General FAQ

The General FAQ is a searchable index of FAQ emails sent to the FAA email list serv. Content includes answers to frequently asked questions, friendly reminders, and helpful hints regarding Faculty Affairs actions.

-New Guidelines for transmittal memos.  Per new instructions from the Provost’s office, for all files requiring a transmittal memo (all UTL/NTL appointments and promotions; all UTL/NTL reappointments conferring tenure or continuing term; all MCL actions conferring continuing term; and files with issues that should be addressed up front) please include a brief statement that clearly states why the candidate merits the action proposed. e.x. why promotion is merited at this time. This brief paragraph can be framed in a variety of ways, for example, this candidate has met and/or exceeded the criteria for promotion to professor for these reasons a). xxxxxx b). xxxxxxx c). xxxxxxxx.  Please do not repeat information in the long form (such as training history, etc) in the transmittal memo.  If there are issues raised in the file, please do address them briefly in the transmittal memo even though they are addressed in more detail in the file.

-New Guidelines for search report narratives.  Per new instructions from the Provost’s office, search reports will need to explicitly detail certain information to demonstrate that a fair and comprehensive search was performed. Please ensure that search narratives include: 1. A brief introduction to the programmatic need for this position, as well as information as to what (rank/line was searched for), when (search was approved and Ad/Letters sent out), how many (numbers solicited), who (search committee membership and any considerations for conflicts of interest/if known candidates were noted); 2. Include a brief timeline of search committee meetings and significant discussions/determinations at these meetings; 3. Describe all efforts made to increase the applicant pool and what affirmative action considerations were made; 4. Describe the criteria used to evaluate and rank the definitive pool; 5. Definitive pool description – provide an evaluation of each candidate and discuss how each met or didn’t meet the established criteria; 6. Summarize the report by concluding with the proposed recommendation (appointment of Dr. Jane Doe to rank/line).

-Follow-up solicitations for referee and trainee letters.  When a referee or trainee has not responded to a request for an evaluative letter on a faculty candidate within a reasonable period of time (typically 2 weeks), please send a follow-up solicitation letter to remind them that their feedback is a valued part of the review process. It is required that at least 2 follow-up requests be sent out to a referee or trainee. After 3 notices have been sent (the original request and 2 follow-up requests), and if the required number of letters for the faculty action are obtained, then evaluative letters do not need to be pursued any further. However, if 3 notices have been sent, and if the required number of letters for the faculty action have not been obtained, you may consider expanding the referee grid to include additional referees and/or trainees. A revised referee grid would need to be sent to OAA for review in this case. 

-Referee requests in a candidate evaluation.  Referees who are solicited for an evaluative letter on a faculty candidate should be provided with a current, dated CV and candidate’s statement (required for reappointments and promotions; optional, but recommended for new appointments). If the evaluator requests additional information, such as copies of manuscripts, please try to be helpful. However, please only provide manuscripts that have been published or are accepted for publication. For accepted manuscripts that are pending publication, you may need to obtain this directly from the faculty candidate. Please do not inform the faculty candidate of who has requested this information. Please ask them if they would be willing to share the accepted manuscript as part of their faculty review. They should be informed that this work would be available to reviewers (both internal and external to Stanford).

-Obtaining teaching and clinical evaluations.  For all long forms, please include a brief statement regarding efforts to obtain teaching and clinical evaluations. If the particular action does not require teaching/clinical evaluations, please insert a page with a brief statement with this information. If required evaluations are not available, please provide an explanation. For example, ‘teaching evaluations from the candidate’s previous institution were requested but none were available.’ The Provost’s office has asked that we include this information so that reviewers are aware that efforts to gather evaluative evidence were exhaustive. For reappointment and promotion actions, all available teaching evaluations since the faculty candidate’s last review should be included. For new appointments, please request all teaching and clinical evaluations from the faculty candidate’s current institution.

-Narrative report: scholarly role.  The scholarly work discussed in the narrative report should be a publication from the faculty candidate’s current term so as to speak to their achievements and productivity for this period of evaluation. Additionally, we recommend that an article that has already been published be highlighted as the impact of this work could be discussed in the narrative section. An article that has been accepted for publication can be discussed, though its potential impact would need to be discussed. The author of the scholarship section should be noted. Guidance from the Provost’s office is that it is best practice for mentors and collaborators of the faculty candidate to not write this section or other sections of the long form. 

