About this Portfolio

[this page, which is not required for the tenure application, is in progress]

A Changing Tide

(As I work this history/process into an article, I’ll be filling in notes about related work in the field)

Since the summer of 2008, when ISU’s Faculty Excellence Initiative Committee awarded me summer funding to research and work on a digital portfolio prototype, I have been looking for examples of online tenure portfolios, and the only one’s I was able to find were supplemental to print portfolios, even in fields where multimodal work is the main area of focus. For instance, a portfolio that most closely matched what I was trying to do was produced by a faculty member in Interactive Media and Design at Bradley University. (His tenure portfolio has since gone offline and has been replaced by a professional portfolio, the differences between these are for later discussion.) In email conversations with this faculty member, he noted (and which many faculty in the Arts at several schools have confirmed) that the online portfolio was supplement to his print application for tenure. Making one’s digital work supplemental—especially when digital work is the center of one’s research and teaching—is often not the choice a tenure applicant would make; instead it is regulation of the tenure guidelines at one’s school, and so the choice becomes trying to institute change or ensuring one’s job. It’s not surprising that most tenure-track scholars choose the latter.

However, the last few years have seen changes in tenure guidelines in several departments and schools that have emphases on digital media. My focus here is on those English departments that have made such changes since it is, perhaps, the least expected place in academia to find a push for digital media scholarship even while the push for digital scholarship (a distinction I will have outlined earlier, when this becomes an article…) is often found in humanities departments through digitization and archival efforts of literary texts. There are three sets of tenure guidelines that I often use when speaking to groups about implementing change and evaluating digital scholarship in humanities departments. They include T&P guidelines from the following departments:

The Ohio State University’s Department of English
Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of English
University of Maine’s Department of New Media

Below I will explain the context of each of these departments and why they changed they tenure guidelines to accommodate digital media scholarship (as I know it) and link to relevant sources that others can use for wording in changing their own institution’s guidelines.

The Ohio State University

The English Department at OSU includes digital media as one of their areas of study, and yet digital media didn’t count in junior faculty’s tenure cases. A group of faculty members across several campuses worked to change the “print-centric” wording of their department’s tenure guidelines to include acceptance of digital media work as equivalent in scholarly pursuit to print values such as the book. Department Chair (and then-President of the Associations of Departments of English) Valerie Lee and Professor Cynthia Selfe wrote an article for the April 2008 ADE Bulletin (the article was titled “A Most Capacious Caper“), which described their department’s process of changing the guidelines. Because of the importance of the information that they included in the article, indicating why and how the faculty in digital media recommended these changes (and because the publication of these changes happened in a closed-access journal, thus limiting distribution to junior faculty who may need to start these conversations with their department chairs), please allow me to quote from the article at length:

These proposed amendments to the Department of English Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure (APT) Document are intended to help candidates for promotion and tenure, and review committees, present and assess scholarly work in digital media (that is, work in any field of English studies composed or disseminated in digital forms, not necessarily work on digital media). The amendments address three problems with the current APT document:

Various descriptions of the criteria for scholarship are open to conflicting interpretations regarding the status of work in digital media.

The language of the current APT document is not consistently inclusive enough to guide consideration of work in digital media.

To address those concerns, the proposed language

assumes throughout that scholarship of the highest quality occurs in diverse media;

extends that acknowledgement to all sub-fields of English studies and to all genres of scholarship, including those traditionally associated with print (e.g., monographs and journal articles);

recognizes that scholars may choose to publish their scholarship in a particular medium because of the unique characteristics of that medium and that, therefore, such work should normally be evaluated in the medium for which it is intended.

Internal Clarity and Consistency Regarding the Status of Diverse Media

In the listing of general criteria for promotion and tenure reviews, the APT document states that “Evidence of scholarship should consist of published writing, singly or collaboratively authored, or, where appropriate, recordings, videotapes, films, and works in electronic or other media, singly or collaboratively produced (16-17, emphasis added). The phrasing (”or”) suggests an equivalence among various media—qua media. Yet in the description of criteria for promotion to associate professor with tenure, the document states that such evidence

“typically takes the form of a published book as well as essays in major refereed journals or edited volumes, conference papers at national meetings of scholarly organizations, and book reviews and review essays. Where appropriate, evidence of scholarship may also include textbooks and journal articles on pedagogy, recordings, videotapes, films, and works in electronic or other media, singly or collaboratively produced. These forms of scholarship will be evaluated by the same process and according to the same criteria (see B above) as all other forms of scholarship.” (17, emphasis added).

