ARC Laureate Professor John Grundy

June 2008 (updated 2011, 2012, 2019, 2020, 2021)

I prepared this to try and assist people applying for academic promotions. I ended up saying the same things again and again so thought I’d write them down.

Please make sure you read in conjunction with your latest University promotions policy and procedures!! They do vary quite a lot. These are simply some guidelines I have found useful sharing with others in the past and should be taken as my personal suggestions only. Every university and every promotions panel is similar in some respects, but different in others.

Basic Principles

From my experience on several promotions committees, being a Dean, Deputy Dean, Head of School/Head of Department - and from being promoted myself:

• Virtually no one on the committee will know you / will be familiar with your research / will understand your discipline norms (publication venues, quality measures, and – to a lesser degree - teaching approaches and measures, and service expectations). This is especially true for university-wide promotions committees. In fact, anyone on the committee from your department/faculty may have to leave the room when your case is discussed!

• Thus YOUR APPLICATION must make your case (very) clear

• You must make a case for promotion – usually this is showing you are performing at the level you are seeking promotion to (and are likely to continue performing at that level)

• Your promotion application and referees reports are basically the only place information will come from for the promotions committee – if you don’t make the case in your application, and your referees back it up, you likely won’t get promoted

• Solid evidence is needed to back up your claims

• Please don’t fabricate or embellish – its pretty obvious and consequences can be (very) severe

• Sometimes there may be an interview with the committee - this is usually just to clarify committee questions or ask about future plans etc and should be used to reinforce key information in your application, not be instead of it

• Remember the outcome is not personal – the committee is dispassionately evaluating demonstrated performance against required performance levels. Its not whether “you are good enough” – is whether your demonstrated performance good enough??? (not what you think your performance is – what is demonstrated)

• Try and stand out from the crowd - If your university has one or more academic promotion application examples you could use these for guidelines, and you should certainly follow any requirements about length, content etc. You could also ask recently successful colleagues for a copy of their successful application to learn from. But I caution against making your own application too cookie-cutter same-old-same-old as everyone else - what is unique, stand-out about you and your case for promotion?

• Rather than just counting numbers (papers, teaching scores, grant $, social media posts, citations, etc) - what impact have you made on the Department / Faculty / University / Society / World as a whole? Can you tell a compelling story around this while showing you meet the criteria for promotion?

• If you are in doubt about getting a successful result, or know you are really very unlikely to get it but are “having a go anyway” - please think very carefully whether now is the right time to apply or not. Despite me being told many times in the past “Well, I don’t really care if I get promoted or not…” – when someone gets the letter saying something along the lines of “Thanks very much for your service to the university and application for promotion – but we regret to tellyou that on this occasion it has been unsuccessful…” - they generally always get pretty upset.

All the best with your application!!!

Statement/Overview

• Most promotions processes require a 1-2 page statement of intent or summary. Use this wisely as it makes a big impression on the committee. Saying you feel “entitled” to promotion due to e.g. how great a person you are, how long you have served, how much more you deserve than everyone else, how much better you are performing than everyone else generally isn’t very convincing…

• State you believe you are performing at SL/AP/P level (the level you are seeking!) and your application contains substantive evidence to back this claim up

• Summarise your areas of performance/ key areas you are justifying your promotion on / link to the performance expectations of your University. The later is important, as that is what the committee uses to base its judgement on. If they can’t clearly see you are meeting the performance expectations of the grade for which you are applying, they won’t promote you to it

• What makes you stand out from the crowd? Particularly meritorious performance? Particularly important contribution(s)? What makes your case for promotion strong?

• Can you give an indication of likely FUTURE performance, especially if you gain this promotion? Ideally we want successful promotion applications to continue their great performance / trajectory.

• Keep it concise, impersonal and to the point. Refer to the detailed evidence that is coming later in the application to back up your assertions

Research

Describe the things you are passionate about in research and scholarship. What are the problems you want to solve? What do you like to investigate? What impact has your work had - in the research community but also beyond that. What have been your major findings/successes? What are your best ~3-5 papers (vs a laundry-list of papers/venues)?

The key metrics you can talk about of course are:

• Publications in appropriate venues of high repute - I suggest focus on small number of your highest quality works - the works, their impact and the scholarship they embody, and not the venue they happen to be in (which is only a proxy, at best, for quality...)

• Presentations, performances, well regarded commentary, software, designs, commissioned reports, standards, guidelines etc - as appropriate to your discipline - sometimes called "non-traditional outputs" - some disciplines these are more important, appropriate than refereed publications e.g. in the fine arts, performing arts, law, architecture etc.

• Grant income - this is an input, not an output i.e. helps fund research and is not an end in itself - what research work did it underpin? Who did you win the funding with? What research/impact did it translate into?