-Emeritus Faculty and voting.  Emeritus faculty cannot vote on Professoriate actions. As a consequence, we do not recommend that Emeritus faculty be members of Department A&P committees or search/evaluation committees as their votes do not count for Professoriate reviews (much like CE faculty).  You may solicit Emeritus faculty members for referee letters.

-Guidelines for choosing comparison peers.  Peer sets should be selected to allow calibration of a candidate's distinction and recognition across a broadly defined field. All peers should be scholars who would be able to receive tenure at Stanford and who have tenure at an institution comparable to Stanford. Peers should be at or above the proposed rank of the candidate. Please include dates of highest degree conferral, academic recognition and awards, and other relevant distinctions that illustrate the quality of the comparison peers so that it is clear to reviewers these are appropriate peers in the field. Individuals selected for the peer set should be external to Stanford. In certain cases, comparison peers may also be used as referees. When soliciting referees who are also used as comparison peers, please remove the names of these individuals from the listed peers in the referee solicitation letter sent to them. Please review the School of Medicine Evidence Tables to see which faculty actions require comparison peers.

-Protected FTE for MCL Faculty.  The only requirement for protected FTE for MCL faculty is a minimum of 20% FTE for scholarly research. There is no policy on minimum or required FTE for clinical care, teaching and, if relevant, administrative duties. MCL Assistant Professors, Associate Professors and Professors with a fixed term of appointment are expected to discuss the proportionality of their contributions at annual counseling meetings with their department chair (or designate); this proportionality should be recorded on the annual counseling meeting form.

-Faculty Search Practice in Search Reports.  The new Provost’s guidelines for faculty searches require search committee members with conflicts of interest to step down from the committee to avoid any bias (real or perceived) in the selection of a top candidate. All searches going forward will need to adhere to this new policy (please consult OAA specifically case-by-case about small, focused searches where this practice may be difficult to adhere to). All concluding searches and searches that have already closed with the long form currently being finalized will understandably not be compliant with this required practice. In the search narratives for these cases, please indicate that the search was conducted according to School policy at the time, which required search committee members with conflicts of interest to be recused from discussion and voting on candidates with whom there was conflict. It is important that this is noted in the search narrative for successful review at the University level. 

-Faculty Lead on a Long Form.  In general, the faculty lead for a long form review should not be a collaborator or mentor of the faculty candidate. In cases where this is unavoidable, please ensure that the letters soliciting referees and trainees be authored by a non-mentor/non-collaborator to avoid any possible appearance of bias to evaluators. Additionally, the scholarly review section should preferably not be authored by a collaborator. If the scholarly role section is authored by a collaborator, please ensure that the article chosen for review is not one on-which this person collaborated.

-Review of Long Forms in Joint/Courtesy Departments.  For faculty members with joint or courtesy appointments in other SoM departments, the faculty member’s primary department takes the responsibility of appointment, reappointment and promotion actions. 

·         Faculty with joint appointments must be reviewed by both their primary and their joint department(s), and Chairs from these respective departments must countersign the long form. It is recommended that members from both departments are on the evaluation committee.  Faculty with courtesy appointments may have their courtesy appointment(s) renewed by FASA action if their long form is not reviewed and countersigned by the Chair of the courtesy department(s).

·         For joint appointments: After the action is considered and voted upon by the primary department, the long form is reviewed by the secondary department in accordance with that department’s standard procedures (e.g., a standing Appointments and Promotions Committee). 

·         For courtesy appointments: The Chair of the courtesy department countersigns the long form.  Individual departmental procedures may be established to inform the Chair’s decision (e.g., the Chair may have all courtesy faculty under review be reviewed by their Department A&P, or the Chair may simply review the long form themselves without A&P input – the Chair should establish a procedure and apply this to all files).

-Search and Evaluation Committee voting practices.  Members of search and evaluation committees can also vote at department A&P review. Members of search and evaluation committees can also author the evaluation of candidate and/or candidate’s role sections of the long form. However, members of search and evaluation committees cannot provide letters of recommendation for the candidate under review. 