While the word “typically” allows for work in other media to serve as the primary body of scholarship presented by a candidate for promotion and tenure, the phrase “may also include” could be interpreted to assign a supplemental status to such work. The document should unambiguously establish that all of our quantitative and qualitative criteria can be met by work in any medium.
Inclusive Language

Even if one allows that the document establishes that work in diverse media can meet all of our criteria for scholarship, the language elsewhere reverts to a “print-only” vocabulary. For example, in the discussion of the criteria for promotion to associate professor with tenure, the document states that “Typically, a candidate for promotion to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure will be expected to present to reviewers a book published (or at least a finished manuscript under final, board-approved contract and in production) by a scholarly press with a strong reputation (”Faculty Appointments,” 17–18; emphasis added). Throughout the document, we proposed adopting more inclusive language such as “book or equivalent body of scholarship” in order to establish consistently and unambiguously that our criteria for scholarship focus on quantity and quality, not medium. Similar changes broaden the scope of expert testimony to which we might turn when evaluating the contribution of scholarship to the candidate’s field.

One of the proposed changes would require the Department to accept a body of scholarship that does not meet our expectations of unquestionably high quality, sufficient quantity, and clear evidence of impact on the candidate’s field(s).

In addition to the above documentation, I would encourage reading the rest of the eight-page article in the ADE Bulletin, as the authors also provide a table for identifying and relating the scholarly values of print media to digital media scholarship (p. 56).

Virginia Commonwealth University

In 2006, VCU started enrolling students in their new, interdisciplinary PhD program Media, Art, and Text (MATX), a innovative collaboration between English, Mass Communications, and Art. This PhD program required students in the program to produce a studio-based project that showcased their disciplinary learning, both theoretical and practical. Soon after (to my understanding), faculty teaching in this program realized that they weren’t afforded the same scholarly avenues as their PhD students, and the English department set out to change it’s tenure guidelines to match those being asked of its PhD students. Although I don’t know if process documents such as those provided by Lee and Selfe above, or the Still Water lab below, exist for public consumption, the governance documents that came out of this discussion are publicly available on the English department’s website. In particular, I point readers to pages 20-21, which highlights the changes to acceptance of digital scholarship for purposes of tenure and promotion. Here is the list of those inclusions:

12. The following guidelines apply to the burgeoning area of digital scholarship and creative work:

a. Digital scholarship in English studies currently takes many forms: book-length projects published exclusively electronically; journals distributed electronically
without a print version; and published multi-media work with demonstrated impact on the field, such as hypertexts, content-based CD-Roms, digital scholarly editions, and databases most prominently. Scholarly or professional websites in English studies typically fall into one of the following categories: archives, electronic essays or exhibits, teaching resources, gateways, journals or webzines, and organizational sites. Other forms may develop in the future.

b. The general criteria for evaluating digital scholarship involve its content, form, audience or purpose, and effective use of new media. Consequently, the best way to evaluate a candidate’s work in a digital medium is to do so in the medium in which it was produced. Print-outs or other hard copies are poor substitutes for evaluating web pages online.

c. Digital scholarship, whenever practicable, will be evaluated according to the same standards as print scholarship. For example, criteria for an electronic journal
would include the nature of the peer review process, submission acceptance rates, the stature of the editorial board and/or publisher, and judgments of the journal’s
quality and its impact or influence on the field.

d. Faculty members who work in non-print media and for which there is not a print analog should have their work assessed in two areas: 1) the intellectual content and impact of the work; and 2) the efficacy of its use of the media (usability, appearance, innovation, and the like). The second area should also be evaluated by those
knowledgeable in such media.

e. Frequently digital scholarship is collaborative. As with such collaborative work in the print medium, faculty presenting such collaborative digital work as evidence of
scholarship should be able to document the nature and extent of their individual contributions to such projects.

f. Postings to professional list-serves or discussion groups, e-mail, blogs, and unpublished articles posted on personal or other websites, may be considered evidence of scholarly activity but will not be considered scholarly publication.

g. The stature of funding sources and the composition of advisory/editorial boards can provide evidence of the significance and potential impact of large scale digital
projects such as extensive digital archives, databases or scholarly editions.

