Exploring Collegiality as an Evaluation Factor in Librarian Promotion and Tenure Documents

The role of collegiality in academic review, promotion, and tenure

“…When collegiality or related terms are referred to in the RPT documents in our dataset, they are usually just mentioned briefly or in passing without further explanation or definition. This resonates with the findings of Lo et al [ 27 ] who looked at the prevalence of collegiality and related terms in RPT documents of librarian faculty at R-Type universities in the United States: of the approximately one-third of institutions in their sample that mention collegiality in their RPT documents only a small number of these actually define the term or specify how it should be assessed. Connell et al [ 11 ] also found that when institutions make reference to collegiality they usually do so “…briefly or broadly in their tenure and promotion policies or faculty handbooks, but do not include it as a separate criterion for review” (p. 570).…”

“…While some court rulings have advised institutions to incorporate collegiality expectations in their RPT documentation, it is unknown to what degree U.S. and Canadian universities have in fact adopted such policies, or whether they continue to follow the AAUP’s recommendation to avoid explicit assessment of collegiality. Connell et al [ 11 ] reviewed selected U.S. university policies that reference collegiality, and a very recent study by Lo et al [ 27 ] explored the use of collegiality as a factor in librarian RPT documents at U.S. research intensive universities. However, we are not aware of any studies that have sought to analyze, across various institution types and disciplinary units, how current RPT guidelines at U.S. and Canadian institutions include the concept of collegiality.…”