-Administrative roles that need FASA Actions.  Certain faculty administrative appointments are tracked by the Provost’s office, and consequently need FASA actions to document these terms. These include appointments to Dean, Senior Associate Dean, Associate Dean, Vice Dean, Chair, Director of Centers, or Director of Institutes. All other administrative appointments do not need to be submitted via FASA.

-Mentors for Assistant Professor in Long Forms.  All long forms for Assistant Professors (appointments and reappointments) must include the faculty mentor(s) noted in the file. We ask that mentor(s) be named explicitly to ensure that junior faculty have a senior faculty member who can provide advice and support regarding scholarship, teaching, and/or clinical activities.

-Optional and omitted sections in Long Forms.  Certain long forms may not include content in all sections, either by design or by happenstance. For example, counseling memos are optional for particular actions and may not have been included in a long form, or teaching evaluations may not have been available and could not be included in a long form. In these cases, please include a brief annotation in the respective section indicating the reason for the absence of these materials (e.g., ‘a counseling memo is optional for this action and is not included;’ ‘teaching evaluations from the candidate’s previous institution were requested but could not be attained’). This additional information will help assure reviewers that the long form review was exhaustive and conscientious.

REMINDER:  All Professoriate actions will be launched through ByCommittee beginning April 17, 2017.  Please note that if you want any new appointments launched in FastFac before this date, you must send FCAN information to Ashley by this Thursday (tomorrow).  Any launches for reappointment or promotion must be sent to Rebecca or Audrey by Friday.  Effective April 17, FCAN information will not need to be sent to OAA to launch an action.
 
-Transcripts for new Assistant Professor appointments.  Transcripts are only required for new appointments to Assistant Professor for individuals without prior academic appointments (i.e. these are needed for candidates who are not already an Assistant Professor or higher at another Institution). Please include a copy of the candidate’s transcript of their highest degree (MD, DVM, and/or PhD) in the long form.
 
-External referee letters.  ‘External’ means external to Stanford and its affiliates. We recommend that you limit the number of external letters solicited from a candidate’s home institution, especially for new Associate and Full Professor appointments, where the majority of letters received should come from non-mentor, non-collaborator referees.
 
-% FTE for MCL Faculty.  The only requirement for % effort for MCL faculty is a minimum of 20% time protected for scholarship. The remaining proportion of time and effort dedicated to the areas of scholarship, clinical care, teaching and administration will depend upon the strategic goals and programmatic needs of the department and School, and should also take into consideration the interests and strengths of the faculty member.
 
-Faculty voices in a long form.  In the review of a faculty member, individuals should have only ‘one voice’ in a long form. Examples: a faculty member who authored the scholarship section should not also provide a referee letter; a faculty member who authored the scholarship section should not also vote on the long form at department A&P vote; a faculty member who is on the search committee cannot also provide a referee letter.
 
-CES form.  The Clinical Excellence Survey is required for all reappointment and promotion reviews of faculty with clinical duties. It is also required for appointments of new faculty who are internal to Stanford (namely CEs) to the Professoriate. Please ask all solicited trainees (current, former, external, and external) to complete the CES for the faculty candidate.
 
-Confidential documents.   Nearly all of the documentation we work on (search report, referee letters, evaluative statements, etc.) are sensitive and confidential information. These documents should not be circulated outside of evaluating committees for the privacy of those providing information and for the privacy of the candidates themselves.  Please be mindful of who is cc’d on emails containing sensitive information.
 
-Start Date calculator.   Please find on our homepage a helpful start date calculator. We hope this will be useful in estimating possible start dates for new Professoriate members.  
 
-Managing Conflicts of Interest during a Search.   Please find on the Faculty Searches page a helpful document on Managing Conflicts of Interest during a search.  This document is in line with the new Provost’s thoughts on faculty searches.  
 
-Soliciting Trainees – New Guidance.   Please find on the New Long Form Page a helpful document - Trainee Solicitation Guidelines.  This document summarizes the new policy and process for trainee grid approval. 

