What goes in a promotion packet

The pieces of a packet

Each school publishes its list on its faculty affairs pages. The list can change with your rank and your track. The table draws on one list from each of three schools. Harvard Medical School (HMS) lists the dossier for Associate Professor. Stanford Medicine lists the file for its Clinician Educators. UCSF lists the packet for its Ladder Rank, In Residence and Clinical X series, for packets effective on or after July 1, 2027. A school missing from a row does not name that piece in its list.

You write some pieces, and your department gathers the rest. At HMS, the department prepares the dossier and submits it. Stanford says its Clinician Educator files “are assembled by the department”. At HMS, the candidate may be asked for a list of potential letter writers, and the department head asks for the letters. HMS asks candidates not to contact letter writers directly.

Your CV in the school’s format

Your CV is the one piece all three schools ask you to write. Stanford calls the CV and the candidate’s statement “the faculty member's voice in their reappointment and promotion considerations”. Stanford sends both to the internal and external referees who write letters on the case.

Each school sets its own CV format. HMS asks for the “Candidate’s CV in the Faculty of Medicine format”. Stanford asks that peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed publications be listed separately. Stanford also asks candidates to leave out publications in preparation, citation metrics and impact factors.

Selected works and middle-author papers

An HMS dossier for Associate Professor lists “Five (5) significant scholarly works identified by circling the number next to the citation”. You select them yourself. For promotion to Professor, HMS asks for an annotated list of your ten most significant scholarly works.

If you select a paper on which you are a middle author, explain your part in it. HMS says “the candidate must describe in writing the contribution to the manuscript”. Stanford recommends annotating every article from your current faculty term on which you were not first or senior author, “explaining your role in the study”.

Tracks, lines and areas of excellence

Schools group their faculty in different ways, and each group has its own criteria for promotion.

• Stanford’s Professoriate has four lines: the University Tenure Line, the University Medical Line, and two Non-Tenure Lines, one for research and one for teaching.
• Stanford’s Clinician Educators form a line of their own. Their major criterion is “excellence in the overall mix of clinical care, teaching, administration and/or scholarship appropriate to the programmatic need the individual is expected to fulfill”.
• At HMS, areas of excellence (AoEs) apply to appointments and promotions at Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor and Professor in Residence. Promotion to Assistant Professor by Longer Service criteria, which require at least ten years of service, takes no AoE. There are three: Investigation, Clinical Expertise and Innovation, and Teaching and Educational Leadership. “The determination of the AoE is ultimately made by the Department Head (or their designee) in consultation with the candidate”.
• UCSF reviews faculty by academic series, such as Ladder Rank (tenure track), In Residence, Clinical X, Health Sciences Clinical or Adjunct.

Tenure runs on a clock in some departments. At HMS, appointments and promotions in the Basic and Social Science Departments “are governed by a tenure clock”. In the HMS clinical departments, “there is no required time by which a promotion must be considered”.

Promotion to full professor

HMS asks for more letters for Professor than for Associate Professor. An HMS dossier for Associate Professor needs at least six letters. For Professor, HMS’s Office for Faculty Affairs asks at least 12 leaders in the field from outside Harvard, generally professors, for letters. Each is asked to compare the candidate with 3 to 5 professors in the field. Six Harvard professors from outside the candidate’s department also write. An ad hoc committee then looks for “evidence of impact on the field and of a national and often international reputation”.

For Stanford’s Clinician Educators, the rank of Clinical Associate Professor calls for “regional recognition as superior clinicians, teachers, institutional leaders and/or scholars”. The rank of Clinical Professor calls for “national recognition” in the same roles.

Who decides when you go up

At HMS, “Academic Department Heads are the only individuals who can propose candidates for promotion”. The process starts with a meeting with the department head or a designee, “ideally as part of the annual career conference”. For Associate Professor, the department’s Executive Committee, then HMS’s Promotions, Reappointments and Appointments Committee and then the Dean each make a recommendation. The University makes the final decision.

The LCME accredits MD programs. Its standards ask that each faculty member receive regularly scheduled and timely feedback on progress toward promotion. The guide to faculty activity reporting covers those yearly reviews.

Get your CV ready in ScienceDex

1. 1

   Bring in your CV. Import a Word CV or your ORCID record, or add papers by PubMed ID or DOI. You check each imported entry.

2. 2

   Pick your school’s format. Choose your school’s format. If your school is not listed, choose AAMC, a generic academic medical CV. The format sets your sections and your Word file.

3. 3

   Set your target. Choose the rank, and appointment or promotion. The HMS format also prints the area of excellence you choose. The target sets the readiness checklist.

4. 4

   Mark your selected works. Turn on Selected significant work for each paper you choose. A selected middle-author paper takes a short note on what you did: design, analysis, writing or supervision.

5. 5

   Read packet readiness. Seven checks read your target, header basics, education, appointments, publications, selected works and middle-author notes. Each check has an Open button that takes you to the part of your CV it reads.

6. 6

   Download the file. Download a Word file you can edit, or print the CV and save it as a PDF.

For an Associate Professor target, the selected works check looks for five, the number HMS asks for. Packet readiness, the share of the seven checks your CV meets, shows beside your CV and on your dashboard. You write the Narrative report: your area of excellence and your record in plain sentences. It prints at the end of your CV.

Each school’s format page has a note on selected works: Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medicine and UCSF.

Faculty privacy sets out who can open your CV.