Skip to page content

Third-Year Review

The third-year review is an opportunity for faculty members to know how they are developing given department expectations, understand how they are progressing toward promotion and tenure, and relocate early in their career if there is not a good fit with UGA given their emerging career goals.

In a third-year review, evaluators consider:

  • Quality of work (peer and student evaluations considered)
  • Balance across areas
  • Productivity relative to budgeted time
  • Continuity or integration of work
  • Focus

The third-year review, a formative process, occurs at the end of the third year of appointment for assistant professors. If an assistant professor comes to the University of Georgia with 2 or 3 years prior credit toward tenure and requests to be considered for promotion and/or tenure in the third year of appointment at UGA, preliminary consideration for promotion and/or tenure will replace the third-year review. Faculty members undergoing third-year review will prepare their dossiers in collaboration with the PTU head detailing their achievements and performance in their assigned area(s) of responsibility. This dossier should take the form of Sections 4 and 5 of the promotion and tenure dossier.

The head of the PTU will appoint a faculty committee, in accordance with the appointment unit bylaws, to provide a thorough review of the individual’s dossier. This committee will contain no fewer than three eligible faculty members. The review will be substantive and will provide the faculty member with critical feedback about his/her progress toward promotion and/or tenure.

The third-year review committee will report its findings to the PTU, and the eligible faculty, including the PTU head, will vote to recommend whether progress toward promotion and tenure is sufficient. The PTU head is not obligated to reveal his/her vote. The committee will then report its recommendations, along with the vote, to the PTU head. The PTU head will provide the faculty member under review with a written report regarding his/her progress toward promotion and/or tenure. The candidate may reply in writing to the report within 30 days and any reply becomes part of the report.

The PTU head/s letter, and any response by the candidate, will be included in the promotion and/or tenure dossier when it is developed.