Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Personnel
Academic Senate Council on Academic Personnel
To: Deans, Department Chairs and Academic Senate Faculty
Dear Colleagues:
As we continue to navigate through challenging times, we encourage faculty to apply Achievement Relative to Opportunity (ARO) principles when preparing and reviewing academic dossiers. ARO principles, as originally outlined in the Joint Senate-Administration Mitigating COVID-19 Impacts on Faculty Working Group Final Report (2022), “enable merit and promotion reviews to evaluate candidates fairly based on their individual review-period professional accomplishments by taking into account unexpected or disruptive circumstances during that period that may have curtailed the candidate’s normal ability to achieve expected outcomes."
External disruptions — such as industry strikes, changes in funding priorities and natural disasters — may impact faculty teaching, research or service. If you have encountered such challenges, we encourage you to include an impact statement in your dossier self-statement to contextualize these disruptions while highlighting your adaptive strategies, alternative contributions and overall academic impact. Faculty are also encouraged to consult with their chairs to explore potential opportunities to adjust their portfolios in response to disruptions. The ability to pivot when necessary is considered a positive attribute in a career trajectory.
Evaluations and letters from review committees, chairs and deans for the dossier should include context on department-wide or discipline-wide impacts and should evaluate faculty dossiers holistically, ensuring that ARO principles are integrated into merit and promotion considerations. Specifically, they should:
- Assess achievements relative to available opportunities rather than applying rigid productivity metrics.
- Recognize disruptions beyond faculty control and acknowledge alternative forms of scholarly contributions.
- Apply a flexible balance in evaluating criteria, considering how external constraints may have shifted faculty workload.
Faculty are further encouraged to reach out to department chairs or the Academic Affairs and Personnel Office for further guidance on preparing their self-statements.
Sincerely,
Michael S. Levine
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Personnel
