Criteria and exceptions

As a general principle, candidates for tenure, promotion, or a change of focus domain are expected to satisfy all the criteria associated with the respective career step--the main criterion as well as the more specific criteria, via which the main criterion is elaborated. However, there are situations in which staff members do not need to (fully) satisfy the criteria as they are stated. These are explained on this page.

Compensation

To accommodate diversity among staff members and respect the fact that achieving excellence on certain points may come at a cost, weaker performance on certain criteria can be compensated for by exceptional performance on others, at the discretion of the assessment committee. Compensation may occur across domains except for the candidate’s focus domain: if a candidate does not fully satisfy a specific criterion within their focus domain, this can only be compensated for by exceptional performance on other criteria within their focus domain, but not by results in another domain.

Time-sensitive criteria

Some promotion criteria are time-sensitive. Such criteria assume that a staff member works full-time. If a staff member works part-time instead or has experienced life events due to which they did not work for a significant amount of time, the timeframe mentioned in time-sensitive criteria has to be adapted accordingly. For example, in order to be promoted to Full Professor with a focus on research, one must have supervised at least 4 PhD students in the 5 years preceding the appraisal, assuming one has a full-time contract; if instead one has a 0.8 fte appointment and taken parental leave for four months, one should have shown to have supervised 4 PhD students in a period of 6 years and 7 months.

PhD students and life events

For most career steps, a staff member needs to have supervised a number of PhD students within a given timeframe. However, when circumstances have arisen that were outside the control of the staff member, for instance life events of PhD students, the assessment committee may diverge from such criteria.

The criteria for tenure, promotion, or for a change of focus domain associated with the three career paths can be found at our introduction to Career Paths in Science and Engineering.