Outside Letters

Ideal Set:

A = Strong Relationship

B = Distant Relationship

C = Fully Independent

Candidate Suggested Letter writers:    Provide a list of names of persons (external) to be solicited for letters of evaluation. In addition to contact information, please include:

•  brief commentary on the academic standing of each proposed reviewer and 

• the relationship (strong, distant, fully independent). 

At this time, we suggest submitting no more than five names. The Department will select some of your recommendations and add additional names. The complete list of solicited letters will go forward with your file.

Required at: Tenure, Assoc to Full, Above Scale

Rank of letter writers: For promotion to Associate or Full Professor, letter writers must be at or above the rank for which the candidate is being evaluated

Number of letters: Five to six letters are required and typically sufficient, but more might be needed if completely independent evaluators can’t be obtained for some reason (e.g., participation in many large collaborations). If the recommendation is for a big jump (i.e., AC or AC1, or even more during a Career Equity Review), the independence and stature of the letter writers will matter more.

Faculty member at another UC campus. Files with external letters should normally contain at least one letter from a faculty member at another UC campus. For a career equity review, there should generally be at least two letters from faculty at other UC campuses

Independent Individuals:  At least four of the external letters must be from individuals independent of the candidate and with no close professional relationship. Department-suggested solicited letters should generally be from fully independent letter writers.

Relationship of letter writer to person being evaluated:

a.  Evaluators with a strong relationship to the candidate: Ph.D. advisors and postdoc mentors are always viewed as having a strong relationship to the person under review and can never be viewed as independent. Letters from these individuals have value when evaluating files for promotion from Assistant to Associate Professor because they can attest to research independence, especially if the person under review has ongoing collaborations with a mentor. Letters from these individuals are viewed as having little value at subsequent promotions and are not being counted toward the minimum number of required letters in those actions by the current CAP and CP/EVC. Co-authors on papers and collaborators on grants and major projects during the last 5 years are also viewed as having a strong relationship with the candidate.

b.  Distant Collaborators: Co-authors on papers and collaborators on grants and major projects from more than 5 years ago are considered distant collaborators of your candidate. The fewer the number of co-authored papers and the more distant the time of last collaboration, the more independent the letter will be viewed.  Note:  overlapping time as grad students/postdocs makes the relationship distant at the very least. In particular, if they are in the same research group.

c.   Fully Independent Evaluators: People who are not mentors and who have never collaborated with the person under review as co-authors, co-PIs, or on major projects are considered entirely independent.