MAIN PROJECT GOALS

The project's goals are to investigate the validity of ERLs, determine possible bias in ERLs based on candidate and letter writer characteristics, and identify possible ways to remediate limited validity and bias. Leveraging a partnership between nine universities (University of Houston, Hampton University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Lehigh University, University of Alabama, Louisiana State University, Rice University, Texas A&M University, and University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), and by examining more than 9000 ERLs, this project aims to contribute to the validity of P&T processes, understand barriers to P&T for women and faculty of color, and ultimately, increase the P&T rates for women and faculty of color.

Our project addresses six research questions:

(1) What is the relationship between applicants’ scholarly productivity and demographics (e.g., gender, ethnicity) with ERL linguistic content and length?

(2) What is the role of ERL writer characteristics in predicting ERL linguistic content and length?

(3) What role does linguistic letter content and length play in determining subsequent promotion and tenure votes taken by members of the department, college, and university promotion and tenure committees?

(4) What role do tenure clock extensions, particularly caregiving and COVID tenure clock extensions, play in how ERL language, and how they impact P&T committee voting?

(5) Do ERLs describe a candidate’s collaborative research differently based on candidate gender?

(6) Which ERL and P&T policies increase the validity of URLs to where they are more strongly related to objective scholarly outcomes than to ERL writer features?