Promotions & Tenure Committee Case School of Engineering September 8, 2009 Amanda Shaffer, Interim...

Promotions & Tenure CommitteeCase School of Engineering

September 8, 2009

Amanda Shaffer,Interim Faculty Diversity Officer

Manager of Faculty Diversity and Development

[email protected] www.case.edu/president/aaction/aaeeo.html

Equitable Policies Consistently Applied

The purpose of this discussion to assist committee members to identifying and becomeaware of subtle bias and how it manifests itself inevaluation.

The Merriam-Webster defines bias as “an inclination oftemperament or outlook; especially: a personal andsometimes unreasoned judgment; (2): systematic errorintroduced into sampling or testing by selecting orencouraging one outcome or answer over others.”

Amanda Shaffer, Interim Faculty Diversity Officer, CWRU, 2009

Working Definition

• Our definition of bias as implying “an unreasoned and unfair distortion of judgment in favor of, or against, a person or thing.”

• Bias in mentoring, career development and P&T involves judgments or actions that reflect preferences typically held by individuals and expressed either in overt or subtle ways.

• Bias is often dependant on the culture of the institution, school or college.

• Bias can be negative or positive.


Five Common Forms of Bias

1. Age

2. Resource Allocation

3. Service

4. Gender

5. Race• Bias is often dependant on the culture of the

institution, school or college. • Bias can be negative or positive.


Examples of Age Bias

• Favoring those who followed a similar track as yourself

• Or against older candidates who remained instructors for a significant amount of time


Examples of Resource Bias

• Allocation of financial, space, and equipment

resources can be inequitable

• Senior people who “paid their dues” get priority in

graduate student assignment

• The bigger the investment by the institution, the

more the person should prove they are worthy - this

is usually a positive bias for men, and a negative bias

for women and minority candidatesAmanda Shaffer, Interim Faculty Diversity Officer, CWRU, 2009

Examples of Service Bias

Women and minorities “choose” to do too much service to the

detriment of their scholarship

• Assignment of committee and other service duties can be a heavy burden if you are the only woman or minority expected to provide diversity to committees and advise women/minority students

• Consider if they really have the option of saying no to their chair or dean to these assignments

• Consider if mentoring or advising women/minority students is part of their identity.

• Consider the value of this kind of specialized service to the department, school, university


Examples of Gender Bias - Three Issues

1. Women can be viewed a “less serious” about their careers Which automatically makes their CV less impressive

2. Stopping the tenure clock can be viewed as “extra time”Maternity leave or stopping the tenure clock does not give

anyone extra time and does not mean they should be “extra productive”. All cases should be reviewed according to the standard number of years.

2. Tenure is “his to lose, and hers to earn” A national study showed gender stereotyping in

evaluation of CVs. Male candidates were preferred twice as often as female, with reviewers rating “his”CV above an identical CV with a female name. For tenure, the reviewers were 4X more likely to ask for supporting evidence about the woman’s record, such as proof that she had won her grants on her own. Amanda Shaffer, Interim Faculty

Diversity Officer, CWRU, 2009

Examples of Race Bias

• Many of the same expectations of low productivity apply to faculty of color. (They are less serious, they are here because of Affirmative Action not talent.)

• This requires them to be more productive in order to be considered comparable to their peers.


Other areas of potential bias

Teaching evaluations research shows they are more negative for women

Engaging in interdisciplinary/multidisciplinary research bias toward independent research

Ethnicity see race and gender above

Forums for publishing and presentation specialized can be viewed as less impactful

Selection of review committee representation Disorganized CV or tenure file

should reflect negatively on chair, department, mentors!


Other areas of potential bias

"We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are."— Talmud

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/925105/lightness_illusion/


http://www.metacafe.com/watch/925105/lightness_illusion/

Which square is darker A or B?


The squares are the same shade of greyhttp://web.mit.edu/persci/people/adelson/


What else do we miss even though it is there?


Questions to Ask Yourself to Understand the Way Your Preferences Influence Your Decision-Making

1. Has this person received the appropriate resources? Did they receive the resources promised to them in their startup? Consider the impact of resources and resource allocation (including

office/lab space, administrative assistance) on the careers of young faculty over the last 5 years.

2. How will the committee consider gaps in the record, leaves of absence or tenure clock stoppage? Variations in performance over a period can be evaluated by looking at:a. Average annual productivity?

b. Will achievements be viewed as cumulative (career-long) or just during the employment at the university?

c. Was there high productivity in the 1-2 year period just before the decision?

d. Individual productivity related to comparable peers at the university and/or in the discipline?



3. Is the feedback provided by the chair in the annual reviews

consistently valid, pertinent, and useful to the career

development of the faculty member under review?

4. What approaches to evaluating collaboration might be

appropriate? With regard to collaboration, identify the

advantages and disadvantages to collaborating and address

the difficulties related to the assessment of collaboration for

tenure and promotion.



5. How do assumptions about gender and ethnicity influence your reading of this case? Is a heavier service burden in evidence? Are there any additional positive benefits to the institution when the female or minority faculty members participate in this type of service? This is generally where women and minority faculty are unfairly taken to task for not saying “no” to excess service, when saying “no” is not a real option for them.

6. How will you measure the candidate’s impact on graduate students? Beyond number you can consider retention, quality, graduation rate, post-graduate success, and satisfaction as additional mechanisms for measuring success.



7. Consider how gender and family responsibilities are coupled - in other words, is there a difference between considering family responsibilities for cases of male and female faculty members? Does parental status affect arguments for or against a case? Traditionally men with families are viewed as stable and settled, while women with families are considered to be not serious about their careers.

8. What is your responsibility as a reviewer to notice potential issues of bias for the committee?

9. Consider how, or if, committees this committee should weigh past performance against a bet of future performance with regard to the tenure decision.


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