External Review Letters in Promotion and Tenure Decision Making: Validity and Fairness

晋升和任期决策中的外部审查信：有效性和公平性

• 批准号: 2100034
• 负责人: Juan Madera
• 金额: $ 200万
• 依托单位: University of Houston
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-07-01 至 2024-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2100034&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: External; Review; Letters; Promotion; Tenure

Promotion and tenure decisions at universities are of critical significance to the integrity of the research enterprise because they determine the career progression of scholars and scientists. Despite significant investments in pipeline interventions to diversify academia, faculty of color and women are underrepresented in tenured and tenure track positions. Underrepresentation has important implications for the nation's prospects of developing a diverse STEM workforce. For undergraduate and graduate students of color, having access to faculty members who share and understand their lived experiences and backgrounds has profound benefits. These include developing science identities and persisting in science careers. Therefore, novel ways to examine gatekeeping mechanisms such as the promotion and tenure (P&T) processes are needed. Despite the widely recognized importance of P&T processes, minimal research has examined whether and how P&T processes' most critical elements contribute to outcomes for women and faculty of color. This project examines the validity and fairness of external review letters (ERL) provided by arm's length reviewers as part of promotion and tenure decision making. Academic administrators often view ERLs as the most impartial and critical components of tenure and promotion portfolios, providing qualitative, independent evaluations of candidates' past accomplishments, reputation, potential, and the prospect of continued, sustainable contribution levels. Despite their sensitive nature, given the criticality of ERLs in academic promotion and tenure decisions, the limited research on validity and bias in ERLs is stunning. This project closes this gap by analyzing the linguistic characteristics of ERLs and examining the relationship between ERL linguistic characteristics, promotion candidate characteristics, letter writer characteristics, and promotion and tenure voting outcomes at the department, college, and university-level committees. The project examines ERLs through theoretical work on the social psychology of language use, social comparison processes, and social role theory. This project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development.The project's goals are to investigate the validity of ERLs, determine possible bias in ERLs based on candidate and letter writer characteristics, and identify possible ways to remediate limited validity and bias. Leveraging a partnership between nine universities (University of Houston, Hampton University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Lehigh University, University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), and by examining more than 9000 ERLs, this project aims to contribute to the validity of P&T processes, understand barriers to P&T for women and faculty of color and ultimately increase the P&T rates for women and faculty of color.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

大学的晋升和终身教职决定对于研究企业的诚信至关重要，因为它们决定了学者和科学家的职业发展。 尽管为实现学术界多元化而对渠道干预措施进行了大量投资，但有色人种教师和女性在终身教职和终身教职中所占比例不足。代表性不足对于国家发展多元化 STEM 劳动力的前景具有重要影响。对于有色人种的本科生和研究生来说，能够接触到分享并了解他们的生活经历和背景的教职员工具有深远的好处。其中包括发展科学身份和坚持科学事业。因此，需要采用新的方法来检查晋升和任期 (P&T) 流程等把关机制。尽管 P&T 流程的重要性得到了广泛认可，但很少有研究探讨 P&T 流程的最关键要素是否以及如何对女性和有色人种教师的成果做出贡献。该项目检查独立评审员提供的外部评审函 (ERL) 的有效性和公平性，作为晋升和终身职位决策的一部分。学术管理者通常将 ERL 视为终身教职和晋升组合中最公正和最关键的组成部分，为候选人过去的成就、声誉、潜力以及持续、可持续贡献水平的前景提供定性、独立的评估。尽管 ERL 具有敏感性，但考虑到 ERL 在学术晋升和终身教职决定中的重要性，关于 ERL 有效性和偏见的有限研究令人震惊。该项目通过分析 ERL 的语言特征并检查 ERL 语言特征、晋升候选人特征、信件作者特征以及院系、学院和大学级别委员会的晋升和终身教职投票结果之间的关系来缩小这一差距。该项目通过语言使用的社会心理学、社会比较过程和社会角色理论的理论工作来研究 ERL。该项目由 EHR 核心研究 (ECR) 计划资助，该计划支持推进 STEM 学习和学习环境的基础研究、扩大 STEM 参与以及 STEM 劳动力发展的工作。该项目的目标是调查 ERL 的有效性，确定根据候选人和写信人的特征，确定 ERL 中可能存在的偏见，并确定纠正有限有效性和偏见的可能方法。利用九所大学（休斯顿大学、汉普顿大学、伍斯特理工学院、利哈伊大学、阿拉巴马大学、路易斯安那州立大学、莱斯大学、德克萨斯农工大学和德克萨斯大学里奥格兰德河谷分校）之间的合作关系，并通过审查9000 ERL，该项目旨在提高 P&T 流程的有效性，了解女性和有色人种教师的 P&T 障碍，并最终提高女性和有色人种教师的 P&T 率。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。