Are student letters important for tenure? « Political Science Rumors

4 years - 30 posts - Latest - RSS
OP: 2 Goods vs 2 No Goods
Thread: 40 Goods vs 21 No Goods

Political Science Rumors » Political Science » Teaching

Are student letters important for tenure?

« Previous 12

Mariel

Is your university asking you to do this? Are they actually telling you to go round up a bunch of student letters? If so, go for it. (Actually do whatever you want, I'm just telling you a true story about a guy who really screwed himself over by doing this.) The universities I am familiar with (which is only a handful) prefer to handle contact with students using a third party (a faculty committee member, a department chair, a university staff member) instead of having a faculty member recruit positive student letters under mysterious circumstances.
There is nothing at all wrong with asking a few selected students for a letter. How else would you get them? Just don't ask anyone currently taking a class from you.

How did the guy in your situation bribe/strong-arm them? How did he get caught?

Was he denied *because* of this, or would he probably have been denied anyway?

I don't think there's anything wrong with asking per se, but I would want to be careful with it looking like a quid pro quo.

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 1 NAY !
Syd

I've never heard of this practice (needing student letters for tenure) but it sounds absurd. Do any institutions besides LACs actually do this?

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 1 NAY !
Mariel

I've never heard of this practice (needing student letters for tenure) but it sounds absurd. Do any institutions besides LACs actually do this?

Why does it sound absurd?

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 1 NAY !
Diggory

I've never heard of this practice (needing student letters for tenure) but it sounds absurd. Do any institutions besides LACs actually do this?

They're not usually necessary, but they can make your package look better. I had a student five years out send me a really nice unsolicited email thanking me for having supported her during a difficult time, and our P&T committee took note of that in their write-up for the president.

4 years ago # QUOTE 2 YEA 0 NAY !
Edison

I teach at a LAC-aspiring-to-be-a-SLAC that takes teaching very seriously for tenure (evals, quant and qual, peer assessments, evidence of effectiveness all major parts of the file). I've never heard of a "student letter." This is fake, isn't it?

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 3 NAY !
Sharlene

I teach at a LAC-aspiring-to-be-a-SLAC that takes teaching very seriously for tenure (evals, quant and qual, peer assessments, evidence of effectiveness all major parts of the file). I've never heard of a "student letter." This is fake, isn't it?

Not fake at all. As serious as Cancer. Though my SLac allows candidate to identify students.

4 years ago # QUOTE 1 YEA 1 NAY !
Cerise

My teaching school gave tenure to a person with the nastiest student reviews I've ever seen, because s/he did TONS OF administrative work for the college and the Dean loves him/her.

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 0 NAY !
Mariel

My teaching school gave tenure to a person with the nastiest student reviews I've ever seen, because s/he did TONS OF administrative work for the college and the Dean loves him/her.

What did the reviews say? Were they evals or letters?

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 1 NAY !
Legolas

I teach at a LAC-aspiring-to-be-a-SLAC that takes teaching very seriously for tenure (evals, quant and qual, peer assessments, evidence of effectiveness all major parts of the file). I've never heard of a "student letter." This is fake, isn't it?

Not fake at all. As serious as Cancer. Though my SLac allows candidate to identify students.

I have heard of this too. However, there is a written process for how this works. Depend more on department docs and recently tenured people than a message board.

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 2 NAY !
Diggory

However, there is a written process for how this works. Depend more on department docs and recently tenured people than a message board.

By all means follow local norms and procedures. But none of the three schools I've worked at had any written procedures regulating student letters. One of them had a category for where in the portfolio to submit student letters; the other two schools had nothing at all. That means you're free to work the letter angle so long as you don't coerce anyone.

4 years ago # QUOTE 0 YEA 1 NAY !

« Previous 12

Are student letters important for tenure?

Reply