—Approved April 2008

University of Maine

I include the University of Maine’s New Media Department in this listing for two reasons: (1) It is useful when rethinking guidelines for tenure and promotion in the humanities to think about correlative projects in the arts, especially as universities (and work in digital humanities scholarship as an example within those locations) move to more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work. (2) The New Media Department was a new department at Maine, and so their construction of guidelines were, I’m hypothesizing, under less constraints of change than English departments rewriting their guidelines might be under. Thus, the Maine guidelines might serve as a blue-skies option. The department wrote two documents, both published in the arts journal Leonardo. The first is a rationale for redefining critiera. The second is the list of criteria. Of note is that these guidelines include items relevant to teaching with, through, and about new media technologies. However, I will repeat the scholarly and creative guidelines here, since that information will be of more immediate interest to most readers.

II. RESEARCH AND SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES

Good collaborators are critical to thriving research ecosystems. Candidates are encouraged to list any collaborative roles they have played in publications and other activities, such as conceptual architect, approach designer, release engineer, or matchmaker (eg, introducing two other researchers whose collaboration results in a publication). Each new media department may choose to weight these various roles according to its own priorities.

A. Publications

1. Books/Monographs:

Networked or rich-media publications such as extended blogs, DVDs, or CD-ROMS should be included if they constitute a sustained investigation of a particular topic.

2. Refereed Journal Articles:

In a new media context, a “closed peer-review” article includes invited contributions to edited print journals and networked journals. The format of these contributions may go beyond the form of a written essay to include podcasts, videoblogs, and other forms of archival media.

An “open peer-review” article includes contributions to self-policing publication networks, where the quality or relevance of contributions are subject to community debate and evaluation.

3. Chapters of Books/Monographs (please indicate if invited or juried):

Essays or chapters in edited volumes are more important in new media than the sciences, for these edited volumes establish standards for discourse in emergent subdisciplines of new media.

This category should also include invited contributions to edited, single-issue networked publications.

4. Edited Volumes:

This category includes coordinating or managing a multi-user discussion list, whether accessible via email or Web.

This category also includes the conception, design, engineering, and/or editing of organized media collections, including film festivals , networked databases , and publications.

5. Technical Reports/Book Reviews:

This category includes networked reports and reviews.

6. Other Publications (e.g. editorials, working papers, etc.):

This category includes essays published to email lists, including all contributions to discussions sparked by the publication of that essay.

B. Creative Activities, Exhibitions, and Performance Related Activities (please indicate whether regional, international, national, solo, group, invited or juried):

1. Exhibitions:

This category includes networked exhibitions hosted by brick-and-mortar institutions or independent organizations , and can include online exhibitions as well as physical installations.

a Participating

b. Curated

2. Performance Related Activities:

This category includes political design, social software, and interactive performance.

3. Creative Writing and Poetry:

This category includes literature in all its forms, both analogue and digital, in print or online.

C. Professional Presentations and Posters (please indicate if regional, national, or international):

1. Conferences and Discussions organized

Researchers in new media at this point in its development are actively filling in gaps in the awareness of new media’s own history, a critical vocabulary, and other intellectual frameworks already in place in other fields. The new media program recognizes the value that organizing private and public events have for the field as a whole and, when local, for our students.

2. Presentations

As studies of new media have argued, presenting research at prestigious conferences can be more important than publishing it.

While there is no substitute for in-person gatherings, teleconferences are gradually becoming an important venue for conference presentations, though they vary in degree of formality and organization.

[Eventually write something about how change has to happen on individual campuses, given their contexts, etc.; how my portfolio connects to the above movements in the field, etc.]

The History of This Portfolio

Creating and getting approval for using a digital portfolio for my tenure case was 6 years in the making.

– started at USU after third-year review (in 2006). Previous years had been spent compiling everything into printed versions (and printing multiple versions of each narrative, to correct spelling, etc.) Went through about 1,000 sheets of paper, mostly to describe work that only existed online.

– used it for a job portfolio and discussion point in interviews when I went on the market in fall 2006. Discussed using it as a version of tenure portfolio with deans when I interviewed on campuses. (i.e., ISU knew I wanted to pursue this path when it hired me. They wrote into my contract that e-publications were valued the same as print publications, as long as they were peer-reviewed (most schools said same), which was fine for the kind of publiations I had.)

– Went through mid-tenure review at ISU my first year there using print tenure guidelines and realized what a waste (and duplication of efforts) it was. Old chair, Tim Hunt, understood this and agreed that I should try to use a digital portfolio, but he was also outgoing that year, so I knew I needed to get buy-in from new chair.

