Chapter 14: Reimagining Promotion and Tenure as a Tool for Faculty Development

The promotion and tenure (P&T) processes, and policies in higher education are almost exclusively evaluative. Since being promoted and granted tenure is inherently important to faculty, P&T policies have the potential to be a powerful professional development tool. The School of Engineering at the University of Dayton recently developed a new P&T policy for tenure track faculty, and promotion policies for lecturers and faculty of practice. Using self-determination theory as a framework, these new policies were developed to be both formative as well as evaluative and include tools to aid in career planning, self-assessment, reflection and continuous improvement.