Guidelines for Writing External Review Letters for Tenure and Promotion

Last updated March 17, 2025

Last Updated

March 17, 2025

pairs of students or colleagues working together

Guidelines for Writing External Review Letters for Tenure and Promotion

Last updated March 17, 2025

The Overall Function of External Review

How We Evaluate Says Something about What We Value

One Caveat

Why Do We Have External Review, Anyway?

Tips on the Process for Writing Letters

What Does the Process Look Like?

Here Are Some Things to Think about as You Decide Whether to Participate

What Should a Letter Look Like?

Tips as You Are Writing

Who Is the Audience for These Letters?

Challenges and Pitfalls with Writing Letters

Common Pitfalls and Concerns

What Are the Benefits of Writing External Review Letters?

Is It Worth It? Parting Thoughts

Write external review letters with confidence.

Overview

Writing external review letters for faculty’s tenure and promotion cases is a vital piece of service to the profession. But guidelines around them can be unclear and vague. If you’ve been asked to write an external review letter, and you’re unsure of how to start, this course will help.

How It Works

This course incorporates written resources, labeled by topic. To view the resources in a topic, click on the topic heading. If you’re completely new to writing external review letters, it may make the most sense to go through the topics in order. If you’ve written letters before, you may want to jump to topics that are most applicable to you in the moment.

Who should attend?

This course is best suited for faculty who are writing external review letters for the promotion and tenure cases for other faculty. If you are a department chair or leading faculty development, this course may make sense as a resource to offer your faculty.