Faculty Tracks

Faculty Appointment Designations (Tracks) within the School of Medicine

Effective March 15, 2018, the School of Medicine has updated the criteria for appointment and promotion on our seven faculty tracks. These criteria will be applied for any P&T action initiated after March 15, 2018. The prior criteria are available here.

Faculty appointment designations are called faculty “tracks.” There are seven tracks at UVa, three are tenure-eligible and four are tenure-ineligible. Faculty on all tracks contribute to the School of Medicine’s threefold mission of medical education, research, and patient care. The phrase “without term” is used to denote the award of “tenure.” What follows on this page is a summary description of each track. For the full P&T policy and track description, please click on the appropriate track heading below. Significant changes from the NIH relate to our concepts of collaboration in research; see “Criteria for Collaboration” below.

The three tenure-eligible (te) appointment designations are:

Academic Investigator (AI) – a majority of effort in research, with a balance in teaching and service.
Clinician Investigator (CI) – a majority of effort in research, with a balance in clinical care and service.
Clinician Educator (CE) – at least 80% time devoted to patient care and/or medical education.

The four tenure-ineligible (ti) appointment designations are

Clinical Faculty (CF) – majority of time devoted to clinical activity.
Instructional Faculty (IF) – majority of time devoted to teaching or service, clinical or otherwise.
Research Faculty – Independent (RF-I); majority of time devoted to PI research; teaching is optional
Research Faculty – Support (RF-S); majority of time devoted to PI research; teaching is optional

Appointment to one of the tenure eligible (te) or tenure ineligible (ti) faculty tracks is made according to the major focus of faculty effort as specified in: the initial or modified letter of appointment; the job description with time allocations, and; performance expectations by mission.

During the annual faculty performance evaluation, the position statement is reviewed and modified as necessary. Track designations are reviewed for appropriateness and changed as needed. Progress toward academic achievement is documented.

Criteria for Collaboration

The NIH roadmap for patient-oriented research endorsed team science and established the expectation of expertise for interdisciplinary investigation and collaboration. The national academies have suggested that the evaluation of outcomes of interdisciplinary research and teaching will focus less on the usual number of publications and more on the impact of these publications. A successful interdisciplinary program will affect multiple disciplines and the connections among these fields. The School of Medicine proposes the following criteria for the evaluation of candidates involved in team science:

The curriculum vitae contains evidence of research scholarship in peer reviewed journals of significant impact, and sustained successful competition for hypothesis driven, extramural funding (NIH, AHA, NDF). Roles as co-investigator or project investigator on a PPG is like a R01 investigator of other type (with significant time and effort) will be valued. The bibliography may include middle authored publications and non-PI roles on grants should be explained with annotation of the candidates’ specific contribution made to projects.
Letters from collaborators speak to the unique and invaluable contribution made by the candidate to the success of the research. External referees acknowledge the candidate’s national reputation and recognition as the “collaborator’s collaborator”, the “researcher’s researcher.”
Letters about the candidate should discuss how this particular collaboration generates synergy, creates innovative research networks and/or institutional opportunities beyond the expected product of the individual, independent research, and
First author scholarly publications may include application development, instructive descriptions of interdisciplinary methodologies, commentaries or chapters.

Resources:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-06-036.html – Establishes multi-PI awards at NIH.
http://grants2.nih.gov/grants/multi_pi/overview.htm#dist – Recommends that institutions create policies that allow for multiple-PIs to receive credit on such awards.