This page provides my own sense of how tenure cases are decided at Colby. Below, you can find some specific potential strategies for making the best case, given the current ways of doing things. Note that this is all the opinion of a failed tenure candidate, so you should factor that into any weight you give to my ramblings.
The sad truth is that there is no such thing as "requirements for tenure at Colby". Each person has their own impression of what it takes to be worthy of tenure, and so you are going to be subject to the whims of the particular evaluators with which you end up. I suspect that the members of P&T really do discuss each case and, for the most part, strive for some sense of consistency and consensus within their group. However, this opens up an entirely separate can of worms concerning group dynamics, dominant vs. submissive personalities, manufactured consent, etc. Given the facts of my case, it is also clear that the P&T members cannot (or at least do not) do as thorough a job as the process assumes they will do. To some extent this may be understandable, given that the P&T members have full-time duties at the college and a large number of cases to wade through. That does not make a lack of due consideration and attention to detail any more acceptable, however.
Additionally, this same commitment to industry and thoroughness is almost certainly not held by all the people involved in the other evaluations and reviews leading up to the tenure review. There is no mechanism to ensure that peer reviewers, sixth-semester reviewers, department and program chairs, or even the Dean of Faculty all use a similar set of standards and impressions to judge your case. The best you can hope for is that the particular set of nine people in your P&T committee have impressions of tenurable quality that are consistent with the merits of your case. If not, you will be denied, because it is always possible to support a negative decision if that is what a particular P&T member decides to do. As my case demonstrates, with the lack of accountability in the system this negative support can even be absurd and factully incorrect. But you will have no recourse, because in the end the rules allow the P&T members to use their judgement any way they see fit. There are no constraints, checks, or balances, except for the subsequent judgment of the President of the college or the board of directors. One possible strategy, therefore, might be to bypass the tenure review and become golfing buddies with the people who make the ultimate decision, but I will not go into that here (that was a joke, by the way).
You also have to live with the fact that the tenure standards change with time. To a large extent this is by design. The faculty handbook says explicitly that you must attain the level of excellence held by the most recently tenured faculty (but is silent on how anybody is supposed to know what that level of excellence is). The assumption (and presumably also the desire) is that the changes in standards over time will only be "good" changes. However, there is no mechanism to monitor these changes or to prevent them from being capricious.
In my search for consistency, transparency, clarity, and fairness in Colby's tenure procedures, I have gradually formed a more complete personal picture of how the P&T deliberations proceed. I have formed this picture primarily by drawing an analogy between the tenure review and the review process for academic publications. Most of us have probably served as referees for journal publications (or the equivalent in your field). At least when I review a paper, I go through it once to get a general sense of the quality of the paper. I take extensive notes on any questions I have while reading the paper, as well as noting anything significantly negative or positive about the paper. I then translate those notes into a detailed commentary, which I go back over to see if I generally have a negative or positive view of the paper, whether I think a bad paper can be salvaged, etc. On that basis, I generate my final recommendation. I am aware that many reviewers at this point go back and revise their notes with an eye toward reinforcing the positive or negative recommendation they have come up with, but I try not to do that.
If we use this analogy, it makes more sense that the people involved in tenure reviews would be unwilling or unable to commit to any quantifiable standards. Although I would have to say that if I were asked to explain what makes an acceptable journal paper, I believe I would be able to give much more detailed answers than many people are willing to provide about what makes a tenurable faculty member at Colby. Also, there is a slight disconnect here, especially with regard to the service requirements for tenure. The faculty handbook even states (multiple times) that service requirements for tenure will be evaluated on a pro rata basis for part-time appointments. It is impossible to pro-rate something that cannot be quantified. And yet nobody is willing to quantify the service requirements.
My case has all the earmarks of having gone through this type of review process. Most of the P&T members seem to have given the case a once-over, ending up with a generally negative impression. They then went back through the case looking for confirming evidence of their negative conclusions. This is the only way I can think of to explain the absurd lengths to which the summaries went to paint my case as weak. Unfortunately, the habit of looking only (or primarily) for confirming evidence of a prediposed conclusion is a universal human trait, but one we would hope that P&T committee members would do their best to overcome.
One of the useful things about using an analogy to understand a process is analyzing the places where the analogy breaks down. There are a number of ways in which the tenure review is not like a journal review. Unfortunately, every one of these differences shows how superior the journal review process is to the tenure review process. The numerous and significant weaknesses in the tenure review process seriously call into question whether a journal-style subjective review is the appropriate way to approach tenure decisions. Here are some of the key differences between a journal review and a Colby tenure review:
This is a very tough question to answer. The sense seems to be something along the lines of "You will be fine as long as you are an outstanding teacher and researcher." Many tenure candidates will not find such high-level advice helpful. We could refine it somewhat to "You will be fine as long as you get great student evaluations and student letters, you are prolific in your research publishing, and a set of external referees find your publications to be of high quality." Even this is not that comforting.