• Research student supervision and completions - PhDs, Masters, Honors - names, years, if main or co-supervisor - where did the graduates go (academic, industry, government, not-for-profit organisation positions)?

• Impact indicators (citations, favourable citations, favourable reviews, uptake of work by others including industry, …) - I prefer not to see quotes of impact factor of venues, venue rankings etc as they are always dubious indicators

• Prestige indicators (fellowships, editorial boards, prizes, conference committees etc)

Other indicators can be

• Patents, commercialisation income

• National or international professional standards influenced

• Key research leadership positions (see also below)

Some people include refereeing, committees, editorial work etc here. I prefer to see this under “Service” – in part because many people have very weak service portfolios otherwise! But up to you.

I suggest start with a summary of

• Your areas of research specialty

• Key standout achievements (top impact research, highly cited works, things that have made a demonstrable difference in your area)

• Projects you are doing/recently done/plan to do (a tad forward looking I think is nice)

Publications:

• Indicate quality – comment on the novelty, importance and impact of the work embodied; I suggest quote paper citations/field weighted citation impact if you feel you must quote numbers - vs venue impact factor/ranking, which is a proxy - at best - for publication quality

• Indicate impact (citations, which others have used your outcomes in their work e.g. specific leaders in your field who cite it, industry take-up/influence, patents referencing work, policy change influenced by work, ...)

• Quality is in my view much more convincing than quantity, but after establishing quality, quantity is nice to have too!

Grants:

• External income is often viewed as very important – where from, how much, for how long

• Who was the “lead PI” – you? Someone else? If someone else, realistically how important was your contribution to the proposal? To the project?

• Internal e.g. Uni or Faculty grants – is generally not very impressive, unless you are quite junior. Senior people are expected to get external income!

• How hard is the grant to get? E.g. New Zealand Marsden is 5% success rate – pretty impressive to get one!!! ARC Laureate about10% ;-). ARC Discovery ~20%. Was it from industry? International source that is really hard to get $ out of if an overseas collaborator e.g. NSF or ESPRC?

• Donations or consumables are good if competitively allocated e.g. time on supercomputer, equipment from industry partner.

• In-kind is sometimes useful to indicate e.g. if from industry partner, but usually less impressive than straight $ to the committees

• Does it show e.g. impact in some way e.g. industry partner or government agency commissioned the work and uses it

• How did the grant translate into research outcomes, impact

• Don’t put consulting income/work here – put under Service (to community)

Research students:

• Some people put under “teaching” but I think its best here

• Who, what is their project, when started/finished, indicate publications that came out of project, where they went to after graduation (i.e. what did your supervision prepare them for)

• Quality is good; so is quantity (so long as good outcomes!)

Teaching

Prepare a Teaching Portfolio – there are lots of guidelines on doing one of these. I summarise below. Get help from someone if you need to.

• Outline your teaching philosophy - how do you help your students gain knowledge and skills?

• Summarise your key areas of specialty and experiences – range of units taught etc

• Teaching publications if you have some – these always impress (if good quality) – same as in research section (you might choose to use there if your research specialty is education)

• Summarise key areas of innovation e.g. teaching approaches; development e.g. new units in your area of expertise

• Indicate what special things you bring to your teaching

Give indicators of teaching quality. This can be a tricky one, but again if you give nothing to back up your claims, the committee simply won’t believe them (or will treat with a large degree of skepticism)

• Student evaluations of teaching – you MUST summarise these and speak to them – if some are not so great, then why? What did you do to address negative feedback? Are they trending up or down or staying about the same? Are they for big units, introductory or for post-grad, small units (the former are usually much harder to get very good student feedback on, for a variety of reasons). Not including these suggests to the committee they are poor – or you didn’t collect any, which is at least as bad in the committee’s mind.

Personally I am not a great fan of student evaluations of teaching and the prominence put on them - most students are hardly pedagogical experts (though they do deserve to have their views heard) - but we may have to wait for a while for change... The sexist, ageism, racism and other highly unacceptable comments in many reviews is also very damaging.

• Improvements in pass rate or other student performance measures – these can be helpful especially if the unit historically has issues with these.

• Peer reviews of your teaching - get a trusted colleague to review your outlines, assignments, exams, teaching style (get them to come to a lecture!), etc. You can ask someone outside your uni to do this too of course, which can be good. I am a big fan of these especially if undertaken by education research and practice experts.

• Benchmarking – compare your unit to one offered at another uni. Maybe even discuss it with the teacher of that unit! Get their peer review of your unit design etc. I am also a big fan of this approach.

• Feedback from past students especially if they have gone onto interesting roles in the community/industry and their comments reflect back how helpful you / your teaching / your unit was.

• Accreditor feedback on your unit e.g. from an IPENZ/Engineers Australia review document – if positive!

• Publications based on your unit(s) – these are always impressive!