• -Questions during Faculty Searches.  If you have any questions during a search, such as – ‘Would this candidate be an appropriate Associate Professor MCL recruit?  Do I have a large enough candidate pool to pull a UTL candidate from?  A candidate with conflicts of interest with the search committee has emerged, how should I proceed with recusals/committee membership?  Is it possible to re-advertise this search to include broader criteria?’, please reach out to Rebecca or Audrey to consult. It is important to identify possible issues early on during the search process, when changes can still be made, to ensure successful review by the University later on.  
• -Diversity in Faculty Searches.  Faculty searches are obligated to make particular efforts to seek out qualified candidates who would bring diversity to the professoriate, including women and underrepresented minority candidates. Underrepresented minorities include Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, or American Indian/Alaskan Native candidates. Asian candidates are not considered underrepresented minorities.  In the search report, please explain efforts to broaden the search pool.  However, per University request, please do not include any discussion of women or URM candidates who were not included in the definitive pool.  (You may remember that this discussion used to be required, but now it is to be omitted.)
• -Conflicts of Interest in Faculty Searches.  Search committee members with a connection to a definitive pool candidate should step down from the search committee.  If they do not, they must recuse themselves from interviewing, discussing, ranking, or voting on “their” candidate.  In addition, search committee members should not be solicited for referee letters; if they are solicited, however, they must step down from the committee immediately and may not participate in the actions described above.  Please see the December 2016 Winter Quarterly follow-up email for more details on recusals during faculty searches and appropriate voting practice. 
• -Annual Counseling of Faculty.  Counseling meetings must be held with all junior faculty with a non-zero FTE in the department. For example, an Assistant Professor with a joint 50-50 appointment should have an annual counseling meeting in both departments.
• -Prior faculty experience.  For appointment to Assistant Professor in all lines, there are two different sets of requirements:  

1.  For candidates with no prior faculty experience
2.  For candidates with prior faculty experience or experience at Stanford (CE, Instructor, fellow, etc).

There are two important differences for the second group:

1.  Trainee letters are required
2.  Teaching evaluations and clinical evaluations must be requested. 

• Candidates who are faculty at other institutions should have teaching and clinical evaluations from their current position; these must be requested and included.  Candidates who are at Stanford already should have teaching evaluations (from MedHub, e.g.), and if they do not have recent clinical evaluations, these must be solicited.
• -Trainee solicitation – how many?   For Assistant Professor reappointments, and for promotions to Associate Professor for the UTL, NTLR, and MCL, all current and former trainees should be solicited for letters.  For those individuals with a large number of trainees (this generally applies to MCL faculty), please consult OAA to choose an appropriate sampling to solicit. In all cases, all trainees who have completed research projects with the faculty member should be solicited. In some cases, depending on the total number of trainees, only a sampling of clinical trainees will be solicited.
• -MCL Referee solicitation.   The referee solicitation letter for the MCL line requires the candidate’s distribution of effort (FTE). MCL faculty are reviewed based on their proportion of effort; for example, a candidate with 80% clinical/teaching and 20% scholarship would be seen differently compared to a candidate with 50% scholarship and 50% clinical/teaching effort.  This information is important for referees to have. The letter should contain the candidate’s FTE distribution during their current term. For new Assistant Professors with no previous faculty experience, the letter should still reference their recent FTE – this provides an accurate context for evaluating a candidate’s CV (i.e. number and quality of publications with regards to the time they have to work on scholarship, or number of trainees/mentees with respect to the effort they have dedicated to teaching/mentorship, etc.).
• -Internal Referees.   Internal referees may include UTL/NTL/MCL faculty at the rank of the proposed action. We do not recommend soliciting internal referees below the rank of the proposed action – e.g. an assistant professor for an associate professor reappointment.  Letters from Clinician Educators and ACF can be included, but do not count towards the minimum required number of letters. This means that if you need 3 letters, and you have 3 letters (2 MCL, 1 CE), you will still need one more letter for this action to be reviewed by the University.
• -Regarding documents not required in Long Form.   Certain elements such as candidate’s statements for new appointments, trainee letters for certain new assistant professor appointments, and clinical/teaching evaluations depending on the action are not required for the long form. The Provost’s office has requested that it is indicated that these documents are ‘Not included’ or ‘Not required’ for each of these sections with a brief explanation as to why these were not included in the long form.  This will be helpful in their review, as in some cases, they have been unsure whether documents have been inadvertently omitted.  
• -Memos for FASA actions.   FASA actions are required for: adding/changing Division/Department/School/Institute affiliation, extending an appointment, changing/reducing FTE, adding/renewing/removing non-primary appointments, providing notice of terminating appointments, and recall of Emeriti. Please provide a memo (by upload) for all FASA actions. Note that any change to a primary appointment – extension, FTE change, etc – needs to be counter-signed by the faculty member. This serves as acknowledgement by the candidate of the change to their appointment.
• -Reminder – launch of new long form delayed – tentatively March 1, 2017.   The anticipated start date for the transition to the new long form for all departments in the School of Medicine has been delayed. We would like to roll out the new long form with a system that will support the file assembly and review process, which is currently being customized for our use. The School of Medicine has contracted with Interfolio, Inc. to use their platform ByCommittee.  Please look for updates regarding system availability and training soon. In the meantime, please continue to use FastFac as you have in the past.