I will try to refine each of these further, in the three separate areas of teaching, research, and service. But remember that the ultimate decision is up to a randomly selected set of nine of your tenured colleagues, and there are no institutional standards, so everything I present here is (somewhat educated) guesswork. Remember also that I am a failed tenure candidate, so I may not be the best judge of what the requirements are.
I may be the most cynical about this area, because this seems to be the area that really did in my tenure case. I think this is clearly the most important area in which you must excel for tenure. The question is where to put your efforts so that P&T members will conclude that you have excelled. The assessment of your teaching will be measured almost exclusively by the scores and comments you receive on your teaching evaluations and the comments in the student letters solicited for your tenure review. The P&T committee will first look for evidence that your scores and comments are roughly at the same level as recently tenured faculty (although I still have no idea how they accomplish that without being allowed to review the cases of the most recently tenured faculty). Next, they will look for negative scores and comments that appear to indicate a pattern. It is not clear what it takes for someone to conclude that there is a "negative pattern", but my case suggests that it may not take much. If there are any such negative patterns in your teaching record, this can be held against you. Whether it will be held against you at this point is up to the whims of the P&T member. If they like you personally, or feel your research record is strong, or any other of a number of possible personal reasons, they could choose to overlook the negative pattern...or they could choose not to.
Given this method of evaluation, there are two primary things you have to focus on:
In terms of avoiding the negative patterns, you must first and foremost teach defensively. Do not take any risks in your pre-tenure classes, unless you are prepared to accept the potentially negative consequences. Everything you do should be relatively standard. You cannot make the students feel like they have too much work, you must return all assignments on time, and the students must like you. If you try something that goes wrong, it will reflect negatively on you...you do not get points for trying unless you succeed. You should also avoid assigning any large end-of-term projects. If you do, the students will put the projects off until the last minute and then will complain about an uneven workload. Make sure, especially, that you do not have any large assignments or tests due right before the students fill out their course evaluations. You want them to be as happy as possible on that day.
If you ever do get any negative comments or scores, you must go to great lengths to explain why these do not indicate a "pattern". As soon as you get the negative evaluations (even if it is only one or two comments or scores) you must write your own thorough interpretation of the events. I do not think you have to write this on the evaluation form itself (although you are allowed to), but you must at least keep it as a record to submit with your tenure dossier. We are told that the P&T members, in their thoroughness, are able to contextualize all of this information, but the evidence suggests that they will not do that in your favor unless you and your department review committee spell out the favorable interpretation for them. Note that you also have to do a balancing act here. If you lay the blame for all the negative evaluations at the feet of the students, that will be held against you, because at Colby “The customer is always right.” So you must be careful to contextualize the evaluations, but also be contrite and proactive about doing things in the future to prevent similar negative reactions from the students (even if they were not really your fault…as far as P&T is concerned, everything is your fault when it comes to teaching).
Note also that you might be done in by factors that are beyond your control. You may just get a bad batch of students who do not want to work. If you penalize them, they will complain. I am aware of one class in which a significant number of students cheated and were caught. You can imagine what the evaluations looked like for that class. In such situations, there is probably very little you can do except try to explain the situation as well as you can. But even then, if you get a second bad batch of students, the conclusion will be that there is some negative aspect of your teaching qualifications that produces such bad behavior. The students will have established a negative pattern in your record. Let me repeat that when you write your interpretation of events, you must not do what I am doing here: assign any blame or responsibility to the students. There is a strong sense at Colby that the students are customers, and the customers are always right. If you assign to the students any resonsibility for apparent negative patterns in your record, that will be held against you.
The other side of the coin is to demonstrate positive teaching excellence. To be more accurate, you must demonstrate high marks in the areas that the P&T members choose to examine. For the most part, this seems to boil down to a general indication that the students like you but feel challenged by you. The students cannot just "like" you; they must write comments in their evaluations and letters that suggest that you changed their lives in significant and positive ways. You must receive comments like "this is the best class I have ever taken", "this is the best professor I have ever had", or "this class made me decide to go to graduate school". You must receive a lot of these types of comments (I received a lot of these types of comments, but apparently even that amount was not enough).
At the same time, you must not give the appearance of "pandering" to the students. They must feel like you have challenged them and they overcame the challenges (presumably because they learned something). Notice that there is very clearly no requirement (and possibly no way to measure) that the students have actually learned anything from you. Rather, the teaching part of your tenure case will be decided primarily on the question of whether the students feel like they have learned anything from you. I am sure that the assumption is that outstanding teachers will produce students that feel this way (perhaps accurately). I am equally sure that there are other ways to produce such students. For example, break all of your coursework up into a series of very small projects that are not enormously difficult. You want the students to feel like they are always working on something, but they must also feel like they have solved the problems. You can even provide them with most of the solutions in class as they work the assignments. You will end up with students who feel like they have worked hard but have overcome the obstacles you placed in front of them. You will receive good evaluations. You may even end up having some students who actually learned something significant.
