"Cases & Questions" Development
Content — Annotated (Color-Coded) Career Account
This is a case summary, or unofficial accounts, of candidate's career. This account is annotated, or color-coded; non-coded accounts are written without biases and procedural issues highlighted, and are used in all ADEPT activities. Consistent formatting was done using a template.
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Arthur Stevens (annotated)
Mechanical Engineering
ISSUES: publication venues, order of listing of authors, contribution to articles
Arthur Stevens, Associate Professor in Mechanical Engineering working
in the area of automatic control systems, came up for promotion to full
professor after five years in grade. He published 35 articles during
his 10 years at the university; 17 of these articles appeared in
conference proceedings. One of his articles won a best paper award
within an ASME session devoted to novel advances in control of smart
structures. Stevens was almost always listed as last author of his
collaborative publications, except for two papers listing him as first
author. His collaborators were almost all graduate students. He never
published an article, book, or conference proceeding as the sole
author. He applied for one provisional patent in his sixth year, but
did not pursue the full patent agreement when it came to term.
Regarded as a capable, confident teacher who offered a range of
required and elective courses needed by the unit, Stevens’ teaching
averages on his student evaluations ranged from 3.8 to 4.2 in
undergraduate courses and from 4.3 to 4.5 in graduate courses (on a
five-point scale). A number of undergraduates remark on evaluations
ranging over recent years that Stevens is “very accessible” and an
“interesting lecturer” who provides “wonderful illustrations and
graphics” to get across his points. Although he has been nominated for
his school’s teaching award, he has never received it. He carries the
load in teaching courses in his area. Graduate students in his research
group attest to his willingness to advise them regarding career
prospects in academe and industry. Some students express amazement at
his accessibility compared with other faculty.
Stevens managed to support his research group
with a steady funding level of $200,000 per annum average, slightly
below department norms (PTAC survey results on importance of funding as measure of intellectual products). He was a good citizen, serving diligently and effectively on several different school-level committees. As a good deal of his research has commercial application, much of his funding has come from industrial sources (bias on funding sources, basic versus applied).
Stevens never served on university-level committees, nor did he take
leadership roles in scholarly and professional organizations, although
his collaborative articles have established his international research
reputation in the field; two of the five articles submitted with his
promotion curriculum vita (cv) were termed “breakthrough” and “now classic” by two
external reviewers. One
committee member comments that it is her understanding that his field
is fairly specialized and small, so it is possible that the reviewers
are too familiar with the candidate; she points out that both glowing
reviews come from faculty who shared the same graduate institution as
Stevens (best practices on entertaining letters of reference).
Some members of the school-level promotion and
tenure committee endorse promoting Stevens to full professor because he
is a good citizen and a "good guy" (bias report on gender).
They argue that if he does not get promoted, it might upset him and
there is no point of that. Others question whether his publication
record is adequate for such a promotion. One member is concerned that
17 journal articles in ten years "is not competitive," as many current
applicants who have done post docs already have 5-10. Another member is concerned that only half of Stevens' papers are from refereed journal articles, (best practices on intellectual products; PTAC survey results) while yet another member argues that as the last author, Stevens had little technical input into these papers (bias report on order of references; PTAC survey findings). As a member of the committee, how would you respond to these concerns and ensure that Stevens receives a fair evaluation?
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