The long walk

Today I made the last tiny adjustments to my tenure files, and walked them over to the Committee on Faculty (COF) Coordinator's office. I had three files: Teaching, Professional Growth, and Service. The first two were pretty fat files, the third and skinny file was mostly letters from colleagues thanking me for serving on committees or other service. The next step is for the Personnel Committee of the School of Music to review my files during the next three weeks and to write their report with a recommended decision. The School Personnel Committee (SPC) consists of all full-time faculty, except those in their first or last year at DePauw. Plus untenured faculty can recuse themselves, as I did for my colleague's tenure review that is immediately after mine. I get to read the SPC's report and write a response if I see fit, and then these are sent on to COF. They write their own report with recommendation to either concur or disagree with the SPC's decision, which is sent on the Vice President of Academic Affairs and eventually to the President. Theoretically either of these people or the Board of Trustees could overrule the previous decisions, but I'm told this is unlikely to the point of never happening.

It feels much like when I submitted my dissertation, concerned whether I caught all the typos and logical flaws. But nothing is perfect, and I feel the files do represent my work, which is the important thing.