December 17, 2016  -  Follow Up to Winter Quarterly FAA Meeting

• -Please check the Department Contact List to make sure the most up to date information is available for your Department. Please contact Audrey to update or correct this information.  
• -Please use the Department On-Time Tracking sheet to track actions that will need to be reported on in August of each year.
• -On recusals during Faculty searches:  if a search committee member must be recused (either a collaborative or mentor/mentee relationship), the best practice is that the search committee member be recused on discussions pertaining to the candidate, as well as all ranking and voting of the search pool.  However, we do understand the difficulty this best practice can lead to in most Faculty searches, so it is ok for the recused search committee member to rank the other candidates relative to each other. The recused search committee member cannot participate in the final ranking/vote where the candidate with the conflict is added into the rank order, however.  If additional clarification is needed, please contact Audrey and Rebecca.  
• -On confidential conversations with trainees:  OAA will not provide additional guides/scripts for faculty who may conduct confidential conversations with trainees so as not to limit the candid openness of responses from trainees.  Besides the 2 questions in the trainee solicitation letter (below) – trainees should be given the liberty to provide whatever feedback they think is appropriate. This topic will be brought up in an upcoming Chairs/Chiefs workshop to provide these faculty members with best practices when conducting these conversations.  
  • 1) How well and in what capacity do you know Dr. _______________?
  • 2) How would you characterize Dr. _______________’s performance as a teacher/mentor?
• -Regarding confidentiality:  We have reviewed this question a bit further with Vice Dean Boxer. We would like to be able to balance the goal of transparency with confidentiality. We also want to avoid causing anxiety for the candidates should things not proceed as expected, since this can happen for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidate’s qualifications or the ultimate outcome of the review. Here is what we suggest:

Once review of a faculty candidate for appointment/reappointment/promotion has commenced, it is appropriate, if asked, to tell the candidate such general information as “we are currently collecting letters” or “we are gathering department documents for your file,” or “it is at the School review process” or “it is at the Provost’s Office.”  It is also fine to let them know what the typical review timeline is, and that they can find the meeting dates for School A&P committees, as well as the committee members, on the OAA website. But, it is also a good idea to qualify this by saying that there can be delays in the timing that have nothing to do with the individual candidate’s file, so they should not be concerned if the review is not completed within the expected time. We assume that departments will reinforce with the candidates that they also must respect the privacy of the process and not seek to discover confidential information from individuals inside or outside the University who may be involved in their review.

Please do not provide such specific information as “we are still waiting for four letters,” “it will be reviewed at the December 12 School A&P meeting,” “the file was sent to the Provost for review on December 21^st, and we expect to hear back by February 1,” etc.  Specific information provided by OAA to the Department FAA should provide you and your Chair with some context, however this information should not be passed on to the faculty candidate. 

• -The launch of the New Long Form has been postponed from 1/1/17. Currently, the new launch date is uncertain. Please stay tuned for additional updates in the new year.
• -Question from a fellow FAA:  Do other FAAs have a role in the on-boarding process in their departments?  Specifically, who handles the ‘getting started’ tasks (namely for the CE and Visitors that aren’t hired though HR)?   If FAAs from other departments could let me (Audrey) know, I will follow up with any resources FAAs would like made available, or processes that FAAs would like to share.  
•  

