Documenting your work for promotion and tenure

Question:  

I’m in my first year on the tenure track, and I know I need to be thinking about my tenure file even now. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed trying to set up a system to collect all the evidence I’ll eventually need. What do I need to keep? Where should I put it all? 

– Anonymous, Public Health 

 
Dr. Editor’s Answer:  

You’re smart to be thinking about this now, dear letter-writer: by collecting and organizing the evidence of your work from day one, you’re going to give yourself more options in the future as to how you craft the story of your career. When you collect and organize the evidence of your work, you’re building a corpus — a body of texts that you can, in the future, analyze for patterns, just as you would analyze, for instance, survey responses to identify themes in community health needs, or epidemiological datasets to identify trends and patterns in disease occurrence.  

To put it another way: the evidence that eventually becomes the appendices in your dossier can be used as you use any other set of evidence. So, developing and maintaining a system to manage that evidence will enable you, in the future, to make a compelling argument that draws on the data of your tenure-track work.  

Of course, that’s nice to say in theory, but not always easy to put into practice. Also, I’m an editor, not a writing coach, so I rarely support researchers in collecting their materials — I’m more about synthesizing and communicatingthan record-keeping. So, to learn more about what to collect and how to organize it, I collaborated with my colleague Kate Vacek of Compass Academic Coaching, and, with the support of UBC doctoral student intern Athena Loredo, we interviewed 15 recently tenured and promoted academics from the U.S., Canada, and Australia. We then created this free 30-page PDF to share their words and experience with you. Below, Dr. Vacek and I draw on our learnings from these interviews, along with our combined 12-plus years’ experience supporting promotion and tenure applicants.  

 
What should you collect? 

To provide evidence of your research, keep PDFs or stable links to all publications, along with citation information. Save copies of all grant applications — both funded and unfunded — along with submission confirmations and responses from funders. Document your conference presentations by keeping programs, scripts and slides or posters; distinguish between peer-reviewed presentations and invited talks. If you supervise research assistants, maintain records of who you supervised, when, what they did during their RAship, whether they won any awards or scholarships, and what happened to them after your work together: their career outcomes, academic or non-academic, are a proxy of the quality of your mentorship. Track media mentions and appearances, ideally by downloading articles or videos, rather than expecting that links will remain unchanged and non-paywalled in the long term. If you do outreach work, save workshop materials, visual aids, attendance data (How many attendees? From what organizations, regions, or communities?) and — with permission — photographs of participants engaged in your knowledge-mobilization activities. Keep a running list of manuscripts in progress with status updates. And when you receive an award, in addition to the notification letter and certificate, save any details you receive from the awarding agency as to why you were selected. If you can get the nomination letters, save those too, as they can be an asset in how you describe your research excellence. 

For teaching, save all syllabi and course materials you create, including slide decks, assignment descriptions, rubrics, even screenshots from your learning management system (Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, etc). Some folks are required to keep a list of the number of students registered in each course; a simple spreadsheet or table can help you with that. Yes, you’ll need to save all course evaluations. But also keep your own reflections on those evaluations, so you can describe qualitatively how you changed your teaching based on student feedback. Do the same with records of peer observations of teaching and your reflections on that peer feedback. Those records you keep for your RAs? Track the same information for your TAs and undergraduate or graduate supervisees. Save letters or emails of appreciation — particularly any unsolicited ones. And, again, keep those award notifications, certificates and nomination letters. 

For service, retain materials you create as part of committee work (community agreements, terms of reference, policy recommendations), and record both administrative positions categorized as service and roles you’ve held in scholarly societies (noting when they are elected). If your institution counts journal reviewing as a service activity, track the journals you’ve reviewed for, the years in which you reviewed, and the number of articles reviewed per year. Keep letters and emails of appreciation, and track numerical evidence of your impact — quantifiable increases in community engagement, event attendance or any other numbers that reflect well on you.  

 
Where should you put it all? 

The short answer: pick one place and use it consistently. 

Dr. Vacek told me that the faculty members she’s supported use various tools — OneDrive, Notion, Google Drive, Proton Drive, Dropbox, email folders, or whatever platform their institution requires for final submission. “I think the key is finding one storage spot that is easy for you to use consistently,” she advised. “People get frustrated and anxious when they start building their application materials and discover they have stuff squirreled away in multiple places. They can’t find what they are looking for easily and don’t trust that they collected everything they want to showcase.” 

Wherever you store your evidence, consider separate file folders for teaching, research and service, as well as folders for each academic year. If you’re not great with systematic file naming, create a dummy file in each folder that will remind you how you’ve decided to standardize your file names. I’m thinking of something like “2025-26-Month1-Month4-COURSENAME-100-DocumentType.” Using a consistent file naming convention will make your life easier when, in five or six years, you’re trying to figure out if “2025-HLSC-300” was taught in the January semester or the September one. You’ll also love yourself for not needing to open the file to know what’s in it. By popping a dummy file into each folder with this template naming convention, you won’t need to remember or locate your file name convention — it’ll be at your fingertips. 

One final recommendation: an inventory or basic finding aid can be a huge help to your future self. Create a simple spreadsheet or document where you log new items as you add them to your collection. Include the date, a brief description and the file location. This running inventory will make it substantially easier to compile your dossier when the time comes, and it ensures you won’t forget about that conference presentation from year two or that media interview from year three. 

 
A simple system is a gift to your future self 

The thought of organizing five or six years’ worth of evidence might feel overwhelming, but remember: you’re not building the entire file today. You’re simply creating a system for collecting materials as you go. At some point this semester, spend an hour setting up your storage location, creating your inventory document and determining your standardized file names. Then, make it a monthly habit to add new items and update your inventory. By the time you’re preparing your actual tenure file, you’ll have everything you need at your fingertips. Compiling a tenure application can be a stressful, lengthy task, and you’ll thank your earlier self for the foresight. 

For more advice on setting yourself up for your future tenure application, download our free, 30-page PDF of advice from recently tenured and promoted research- and teaching-stream faculty, Promotion & tenure perspectives from faculty who’ve been through it. More from me on P&T next month, too.