The Institutional Hiring Plan (IHP) is a single plan detailing all approved tenure-track searches for the following year’s hiring cycle. This year’s IHP process will result in the creation of the 2023 IHP, which will designate the tenure-track faculty searches for the 2023-24 academic year.
The IHP is a primary component for determining the future excellence of the University of Oregon. It allows the university to keep strategic priorities at the forefront and gives direction to progress happening across campus. It is a roadmap to future scholarship and teaching excellence, as well as a tool for responsible budgeting and financial management.
Because of its importance to the university, the IHP is created through a collaborative process. Each college/school runs its own IHP proposal process to elicit proposals from the faculty, after which deans review their school/college’s proposals, and prioritize them before forwarding those proposals that warrant provost review. Proposals are reviewed by the provost and are provided to advisory groups including the deans, the Provost’s Faculty Hiring Advisory Committee, the Active Recruitment Team, and relevant initiative steering committees for discussion and feedback. The provost will then finalize and announce the IHP, which will detail all approved tenure-track faculty searches. Final decisions related to the IHP are the responsibility of the provost.
The Provost’s Faculty Hiring Advisory Committee is a rotating group of seven senior faculty members from representative disciplines across campus. The Active Recruitment Team is comprised of faculty members and members from the Office of the Provost, the Division of Equity and Inclusion, and the Office of Human Resources.
Scope of the 2023 IHP
With a long-term goal of incremental growth of TTF, we hope to approve a number of searches that is slightly larger than last year. This is subject to change based on continuing analysis of our recurring resources.
It is expected that most new searches in the 2023 IHP will be funded at the level of assistant professor. Deans interested in hiring at the associate or full professor level will be required to work with the provost to identify resources to pay for the difference in salary.
Costs related to renovations and startup will also be serious considerations in decisions about the 2023 IHP.
Timeline
- October 2022: Provost launches the 2023 IHP process, directing deans to work with their faculty to develop hiring proposals for the 2023-24 search year.
- October 2022 to February 2023: Deans work with faculty to identify needs and generate ideas for faculty searches. Questions about internal school or college IHP processes should be directed to the respective dean’s office.
- February 3, 2023: Deadline for deans to submit school and college-level proposals to the Office of the Provost.
- February to March 2023: Provost reviews proposals, requests analysis from initiative steering committees, and meets with deans individually.
- March to April 2023: Provost drafts proposed plan, discusses with Provost’s Faculty Hiring Advisory Committee and deans, reviews proposed plan for space and startup impacts, analyzes the Active Recruitment Team’s suggestions for the best ways to support diverse and high-quality searches, finalizes IHP.
- April 2023: Announcement of the 2023 IHP.
In addition, the Office of the Provost will host an opportunity for the deans to discuss collaborations across the IHP.
Your IHP Proposal
Unless the dean decides otherwise, searches that remain pending from the 2022-23 search year and those that were discontinued due to insufficiently diverse applicant pools will generally be automatically considered for 2023 IHP consideration. Updated proposals will not be required for these positions.
All proposals are required to use the 2023 IHP Proposal Template. Please see Documents and Links for the current version of the template, and for guidance on how to fill it out.
Expectations
Proposals are expected to provide persuasive rationale to address the quality or degree of excellence of the program or department in which a hire is being proposed. The provost expects proposals to consider diversity, equity, and inclusion and to describe TTF hiring needs using appropriate information and metrics.
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to the mission of the university, and as such are foundational in all of the work we do.
- Proposals are expected to address diversity, equity, and inclusion, and will be evaluated on that basis. Include strategies for mounting a diverse search and address relevant field availability estimate data.
- Note: All approved TTF searches continue to be required to follow active recruitment and equitable search best practices (e.g. robust active recruitment plans, evaluation criteria for required candidate diversity statements), as these are critical components of this institutional priority. Deans and search committees are expected to seriously review search plans, and to intervene as appropriate to continue to foster these essential shared values. Best practices are outlined on the Office of the Provost website.
- Strong IHP proposals are data-informed, including references to institutional metrics, such as operational and mission metrics. The Office of the Provost and the IHP advisory groups use these metrics during the proposal review process.
- Operational metrics are defined by UO, and are hosted on the Institutional Research website, which will be updated soon.
- Mission metrics are defined by the relevant unit, and may include research and creative activity metrics, as well as teaching and student success information as reflected in graduate and undergraduate education metrics and surveys.
Criteria
Each proposal must describe how a hire in the designated area would clearly map to the strategic vision, values, and needs of the university, and the priorities of the college or school. Proposals should also describe how a hire would do one or more of the following:
- Contribute to growth or maintenance of excellence in national and international leadership of the university within the proposed field.
- Help catalyze inclusive excellence in new areas of research or creative activity, maintain or strengthen established premier areas of research or creative activity, or draw together multiple areas of research or creative excellence.
- Grow and/or maintain areas of demonstrated prospective/future undergraduate student interest.
- Grow and/or maintain successful graduate programs, where there is faculty capacity for building areas of excellence and/or new programs of particular institutional need.
In addition to the above, proposals that are tied to the Environment Initiative or the Sport & Wellness Initiative must describe how the search will contribute to the development and success of that initiative, referring to the appropriate linked initiative-specific criteria.
Consider the following when developing proposals:
- The provost will consider clusters of positions if they are proposed by all participating deans and if the cluster clearly supports a substantial and tangible increase in the excellence of the university.
- Units should have a plan outlining how they will ensure that new faculty are successful at the UO and ensuring that they have a climate that promotes faculty retention (e.g. a plan for mentorship, successful faculty onboarding and transition into the unit and the university). Before submitting an IHP proposal, units with historical challenges regarding unit climate and/or faculty retention issues should work with their deans to ensure that a well-articulated plan is in place that will allow new faculty to succeed.
Deadline
The Office of the Provost has provided dean’s offices with additional instructions regarding the IHP submission process. College/school proposals are due to the Office of the Provost by Feb. 3, 2023. Questions about a particular school/college IHP proposal process should be addressed to the leadership of that school or college.
Documents and Links