December 1, 2016

• -Year End Reporting of Professoriate long forms and annual counseling.  Chair incentives are tied to on-time faculty appointments/ reappointments/ promotions, as well as on-time annual counseling of junior faculty within their department. To aid FAAs in tracking this information, we have prepared a template for you to use. We will ask for this template to be turned in by August 31 of each year. To calculate whether an appointment/ reappointment/ promotion is late, we use the following guide – Long Forms are considered late if:
  • New appointment: the final long form is not received after approval of the search report/offer letter within 2 months for an Assistant Professor appointment or 3 months for an Associate/Full Professor appointment. If the new appointment is being pursued by a waiver – the long form is due 2 months (Assist Prof) or 3 months (Assoc/Full Prof) from the date that the waiver is approved by the Provost. We use the date of the email sent notifying the department of approval of the waiver or search report/offer letter.
  • Reappointment/Promotion: the final long form is not received 6 months after the launch of the long form, or the final long form is not received 6 months before the end of the candidate’s current appointment term, whichever is earlier. Ex. John Smith’s appointment ends 1/31/18, and the long form was launched 3/15/17. The long form is due either 7/31/17 (6 months before end of term) or 9/15/17 (6 months from launch), whichever is earlier. So in this case, the long form is due 7/31/17.
  • It is important that in all cases – we are considering the date we receive the FINAL long form, not the initial draft. If for some reason, the draft long form is in OAA for review for a long period of time (more than 2 weeks), we will add this time to extend the due date of the long form. We track the date we receive the final long form to make sure that revisions are made in a timely manner for A&P/APRC committee review.  
• -Faculty Workshops.  Upcoming and past faculty workshops are posted on the OAA website (Professoriate workshops and CE workshops). Content is also posted from these workshops on the website. Emails regarding these workshops are sent to the faculty directly. However, it may be useful for you to be aware of these upcoming workshops and the content presented.
• -Department File Storage.  Department faculty files must be kept indefinitely for the Professoriate population. For the CE population, Department faculty files need to be kept for at least 7 years after the faculty appointment termination. All materials from Department searches must be kept for 3 years after the close of the search (even if the search was unsuccessful).  
• -Search/Evaluation/and Department A&P Committee voting practices.  Membership on Search/Evaluation/and Department A&P committees may include CEs. However, CEs cannot be voting members of Evaluation or Department A&P committees on Professoriate actions. They may vote on Search committees.   Members of the Professoriate (UTL, MCL, NTL) who are on an Evaluation or Department A&P committee can only vote on faculty actions conferring rank equivalent to their own (i.e. an Associate Professor cannot vote on Full Professor actions, but may vote on actions granting rank to Associate Professor).  To be clear, on Search committees, all Professoriate and CE faculty are eligible voters.
• -Long Form Copies.  The final PDF version of a long form is distributed to the A&P/APRC committee one week in advance of the meeting to ensure adequate review time (see here for scheduled meetings). Hard copies of the long form are due to OAA (either at Page Mill or OAA mailbox in the Dean’s Suite 3^rd floor LKSC) by the morning of the actual day of the committee meeting. Immediately after committee review (assuming no requested edits from the committee), hard copies are delivered to the Dean for his review and signature. In OAA review, we scrutinize the PDF version carefully, but we do not carefully review the hard copies. Recently, we have had a few files returned from the Provost’s office for not being complete – missing the last few pages of the print out. Please be careful to check the hard copies for completeness before submitting to OAA. Also, please review the required copy numbers for each action here under Frequently Used on the right hand side.
• -FAA contact information.   We have received a few requests about providing an FAA roster list so that other Department FAAs know who to contact regarding particular actions such as joint appointments or courtesies. We would like to know if this is something you would like/are willing to have posted on the OAA website. We will go with the majority on this – if you would like, or not like this information made available on the OAA website, please let me know. If I have not heard from you, I will assume that this is ok to do.
•  

