Quick Tenure and Promotion Thread. Like all #AcademicTwitter discussions, triangulate your advice, grain of salt, & all the stuff. I write a fair amount of T &P letters--probably inching toward 20 total since tenure. Here is some of the things I look for 1/

1. I do read the university guidelines. Things differ-I have written for R1s & regional comprehensive schools. I take that into account. 2. Your personal statement (to Jess) is very important. I am interested in whether people have a clear identity of who they are as a scholar 2/

I usually start going through the person's work & think about what I believe is their research agenda. Very cool when this immediately aligns with the person's statement (which I usually read after going through a fair segment of the work). If I'm reading your stuff..

You probably work in a couple of different areas. Are you asking questions that are of interest to those working in those areas? Are you furthering the knowledge base? Does not have to be ground-breaking (deep breath) but show you understand the field & where your work fits.

Also, are you positioned to continue asking cool questions? Spoiler alert--tenure is the starting line, not the finish line. Stuff gets harder after this (but with job security). One of the best person statements I ever read...

The person talked about a completed piece of work & then showed how next piece of work on the same area built on that work & how they had learned from the previous study. That kind of growth -pretty darn cool to see from an early career scholar & made sure to shout that out...

While you need to be careful about service pre-tenure, I am interested to see whether scholars are building their networks--have you made good research partnerships? Have you started getting involved in your professional association? Are you reviewing?....

Life changes post-tenure. Be a good citizen. People notice this kind of stuff. Hope these humble thoughts are useful. For those of you putting together your packets, you can do it. I believe in you :)