Faculty Appointments, Promotion and Tenure

This pathway, for faculty employed by Wake Forest University School of Medicine (WFUSOM), offers five tracks available for clinicians, basic scientists, and professional educators. Faculty advancement on each of these tracks has a professional focus on scholarly productivity and dissemination.

Guidance for Specific Promotion Tracks:

• Tenure Track: This is the most common faculty track for basic scientists in our institution. A 9-year probationary time period (“tenure clock”) applies to faculty employed by WFUSM on this track, and processional success is focused on peer-reviewed scholarly products and publications and dependent on extramural funding success and continuity. Faculty on this track typically apply for promotion to Associate Professor and Tenure together.
• Clinician Scholar Track: This is the most common faculty track for clinicians employed by WFUSM, whose scholarly work is disseminated with a focus on the clinical aspects of patient care, teaching, and/or scientific discovery.  This track encompasses the prior Clinician, Clinician Educator, Clinician Scientist tracks and includes expectations for scholarship in clinical work, education and/or research.  For advancement, a professional focus is on peer-reviewed scholarly productivity and publications. 
• Research Scholar Track: This is a contingent research faculty track.  Faculty on this track, employed by WFUSM, focus on research implementation and team research, typically as a collaborating investigator and team scientist with modest participation in non-research activities.  100% funded effort in research is required and not eligible for institutional match funding.
• Educator Scholar Track: Faculty on this track, who are employed by WFUSM, focus on education pedagogy and the scholarship of education. These professional educators most often have a basic science or education degree and are not clinicians.  Clinicians with a focus on educational activities are typically on the Clinician Scholar track.  Advancement on the Educator Scholar track is focused on peer-reviewed scholarly productivity and publications and often is accompanied by success with extramural funding for educational work.

View all promotion track summaries.

The Clinical Faculty Pathway is a non-tenure eligible faculty classification for physicians who contribute to the mission of our school of medicine and our health system through independent medical practice, teaching, research and the recurrent direct supervision of patient care provided by medical students, resident physicians, and other healthcare learners. Faculty on this pathway have full faculty appointments at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

Professional titles on this pathway are Clinical Instructor, Clinical Assistant Professor, Clinical Associate Professor, and Clinical Professor.

Academic advancement requires annual demonstration of excellence in patient care, teaching, and other professional achievements.

Applicants for promotion on the Clinical Faculty Pathway will prepare a Clinician’s Portfolio to demonstrate excellence in patient care activities, a Teaching Portfolio to highlight achievements in teaching and education, and a Professional Achievement Portfolio to demonstrate annual achievements and excellence in up to three areas of professional focus.

While there are no specified minimum numbers of traditional publications or extramural grant funding on this pathway, these types of professional accomplishments are highly valued and may be used with other portfolio evidence to demonstrate significant achievements that support faculty excellence in these categories:

• Patient Safety & Quality Improvement – faculty will lead and/or play a documented key role in creating, analyzing, and implementing patient safety and quality initiatives, with evidence of performance improvement on an annual basis recognized regionally (for advancement to Clinical Associate Professor) and/or nationally (for advancement to Clinical Professor).
• Patient Care Process Improvement – faculty will create and/or play a documented key role in implementing creative patient care processes or clinical pathways which are recognized and/or implemented at a regional and/or national level. Evidence of effectiveness and annual assessment of success are highly valued.
• Committee Leadership – faculty will serve in leadership roles for institutional and/or professional society committees and task forces annually. Evidence of accomplishments, significant initiatives, and outcomes is highly valued. Include details for role(s) the candidate has in accomplishments.
• Clinical Administrative Leadership – faculty will provide evidence of excellence as a leader for clinical care activities. Roles may include serving as a medical director, clinical operations leader, or other ongoing and regular patient care related leadership positions. Feedback and assessments from team members, such as 360-degree evaluations, are highly valued to provide evidence of strong leadership. Include information about the success of these activities and how the candidate’s leadership contributed to them.
• Healthcare Innovations or Research – faculty will demonstrate creative accomplishments that lead to patents, medical device development, new therapeutics, nontraditional teaching methods or healthcare/public health content delivery, research with clinical relevance, or other innovative approaches that improve health. This may include supportive roles in team science that may not be considered traditional peer-reviewed scholarship. Grant funded professional activities that support the clinical mission of our health system are highly valued and may include extramural support of new clinical programs, innovative educational efforts, research programs and/or other funded patient care initiatives. Peer-reviewed publications and other dissemination of results can be used to support meaningful outcomes and impact.
• Advocacy Efforts – faculty will provide evidence of significant participation and leadership in state and/or national advocacy efforts related to healthcare and/or academic medicine, including medical education and research, documented annually. Include documentation of outcomes, successful initiatives, and details about how the candidate contributed to these efforts.
• Clinical Outreach Activities – faculty members will lead regular institutional outreach events, regularly appear in media to represent the institution, and/or publish written materials disseminated outside of our health system that support the positive reputation of our institution each year. 

View the Clinical Faculty track summary.

Request letters, signed by both the faculty member and the Department Chair, should be addressed to the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs for approval.

Any department chair hiring a candidate who will receive funding from the WFUSM (e.g., salary, startup, etc.) will need to complete the steps outlined in the SOP. If the candidate is receiving WFUSM funding and clinical support, the department chair will also need to follow the process outlined by UGP. Candidates fully funded through the clinical enterprise (i.e., no WFUSM funding) do not need to complete the process outlined below.

As part of the SOP, hiring leaders/designees will need to complete the following REDCap forms:

• Faculty Appointment Request Form
• Faculty Recruitment Justification and Offer Package Form
• Along with other information, this budget template will need to be uploaded into this REDCap form:
  • If faculty candidate has a requested initial salary below the NIH cap, use this budget template.
  • If faculty candidate has a requested initial salary above the NIH cap, use this budget template.

Academic departments at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine may complete and submit a completed Faculty Candidate Summary form and supporting documents to the Office of Faculty Affairs for full faculty appointment requests.

• Academic Faculty Physician: includes MD, DDS, DMD, DO, DPM, MBBS, MBBAOBCh, MBChB
• Academic Faculty: non-physician faculty without clinical duties, such as researchers and educators (PhD, DVM, DrPH, EdD, JD)
• Academic Faculty Clinician: DNP, PA-C, MA, MHA, MPH, MS  MSSW, PA-C, PharmD, PsyD, PhD and all non-physicians with clinical duties

• New Faculty Candidate Summary
• Curriculum Vitae
• Letters of Reference (LOR)
  • One LOR required when requesting tenure with equivalent rank at time of hire.
  • Two LORs required when requesting promotion at time of hire to Associate or full Professor, with or without tenure.
• Chair memo required when requesting a rank of Associate or full Professor, with or without tenure. The chair memo template can be found in the Promotion & Tenure (P&T) section below.
• Include a memo from the department leader for any secondary appointment.