– Concomitantly with new chair search, ISU was doing a new provost search. Provost they hired had implemented an electronic portfolio/repository for faculty at her old campus, plus she was an English Education PhD, so I hoped to have an ally in the top stakeholder’s office. Was going to plan a meeting with her, but the new chair came on board in fall 2008, loved the digital portfolio idea for my work, and suggested that I didn’t need to go to the top to start. I needed to start locally.

In the meantime, I created the following video to show my provost, deans, and other tenure stakeholders at Illinois State University why I needed to submit my tenure application in an all-digital format. I presented it at one of my major conferences in March 2009 and to my chair when I returned home, in early April. Throughout that year, Mullin had been in conversation with the deans and provosts about the possibility of the digital portfolio, and everyone liked the idea, in theory. When she saw the video, she shopped it around with the deans and assistant provost Chuck McGuire. (McGuire had been interim provost my first year here and had also been on a university committee that had awarded me an FEIC grant for a summer stipend in 2008 to work the prototype of the portfolio, so he seemed to be on board, again, in theory.)

Although Mullin had gotten positive feedback from the necessary stakeholders and had discovered a crucial element to the tenure process — that supporting materials don’t go to the provost’s office unless it’s a case under scrutiny, which meant that the provost would never see the digital portfolio and, thus, didn’t need to necessarily give permission for me to do one — no one had actually said to me, at this point in early May 2009 (just six months before my portfolio was due) that I had permission to proceed. Mullin immediately got on the line with the deans and scheduled a meeting, which also produced an email from the Executive Associate Dean Sam Catanzaro confirming that Assistant Provost Chuck McGuire had approved of the digital portfolio because it stood in line with university guidelines already on the books. In fact, the college guidelines state:

“To ensure uniformity in the presentation of information on candidates for promotion or tenure, all DFSCs shall utilize the College format for documentation of promotion and tenure cases.”

which did not signal to me that a digital portfolio was OK, so we continued with a scheduled meeting.

On May 15, 2009, I presented a prototype of the portfolio along with this video, in draft form, to those present: Joan Mullin, Sam Catanzaro (Executive Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences), and Interim Dean Jim Payne.

During that meeting, we discussed details (and possible sticking points) about how a digital portfolio could go forward. The deans gave me verbal permission to try this option. The two main sticking points included:

that I make it evident that everything required in the paper application is included in the digital portfolio, and
that I make it abundantly evident what is peer-reviewed and what is not.

The former point is a matter of my needing to make sure the navigation of the site makes sense in relation to the print application materials (not an easy task given that the print materials are fairly redundant, but in a linear way). This latter point deserves some discussion (that I may hold off on for now) because the issue at stake indicates that anything online is still suspect.

A few other, minor sticking points:

how would signatures get passed around without my creating a login system?
how would paper copies of letters from the DFSC and CFSC get passed around without my scanning them?
how would tenure readers understand the “live” nature of the blog – that I would be continuing to add material to the site after I deposit the URL on the Nov. 2 deadline?

I’m happy to say that the last point, which I brought to the deans’ attention, ended up being a non-starter. Associate Dean Catanzaro said that the print tenure documents are also live in that if a scholar has material published (or accepted) after the Nov. 2 deadline, the tenure readers will accept amendment documentation to the person’s file.

I left that meeting with some revision strategies on the navigation (making it even more simple, despite my wider audience’s needs from the field perhaps wanting or needing those extra components, such as Recent Posts and Recent Comments). More over, I left the meeting with verbal confirmation that I could proceed on the digital portfolio.

On June 23, 2009, Mullin forwarded me an email that Dr. Catanzaro had sent to the CAS department chairs regarding a change in the promotion and tenure guidelines to accept “electronic versions [of tenure portfolios] via e-mail.” Here is the paragraph in question (which I refer to as “The Cheryl Paragraph” :)

Fully On-line Portfolios: Discuss your portfolio with the Dean and Executive Associate Dean at least six months prior to submission. Submit the Provost’s required cover letter and application form, clearly indicating the URL. Include all pertinent information requested in this application in the on-line portfolio.

[to be completed...]

Acknowledgements

The following people gave me help, advice, and encouragement as I worked on readying this portfolio for my tenure case:

[to be completed]

Karl Stolley, techno-rhetorical assistance (with PHP and Burke)