The unit head is the individual responsible for identifying and recruiting external reviewers to write letters of evaluation during the winter and spring terms of the year preceding the year that the review will be conducted; correspondence with potential external evaluators should not be delegated to others. Recruitment of external reviewers should take place in Freburary or March. A minimum of five external letters is required for each case, making it advisable to arrange for at least six or seven. The unit head should use the "External Evaluator Selection Worksheet" in the course of selecting and recruiting external reviewers. The Office of the Provost does not require that this checklist be included in P&T dossiers, but it is recommended as a method to assist unit heads in doing this extremely important work. The College of Arts and Sciences requires dean-level approval of potential external evaluators before contacting them, and other schools and colleges may also request this step. 

The unit must compile a list of possible external reviewers. The candidate may also provide a list, which should be compiled without knowledge of the unit’s list. If the candidate suggests a reviewer who also appears on the unit’s list, that reviewer may be considered an independent unit selection rather than one proposed by the candidate.  

There is no obligation to include reviewers suggested by the candidate, but it is advisable to do so unless the candidate has provided only names of individuals who appear to be inappropriate.

It can be helpful for units/departments and schools/colleges to track their external evaluators throughout the reviews process for each candidate as well as for each review cycle and year.

All external evaluation letters should be solicited from disciplinary and professional leaders with no more than a professional knowledge of or relationship to the candidate. An absolute majority of the letters included in the dossier must also come from reviewers selected independently by the unit rather than suggested by the candidate. 

• Reviewers should be at or above the rank being sought, ideally at the rank of full professor, though an associate professor can serve as a reviewer, if that reviewer clearly represents an essential voice in the critical evaluation of the candidate’s scholarship/creative practice. 
• Identify reviewers at comparable institutions.
• Reviewers should be leaders and respected colleagues in the disciplinary or professional field.
• Avoid reviewers with close relationships to the candidate. The following relationships should be considered disqualifying: dissertation advisor or member of doctoral committee; former departmental colleague; research collaborator within the review period; co-author within the review period; former teacher or mentor; faculty member who taught in a graduate program from which candidate received an advanced degree; former UO faculty who taught at UO in the past 10 years. Close personal relationships are also problematic. Many other professional relationships are acceptable, but prospective reviewers who express concern about their ability to present an unbiased evaluation or are uncomfortable playing the role of an evaluator should be excused.  
• It occasionally occurs that a letter is submitted and upon reviewing the letter the head, committee, or dean recognizes it as having one of the above conflicted relationships. In these cases, letters from reviewers who are too close to the candidate should be disqualified.  Do not remove them from the dossier but mark them clearly as disqualified, and do not consider them in your review.

Once the list of prospective reviewers has been constructed, draw from this list to recruit reviewers. Unit heads alone are responsible for communicating with external reviewers throughout the promotion and tenure process.  

• Typically, there will be three communications with those selected to serve as an external reviewer: an inquiry regarding availability to serve, a formal request for evaluation, an acknowledgment of receipt of letter. Required templates for each are available below under Resources. We expect all units to make use of these templates. While they may be customized, do not make statements such as: “We are trying to promote Professor X.” Please ensure that all reviewers are sent the same communications, the same set of materials to review, and each one is asked to address any personal or professional relationships with the candidate. One example of each communication should be placed in the dossier. 

Each external reviewer should receive:  

• The candidate’s statement (signed and dated)
• The candidate’s CV (signed and dated)  
• The unit's promotion and tenure criteria document 
• The candidate’s scholarship, research, and/or creative activity
  • Include only materials from the review period
  • This may be a subset (5 or more publications, for example) of the candidate's choosing, dependent on unit/department norms and policies
  • The Office of the Provost encourages candidates to include all materials/publications relevant to the review period
  • This may include an example or two of works-in-progress

A reminder to send external reviewers an acknowledgement of receipt of the letter of evaluation after they have provided it to your office. 

If a prospective reviewer declines to serve as a reviewer, retain a copy of that reviewer’s declination message. All declinations must be documented in the dossier. If the declination is received orally, by telephone or in person, provide a note in the dossier to that effect, including any reason(s) stated for the declination.  

Contact additional prospective reviewers in order to ensure timely receipt of an appropriate complement of reviews. It is important to ensure that a clear majority of the reviewers are independently selected by the unit and do not appear only on the candidate’s list of suggested reviewers.

• External evaluator checklist template and evaluation letter sample language