Because the student evaluations are such a big part of the tenure review, I would also recommend an action that I did not do myself. You should give a speech immediately before the students fill out their evaluations. I viewed that as "cheating", although I am sure some faculty members do it. You do not want to use this speech to plead for good evaluations. Rather, inform the students frankly that the scores and comments they give you will be used as the primary criteria to decide whether the college gives you tenure. Tell them that the bar is quite high, the scores must be high, and the comments must be effusive. Then ask them politely to be as verbal and encouraging as possible if they liked your class and your teaching. I believe that most students do not realize how important these evaluations are, so it is very important to remind them at the right time. When it comes time for your tenure review, you might also try to contact the best students you have had, encouraging them to respond to the department committee's request for letters of recommendation (with similar advice about being effusive). It is essentially up to you to find ways to bias your case in positive ways because nobody else is going to do that for you, and the P&T members will be searching for every possible negative intepretation (unless they otherwise have some reason to want to give you tenure).
Another factor is that you should probably, for the most part, avoid leading any independent study projects. They take lots of time, but it appears that you get no credit for them, even if you do an enormous number of them. Do them only if you have a particularly good student or if you just like doing independent studies. Although this may be another area were it will be held against you if you have not done any independent studies, so perhaps you should do at least a couple.
I am not sure about the quality of the advice I can give about research. I have not obsessed quite as much about these requirements, because it appears that my research record was generally deemed worthy of tenure (although the fact that some P&T members questioned my research record demonstrates the absurd lengths to which they were willing to go to argue that my case should be denied). However, it appears to me that there are two primary aspects to this evaluation. First, each P&T member must be personally convinced (according to their own subjective criteria) that the quantity of your research is sufficient. Second, there must be evidence that you are respected in your field, which includes a sense that your research is of high quality. They say that quality is more important than quantity, but I suspect that you do not want to play that game unless you really have something great to publish.
As for the quantity, like with everything else, there are no clear guidelines. It also appears that quantity expectations vary widely by discipline. For quantity expectations, you should talk to tenured people in your department or program, as well as any former (but recent) P&T members that you can get your hands on. Or try to find the publication records of people in your department or program who recently received tenure at Colby (if you are in a small department or program that has no recently tenured members, then you are out of luck here).
There are apparently a few measures of whether you are respected in your field. The primary measure seems to be the reports from the external referees on the quality and quantity of your research. However, it appears that the P&T committee will also use other indicators that are related to service. They want to see that you are invited to participate in conferences, to serve as a reviewer, to submit book chapters, etc. To get good marks here, it is probably best for you to be as well known as possible in your field. Yes, you should be publishing, but you should also go to conferences and schmooze with people. Be agressive in volunteering to be a reviewer for conferences and journals. If you have a tendency to be shy, try to overcome it as much as possible. Just having good publications will probably only be enough if the external referees say they are extremely good. If you can provide evidence that lots of people cite your work, that would also be a good thing to do.
In the area of service, the rumors and innuendo about the requirements (that service does not matter) are in conflict with the official party line (that service is essential). However, in spite of the facts of my case, I still believe the rumors and innuendo. I do not believe that anybody will be denied tenure at Colby if their teaching and research are deemed outstanding enough, regardless of how much service they have done. This does not mean you should do no service. In particular, serving on committees or helping out in other ways is a good way to get people to know you and like you, and that is probably more important to the P&T committee than how much service you have done. If you are in a small department and/or tend to be shy it may prove difficult to get elected to committees. I tried to be picky and run only for the committees to which I thought I could best contribute, but that appears to have backfired, because I did not end up getting elected to those committees. In those cases, you should find other ways to do volunteer work for the college. For example, I became an active member of the advisory committee for Science, Technology, and Society; served as a resdidence hall faculty associate every year; took on extra advisees; helped the Psychology department run experiments, etc.. Even that turned out not to be helpful for my case, but that is part of why I do not really believe that I was denied tenure because of my service. For the most part, you should just try to find ways to make sure people know who you are, but ignore service beyond that. In your tenure dossier, make sure to be thorough and count anything you have done that could be construed as department, college, academic, or even community service. Your department will probably care more about the department service. The P&T committee will probably care more about the college service. Your research record will be judged in part based on your academic service. The community service is just to place yourself in the best possible light. For all of the aspects of service, really you are just trying your best not to give them any excuses to deny you tenure if they decide they do not like you.