The Department will provide five arm's-length letters evaluating the candidate's scholarship and could provide up to three additional arm's-length or non-arm's-length letters. At least three of the total arm’s-length letters received must be from evaluators selected by the Department, and two of the total arm’s-length letters received must be from the candidate’s list. The additional arm’s-length letters must come from the Department’s list, and the non-arm’s-length letters may come from either the Department’s or candidate’s list. Department chairs and faculty coming up for review often have questions about who might or might not be appropriate as an arm’s-length external evaluator. While you and your departmental colleagues are best qualified to gauge the expertise of people in your field, the College does have some general guidelines. These guidelines aim to forestall potential questions about evaluator experience and objectivity, questions that might (and have on occasion been seen to) undermine a candidate’s case as it proceeds from the department to APT:
- Ideal arm’s-length external evaluators are objective, credible, and highly respected in their field. They are at institutions with solid track records in research. They have no personal relationships with the candidate and are free from bias, including bias due to personal or professional relationships with the candidate.
- External evaluators should not include the candidate’s adviser or other members of the dissertation committee.
- They may include professional acquaintances of the candidate but not friends.
- They should not include the candidate’s coauthors or former instructors.
- They should not include Claremont Colleges’ faculty.
- For tenure reviews, they should be at or above the rank of tenured associate professor, or its academic or non-academic equivalent. To the degree possible, evaluators should be full professors.
- In reviews for promotion to full professor, typically all external evaluators should be full professors themselves.
These are guidelines, not immutable rules, and if you have compelling reasons for an exception, please simply outline them in the departmental report.
Note: Adapted from Outside Referees, Pomona College.