The biggest problem I have seen over the years with teaching portfolios is lack of evidence for quality of teaching and ignoring negative student feedback (especially when the students seem to have a point and the same issues keep getting flagged).

Service

Sometimes this is called “Leadership” or “Administration”. Sometimes these are separate sections. Key areas include:

• Service to university – including department and faculty – what key admin roles, committees, tasks done, outcomes achieved. You really need to show that you did more than just warm a seat on a committee or panel. What can you demonstrate – with appropriate evidence – was your key contributions? What difference did you make??

• Service to discipline – refereeing, conference organizing, editorial boards, programme committees, running events, professional discipline body memberships, etc. Again – what is the evidence for quality? There are heaps of weak, low repute conferences and journals these days – being a PC member is hardly a mark of distinction! Show this is a top or very good venue. Indicate the top people in the world in this area are also members. Just being MACM isn’t impressive at all – what events have you been to, organized, what difference have you made??

• Service to community – I include service to industry here e.g. your consulting work done, pro bono work e.g. supervising student team working for a not-for-profit, etc. What evidence do you have this is important/impressive?

This is often a weak portfolio for many people. For senior promotions, a lot is really expected by the panel these days e.g. deputy Head roles; Associate Dean; chairing a uni or Faculty committee; substantive discipline service. This is the one portfolio where time is really needed – being chair of an important committee for 3 months is not very impressive at all; but 3 years is!

Performance Relative to Opportunity

Sometimes you need to explain challenges you have faced in your career that put the above portfolios into context. You should take the opportunity to do this as again the promotion panel is very unlikely to know the issues and circumstances. Promotion applications are highly sensitive and confidential and you should consider what you might want to reveal. Describe the circumstances succinctly and clearly the impact on your career performance, even if it was some time ago. Lost opportunities in the past may still impact you today. Some but by no means all examples:

• serious personal medical issue

• serious medical issue for close relative, especially if you had primary or significant caring responsibilities

• new child (gave birth, adopted, your partner gave birth) and period of leave

• worked part-time for a period (for whatever reason)

• moved from industry to academic role

• period of unemployment or in a non-research / non-teaching role

• moved country, moved university

• large service role impacting teaching and research

• clearly biased student reviews

• suffered from domestic violence, been a refugee, have post-traumatic injury or other very serious and debilitating experience

Referees

Often you need to nominate referees, especially for senior level promotions. Good referee reports are ESSENTIAL. Some suggestions when choosing your referees:

• Choose people who are well-known in your discipline, preferably are "Professor XYZ" and work at a prestigious institution. Yes I know, I know - this suggests bias towards "Professor" title and perceived "prestige" - but promotions committees generally like to see these sorts of referees. Give them what they want if you can.

• Choose someone who actually knows you and can comment on your work well.

• Choose someone who will actually send in a referee report by the deadline.

• Choose someone who will write a good referee report, will follow the template (if there is one)

Interview

As noted above, sometimes you are asked to attend, or given the option to attend, an interview by the promotions panel. If you have the option to do this, I suggest you do it.

As with all other interviews:

• Prepare in advance vs try and "wing it" ; its not a good time to make a bad faut pas, especially if your promotion case the panel think is borderline - this is the chance to push it over the line (not under!)

• Sometimes you are asked to do a short 5-10min presentation and then are asked questions. Sometimes the panel just asks you questions. Sometimes you are told these in advance, or in broad terms, but more often than not you are not sure what you will be asked.

• If giving a presentation, focus on on the FUTURE more than the PAST - the panel has all your information in the application about your achievements to date. Summarise BRIEFLY your key outstanding achievements, impact, points of difference, a bit like in the covering/overview statement (see above). Then summarise your key directions/plans/expected outcomes & impact in research, teaching and service. If it is a senior level promotion, focus on leadership in all areas vs your own personal planned achievements.

• Some of the sorts of common queries of the panel are:

  • What is your most significant publication to date? Why?

  • Tell us about a planned project you will do and grant you will apply for

  • We see you didn't get great student responses for unit/course/class XYZ - why was that? What did you do / are you planning to do to address this?

  • What is your strategy for recruiting strong graduate students?

  • When you served on Committee ABC / in role DEF, what was the key difference you made? How did you go about building a team to tackle the key issues in this portfolio?

  • We notice you are not on any top journal editorial boards / conference committees yet. How might you get such an invitation?

  • How do you go about finding and working with industry / community / government partners in your research and outreach?

  • What is especially strong about your recent performance that we should promote you?

  • Where do you want to be in 3 / 5 / 10 years time? [ HINT: in your CAREER, not which University - especially if its not the one you are currently working at :-) ]

ALL THE VERY BEST WITH YOUR PROMOTION APPLICATION!!!

If you found this helpful, or have suggestions/feedback for improvement, please do let me know at john.grundy@monash.edu