October 17, 2016

• -Ads for Searches.  Printed Ads are no longer required for School of Medicine searches. If a search Ad is only circulated in online journal formats, please provide a copy of the text as it appears online. Additionally, if there is an ongoing search in your Department, you may provide the Ad information on your Department website. To be clear, the search Ad must be posted in at least one online journal.
• -Rolling Searches.  Searches that are assigned several billets and remain open until the Department has found suitable candidates are known as rolling searches. This type of search is only available for MCL searches (not UTL or NTL). If your Department plans to hire multiple MCL faculty and can plan a broad advertisement, have your Chair talk to the Vice Dean about the possibility of using a rolling search. A rolling search allows for the selection of several MCL candidates from one search.
• -Regarding Searches and Known Candidates.  If a candidate has a mentoring or collaborative relationship with a search committee member, that member must step down, or be recused from all contact, discussions, ranking, and voting involving that candidate.  If the individual with a known relationship with an applicant is the Search Chair, that individual must step down and another faculty member with no conflict of interest must take over as Chair. The ‘former’ Search Chair may remain on the search committee, but must be recused from all discussions, etc, regarding the candidate.
• -Internal and external candidates during a Search.  It is very important that disparate treatment of internal and external candidates during the interview process does not happen. This search best practice is key to removing biases when conducting a search. Therefore, internal candidates should receive the same treatment, interview process, etc as external candidates.
• -Referees: Assistant Professors.  For new appointments to Assistant Professor (all lines), referee grids do not need to be approved by OAA. Additionally, candidates may suggest or solicit 3 or more referees.
• -Referees: Associate/Full Professors.   For all actions for Associate/Full Professors (all lines), referee grids and solicitation letters must be approved by OAA prior to solicitation. Candidates may suggest up to 3 total referees (internal and external combined). If additional referees are needed after the grid is approved (if perhaps some referees have declined or not responded, or were missed in the original submission of referees), the full grid must be re-submitted and re-approved by OAA. As a reminder, referees should be at the same rank, or higher than that of the candidate. For tenured appointments, the referees must also have tenure at an institution comparable to Stanford, or be experts in the field.
• -Regarding Trainee letters.   For Assistant Professor reappointments, and for promotions to Associate Professor for the UTL and NTLR, and for MCL with most of their FTE devoted to research, all current and former trainees should be solicited for letters. For all other actions, a complete list of current and former trainees should be provided by the candidate, and the Faculty Lead for the long form, or the Department Chair or Division Chief, should randomly select a mix of current and former trainees to solicit. Regardless of whether a trainee evaluation is positive or negative, if they choose to provide feedback by an anonymous phone call, they must be noted as anonymous in the trainee grid and identifying information must be redacted from the evaluation summary in the long form. Confidential conversations should not be conducted by FAAs – these must be handled by the Department Chair, Division Chief, or the Faculty Lead.
• -Who is a trainee.   A trainee is anyone who has benefited from direct mentorship/training from the Faculty member. It is preferable to solicit trainees who have worked for a significant period of time (currently or formerly) with the Faculty member for a more thorough/comprehensive evaluation. However, if the Faculty member has limited teaching/mentorship, including trainees who have been mentored in an ad hoc capacity are allowed. The faculty candidate should provide a full list with dates that a trainee worked with them, which should help the faculty lead, Department Chair, or Division Chief choose appropriate trainees to solicit.
• -Regarding teaching evaluations.   Formal teaching evaluations, if available, should be provided in summary form in the long form. If formal evaluations cannot be obtained, then aggregated informal teaching evaluations can also be included. Departments may want to make faculty members aware that OAA now has an official teaching evaluation template online (Under the Forms Repository – Other Forms – Professoriate and Clinician Educators) which can also be used as teaching evaluations in informal teaching environments.
• -Counseling memos.  In all counseling memos, please include the full text of the criteria for the next possible reappointment or promotion from the Faculty Handbook (Chapter 2 – Specific/Supplementary Criteria by rank/line) at the end of the memo. For example, in the counseling memo for a reappointment to Assistant Professor in the UTL, include the criteria for promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in the UTL.
• -Transmittal memos.  Transmittal memos are required if there are issues to address in a file (negative referee comments, low clinical/teaching scores, concerns about scholarly productivity, etc). The memo should address these as well as provide a plan/assessment of these critiques. In addition, transmittal memos are required for all UTL/NTL appointments, promotions, and reappointments for tenure or continuing term. They are not required for UTL/NTL reappointments for a term of years. Transmittal memos are also required for all actions conferring a continuing term in the MCL.
• -FASA actions and approvers.  FASA actions are required for: adding/changing Division/Department/School/Institute affiliation, extending an appointment, changing/reducing FTE, adding/renewing/removing non-primary appointments, providing notice of terminating appointments, and recall of Emeriti. Please provide a memo for all FASA actions. Note that any change to a primary appointment – extension, FTE change, etc – needs to be counter-signed by the faculty member. This serves as acknowledgement by the candidate of the change to their appointment. FASA actions should have approvers from all Departments associated with the FASA action (i.e. courtesies need approvers in both the primary and the courtesy Department). Once all Department approvers have reviewed the action, please assign either Rebecca or Audrey as the OAA approver, followed by Alexandra Obaya as the secondary OAA approver. The primary OAA approver (Rebecca or Audrey) depends on the primary appointment of the faculty member (i.e. if the home Department of the faculty member is with a Department that Audrey is the OAA manager for, please assign to her, and vice versa for Rebecca). Please assign the FASA action to the appropriate OAA approvers.
• -Reminder: FAA workshop – New Long Form on October 28 9:15-11:15am.  As a reminder, please RSVP http://doodle.com/poll/r5q9xpvdu9gx5v9p for this workshop. Unfortunately, food will not be provided, so bring whatever sustenance you may need.
•  

