Faculty Resources

Detailed procedures, guidelines, and timelines for faculty appointment, promotion and tenure can be found in section five of the faculty handbook.

Use the Promotion and Tenure Timeline, Checklist, and Electronic Submission Instructions to ensure that you are completing all of the required materials on time.

The Annotated Guide to the MUSM CV can be used as a template to develop your own personal CV.

The Annotated Guide to the Application for Promotion can be used as a template for documenting your contributions in domains that are applicable to your specific promotion track: teaching, scholarship, clinical practice, administration, and service.

If a faculty member is applying for tenure, the application should already include documentation of the tenure-relevant areas.  Please include a separate file or a separate section within the application that addresses the five areas evaluated for tenure in 2-4 pages.  It is not necessary to repeat the information already documented in the application, but the candidate may cite specific accomplishments or provide commentary to support each area.  This serves to facilitate evaluation of the candidate by the P&T Committee.

1. Quality of Teaching. Candidate demonstrates that he or she is an accomplished teacher through knowledge of the subject matter, use of varied pedagogical tools, meeting teaching obligations, mentoring students, completing educational administrative responsibilities. Include evidence of high standards of teaching through evaluations by students, peer-review of teaching evaluation, and evidence of improvement.
2. Education and experience. Candidate provides evidence of continuing education by attending professional meetings, developing new skills, collaborating with colleagues, etc. Include evidence of continual education in areas of proficiency, evidence of developing expertise, evidence of disseminating skills and experience.
3. Professional achievement and scholarship. Candidate demonstrates a consistent and sustained high quality portfolio of publications and other scholarly work. Include evidence of professional achievement and scholarship external to MUSM.
4. Group Efforts, Cooperation with Colleagues and Collegiality. Candidate demonstrates potential for continued positive contribution to overall institutional needs and effectiveness in interpersonal relationships. Include evidence of participation in group efforts and evidence of cooperation with colleagues and collegiality.
5. Professional responsibility and service to the school and community. Candidate demonstrates highest levels of integrity including professional ethics, cooperativeness, resourcefulness and responsibility. Include Evidence of responsibility and service to school; Evidence of responsibility and service to university.

Use the Guide to Required Letters of Recommendation to determine the type of recommendation letters that can be used as well as the proper protocol for writing and submitting them.

Academic CVs follow a fairly standard format. Below you will find a template for the School of Medicine along with a transmittal form that needs to be completed for promotion or tenure.

• CV template
• Transmittal form

Faculty members in good standing, who have retired or announced their retirement, may be nominated for Emeritus/Emerita status by any other faculty member in good standing. Below you will find the application requirements and transmittal form that needs to be completed.

• Application requirements
• Transmittal form

These applications are examples only. No one application is perfect, but they should all provide additional insight into the process of documenting contributions to MUSM. The faculty members who submitted these applications approved posting them. All applicants were successful in achieving promotion and/or tenure.

• Tenure Track: Promotion to Professor Example 1
• Tenure Track: Promotion to Professor Example 2
• Tenure Track: Promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure
• Clinical Educator Track: Promotion to Associate Professor Example 1
• Clinical Educator Track: Promotion to Associate Professor Example 2
• Clinical Educator Track: Promotion to Professor
• Clinician Faculty Track: Promotion to Clinical Associate Professor
• Library Track: Promotion to Associate Professor
• Medical Educator Track: Promotion to Associate Professor

Mercer University School of Medicine (MUSM) educates physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and healthcare needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. The school’s rigorous, engaging and collaborative academic environment fosters the development of community responsive health care leaders.

MUSM was established in 1982 to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and healthcare needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. Today, most of its graduates practice in the state of Georgia, and of those, more than 80% are practicing in rural or underserved areas of Georgia. Mercer medical students benefit from a problem-based medical education program that provides early patient care experiences. Such an academic environment fosters the early development of clinical problem-solving and instills in each student an awareness of the place of the basic medical sciences in medical practice.

The School of Medicine opened a full four-year campus in Savannah in 2008 at Memorial University Medical Center. In 2012, the School began offering clinical education for third- and fourth-year medical students in Columbus. Following their second year, students participate in core clinical clerkships at the School’s primary teaching hospitals: Memorial University Medical Center/HCA, Savannah; Piedmont Columbus Regional, Columbus; St. Francis Hospital/Emory Healthcare, Columbus; Medical Center at Navicent Health, Macon; and Coliseum Medical Center/HCA in Macon. The School also offers master’s degrees in family therapy, preclinical sciences and biomedical sciences and a Ph.D. in rural health sciences.

MUSM is recognized for its patient-based learning and integrated system-oriented basic science curriculum during the preclinical years, an accelerated track program in family medicine and internal medicine, and a recognized focus on the community. As a demonstration of the commitment to community-based practice, medical students complete 10 weeks of required rotations in rural and/or medically underserved areas as a key component of their education.  MUSM accepts only Georgia residents into the undergraduate medical education program. Upon completion of residency, approximately two-thirds of students return to Georgia to practice; 80% of these physicians practice in a rural or underserved area.

In addition to medical education, MUSM offers three graduate programs: a Master of Family Therapy through the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a Master of Biomedical Sciences and a Master of Preclinical Sciences through the Department of Biomedical Sciences.

Detailed procedures, guidelines, and timelines for faculty appointment, promotion and tenure can be found in section five of the faculty handbook.

Faculty members are recruited to fulfill specific goals and objectives of the medical school and an individual department or unit of the medical school. In accordance with these specific needs and in consideration of each faculty member’s career goals, faculty are appointed to one of eight promotion tracks:

• Tenure track
• Research track
• Medical educator track
• Library track
• Clinician track
• Clinical scholar track
• Clinical educator track
• Administrator track

The minimum quantitative guidelines for the following tracks should be used in conjunction with detailed qualitative guidelines in section 5.5.2 of the faculty handbook

• Administrator, clinician, Clinical scholar, research tracks
• Library track
• Tenure, medical educator, Clinical educator tracks

The School of Medicine has a Faculty Handbook that can be used as reference in addition to the Mercer University Faculty Handbook.

The Faculty Bylaws govern the faculty in the School of Medicine. These Bylaws are intended to supplement the bylaws and approved policies and procedures of Mercer University.

The Executive Council and Standing Committees of the School of Medicine are dedicated to promoting, assisting and supporting the mission and vision of the School.