individual instruction during regular office hours, tutorial/review sessions, and individual student appointments as needed
- providing students with appropriate training in laboratory techniques and conscientiously enforcing departmental and College safety rules and regulations
- guiding Senior Project students in developing a thesis project, carrying out the experimental work, analyzing their results, presenting their work orally, and producing a well-written thesis
- facilitating students in publicly presenting the results of their research at local, national, or international meetings
- evaluating students equitably and giving them timely and constructive feedback
These criteria for excellence in teaching will be assessed using evaluations by senior colleagues, student letters, and course teaching evaluations. These three forms of evaluation will be analyzed and compared to get a holistic narrative of a candidate’s teaching. The College’s teaching evaluation forms for each course provide a semester-by-semester and course-by course comparison from which to view a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and progress in teaching. Consideration will be given to the candidate’s numerical and narrative student evaluations across the chemistry curriculum, from foundational to in-depth courses. Student letters that are solicited by the Dean’s Office at the time of the reappointment and tenure decisions will also be considered. Faculty evaluation will be accomplished by classroom and laboratory observation by senior members of the department in accord with the regulations in the Faculty Handbook and by analysis of teaching materials submitted by the candidate at the time of reappointment and tenure. The Department will strive to identify and minimize the impact of implicit bias in all forms of evaluation.
Candidates will receive formal feedback through the annual review process on their progress towards reappointment, promotion and tenure. At the time of evaluation for reappointment or tenure, the candidate’s personal statement should describe and reflect on their teaching philosophy and methodologies, providing specific examples of how these have been applied. Supporting documents submitted in the dossier should include syllabi and examples of student assessment materials (problem sets, exams, lab curricula, classroom activities, etc.) to aid in assessing whether the candidate has met the criteria for successfully communicating with, engaging, and evaluating students. The candidate should explain how their teaching and methods of assessment of student work has evolved during the review period and should address any issues that have been brought up in student evaluations, in annual reviews, and/or through classroom visits by senior faculty.
Scholarship
We support colleagues for tenure and/or promotion who have established themselves as active and productive scholars. While recognizing the variance between sub-disciplines in chemistry and allowing for individual faculty member’s differences in research style and methods, we greatly value the research-rich environment of the department and expect all faculty to engage in a research program that involves student participation through the Senior Project. We anticipate that faculty might want to either occasionally or regularly work with students through the summer research program. Depending on the project and its stages, it may be that mentoring students will be additive to the progress of the research; however, supervising students in summer research is not required for tenure and promotion. We also value the intellectual partnership of research collaborations with colleagues both here at Hamilton and at other institutions (colleges, universities, national laboratories, and industry).
Primary evidence of productive scholarship will come from publication of articles on original research conducted after appointment to a Hamilton faculty position in peer-reviewed journals. Recognizing differences in sub-disciplines and in the expected pace of different research topics, no specific guideline is set for the number of publications necessary at the time of review for tenure and/or promotion. However, a record of repeated publication is expected and the candidate must show in their personal statement that the trajectory of the research program is such that the pattern of repeated publication will likely continue into the future. Quality of publications is as important as quantity. Quality will be judged primarily by an internal assessment by the department and through the assessment of external reviewers solicited at the time of review for tenure and/or promotion. Collaborative publications are valued with the understanding that the candidate has played a significant intellectual role in the work. The candidate’s role in collaborative work should be made explicit in their personal statement submitted at the time of the review.
Other forms of scholarship can provide secondary evidence of productivity and will support the candidate’s case for tenure and/or promotion, but cannot substitute for publication of original chemical research in peer-reviewed journals. Other forms of scholarship may include (in general order of decreasing importance)
- obtaining grants for research and research instrumentation, especially from federal funding agencies
- publishing review articles, book chapters, textbooks, etc.
- manuscripts posted to preprint servers (e.g. ChemRxiv, advanced draft of work nearing completion) and manuscripts under active review or revision
- postings to databases (crystallographic databases, for example)
- publishing collaborative papers where the candidate has played only a supporting role in the work presented
- presenting at professional meetings/conferences
- submitting grant proposals for research and research instrumentation
- publishing encyclopedia entries, book reviews and other items that receive minimal peer review
- presenting invited seminars at other colleges/universities
Service
We support colleagues who show evidence of service to the Chemistry Department, to Hamilton College, and to the broader professional and local community. For junior colleagues, priority is for the establishment of excellent teaching and of an active and successful research program with students. Service, therefore, for tenure-track faculty should be kept low, especially before reappointment, but should follow the candidates’ strong interests in serving. Demonstrating service is possible through a combination of the following activities
- advising first-year students and departmental concentrators
- attending and contributing to Departmental meetings
- attending Hamilton College faculty meetings
- assuming a departmental responsibility whether short or long term (e.g. organization of the seminar program, mentoring the ACS Student Affiliates Club)
- writing letters of recommendation for students (graduate school, professional schools, summer programs)
- serving on an appointed or elected college committee
- serving on a committee or board of a professional organization
- serving as a reviewer for journals and grant proposals
- outreach to schools, admissions office, and alumni groups and broader community in a professional capacity
Guidelines for Promotion to Professor
Candidates for promotion to full professor should demonstrate distinguished achievement in teaching, scholarship, and service. Candidates should maintain and build upon their status as outstanding teachers as outlined in the Criteria for Tenure and Promotion. Tenured faculty should continue to revise existing courses and develop new courses, as appropriate, and stay current with their sub-discipline. Participation in team-taught or interdisciplinary courses is more encouraged for tenured faculty than those pre-tenure. It is expected that candidates for promotion will continue to involve students in their research programs such as through the Senior Project, summer research, and/or other opportunities. Candidates for promotion should demonstrate a record of continued research productivity in line with the established Criteria for Tenure and Promotion. While the expectation at the time of tenure is that a candidate should establish a trajectory that is likely to establish a record of repeated publication, candidates for promotion to full professor must demonstrate the successful continuance of such a publication record. In contrast to minimal pre-tenure expectations for service, candidates for promotion to full professor must demonstrate active engagement in the life of the College as well as the Department. This can be done, for example, by serving a full term on one of the major committees of the faculty, serving on multiple elected or appointed College committees, serving as departmental or program chair, and/or by taking on an appointed administrative role within the College. Serving as an officer in a regional or national professional organization, on a journal editorial review board, on grant proposal review panels, or on external review committees of other institutions, departments, or individuals are also recognized as valuable service contributions likely to be available to tenured members of the department.
Revision approved by COA, June 2020