September 20, 2016

• -OAA to offer long form ‘case study’ sessions with FAAs. These will be one-on-one sit downs with either Rebecca or Audrey for 30 min to 1 hour long sessions. This is available for both new and experienced FAAs. We hope to provide you with feedback on the quality of files, answer questions you may have regarding some of the edits you have received, as well as provide additional context for why we request particular edits. If interested, please arrange a time with either Rebecca or Audrey and choose a specific long form recently reviewed to discuss at this case study.
• -Non-renewal of professoriate appointments: If a Department does not wish to reappoint or promote a professoriate faculty member (MCL/UTL/NTLR/NTLT), please have the Chair of your Department contact Dr. Boxer as early as possible in the process.  Non-renewals are very sensitive; the Chair and the Vice Dean must decide how to proceed before staff can take any steps.  Each is handled on an individual basis and may include review by the School or University and may include a terminal year of appointment.  If a terminal year is granted, Dr. Boxer and the Chair of the Department will collaborate on communication with the faculty member and the University.  Terminal years, just like normal appointments, are funded by the department.
  
• -Transmittal memos are required for all UTL/NTL appointments and promotions. They are not required for UTL/NTL reappointments for a term of years. Transmittal memos are also required for all actions conferring a continuing term in the MCL.
• -The 3 non-primary appointments offered in the School of Medicine for faculty:
  Joint > 0%,          where there is a shared billet, FTE and/or salary
  Joint at 0%          with no shared billet, FTE or salary, but substantial duties
  Courtesy              with minimal duties
  When submitting a FASA action to add a Joint at 0%, please use the appointment type ‘Sec Zero FTE 1’ – do not use Joint. This is for University data entry purposes.
• -Candidate’s statements are only required for reappointments and promotions. While statements are not required for new appointments, they are recommended, as it is the only opportunity for the candidate to have a ‘voice’ in their appointment review packet. Our aim is to have these appointments approved by the University, and if a candidate statement can increase the likelihood of that, it is a good idea. If a statement is provided, it must be included in the long form and also must be sent out to referees during the letter solicitation process.
• -To launch a reappointment or promotion, please send to either Rebecca or Audrey in one email:
  ·         candidate’s current CV
  ·         all annual counseling memos since the last faculty action
  ·         what action will be pursued (reappointment or promotion)
  ·         the term length (for a term of years or continuing term/tenure)
  
• -When sending in a draft offer letter for review, know that Faculty Compensation and OAA make edits to one draft shared between the two groups. So, please send a draft offer letter to both OAA and FacComp at the same time (cc all involved in one email), so only one edited draft is created for each candidate.
  
• -Regarding CVs. Please ask candidates to note their role in their grants section (PI, Co-Pi, Co-Investigators, etc). Also, please reiterate to candidates that they should separate peer-reviewed original research (which may, if substantial enough, include case studies, literature reviews, etc) from other peer-reviewed articles (editorials, letters, commentary, opinions, etc). The A&P and APRC committees review CVs in detail and both of the above issues have been discussed by the committees. In some cases, a long form will be held up for a revised CV before being sent for University review, causing delays.
•