Promotion Process
The general process for promotion is the same for Clinical and Full time Academic tracks.
If you are interested in pursuing promotion, you should first discuss it with your service chief and/or mentor. If you are unsure whether you meet the criteria for promotion (see section & ink at bottom of page), please contact either Jane Eisen, Vice Chair for Academic Affairs, or the Chair of your appropriate faculty committee (Ivan Miller, Full Faculty Committee; Marjorie Weishaar, Clinical Faculty Committee) for feedback.
Once you determine that you are interested in pursuing promotion, the following documents must be submitted to the Manager of Academic Affairs.
- Updated CV in Brown format (please ensure it is accurate and current) Brown CV_Format
- Service chief letter of nomination
- Personal statement (1-2 pages in length)
Once these documents are submitted, your promotion nomination will be included on the agenda at the next appropriate DPHB faculty committee meeting. If the committee approves going forward with your promotion, the next step is soliciting referee letters. You will be required to submit referee names and other documents (see below referee details for more info). Once enough referee letters are received, your promotion nomination will again be discussed at the next appropriate DPHB faculty committee meeting. If the committee approves the referee letters, your promotion is now ready to be forwarded to Brown for the Committee of Medical Faculty Affairs approval. A slot on the CMFA schedule has already been reserved. At this point in the process, the Brown BioMed Faculty Affairs office may ask questions for more specific information in order to prepare your dossier fully for CMFA discussion. The DPHB Chair then presents your promotion dossier at the CFMA meeting. You will be notified by the DPHB Chair after the meeting whether or not CMFA approved your promotion.
NOTE: The promotion process can be a lengthy one. A promotion can BE DELAYED at any step of the process. The most common reasons for delay are:
- Bad timing. Promotions are typically scheduled for CMFA meetings in the spring. The Brown BioMed Faculty Affairs office requires that all promotion dossiers for ANY spring CMFA meeting be received in their office by early January. Therefore, if your referee letters are not received & approved by the DPHB faculty committee by December, your promotion will have to be put off until a CMFA meeting the next fall and will not be official until the July after that. For this reason, promotion nominations initially brought to a DPHB faculty committee in September run the risk of not being completed until July 1 two years later. It is strongly recommended that promotion nominations be initiated in the spring.
- Incorrect referee contact information
- Slow referee response
- Not enough referee letters received. If this happens, more names will be requested from you.
- One or more negative referee letters received. If this is the case, usually one or more additional referee letters are solicited.
- Lack of responsiveness from faculty promotion candidate.
REFEREE CRITERIA:
Brown has very specific requirements for referees. Please see: Brown BioMed Faculty Promotions - from Policies and Procedures manual
Full time academic faculty – 8 letters required, 12 referee names are requested
Clinical faculty – 5 letters required, 8 referee names are requested
Once the DPHB Committee approves a promotion nomination, the Manager of Academic Affairs contacts the promotion candidate and his/her service chief to request referee names.
These lists MUST include: referee names, rank, institution, address, phone number, fax number, email address. The list must also include a one or two sentence description of the referee’s area of expertise.
**In DPHB, we also request that the promotion candidate include a brief description of his/her “professional relationship” with the referee. If any kind of professional collaboration took place in the past, it should be explained here. If there is no “professional relationship”, that should be indicated.**
Criteria for promotion (Brown & DPHB):
Brown BioMed Faculty Core Criteria
Clinical Associate Professor is the only rank for which DPHB has its own additional criteria. The DPHB criteria for promotion to this rank are: PDF OF CRITERIA MEMO