Date
Dear Professor [Name]:
Thank you very much for your willingness to provide us with an evaluation of [candidate’s name], who is a candidate for promotion to [associate professor with tenure/full professor]. To assist your evaluation, I would like to provide the following guidelines for your report.
First, please indicate whether or not you have had any personal association with this candidate or are already familiar with [his/her] work. This will help us understand your perspective on this candidate.
Our primary interest is in your assessment of the overall quality of this candidate’s scholarly work: the level of productivity; the quality of the venues in which the work appears; its most significant findings; and the importance to and impact on the field. Please limit your review comments to the research/scholarly/creative accomplishments and the potential for the candidate to add to the discourse of the discipline. Review of the candidate’s teaching accomplishments and service performance will be done in a separate component of the tenure evaluation.
If [candidate’s name] publishes or otherwise disseminates their scholarly work in venues where multiple [authors/inventors/artists] are common, it would also be very helpful if you could provide an explanation of the discipline’s methods for indicating the importance of a particular author’s role (for example, the accepted protocol for listing authors). In addition, [if this candidate has obtained extramural funding] we would appreciate your assessment of the competitive nature of funding from the granting agencies who have provided awards.
Finally, we ask that you refrain from offering any opinion as to this candidate’s readiness for promotion and/or tenure since we are requesting your evaluation of only a portion of [his/her] record.
Please note that, under Texas state law, we are unable to assure the confidentiality of your report. As a consequence, our review process stresses transparency, and your report will be made available if someone expresses a wish to see it.
I would appreciate receiving your review by [date]. Again, allow me to express my appreciation for your willingness to assist us.
Sincerely,