Faculty Promotion & Tenure

Welcome to the Feinberg Faculty Promotion & Tenure Gateway! At Northwestern, we seek to help all faculty achieve their full potential with timely achievement of promotion and, where relevant, tenure. 

Obtaining and documenting career achievements needed for promotion is best approached over a series of years. We hope that you will visit this website early and often in your time at Northwestern as you plan (and sometimes modify your plans) for your career trajectory.

An important early step in your promotion journey--and in using this website--is to confirm your career track (faculty are typically assigned to a career track at time of hire). Your career track establishes the criteria that will be used to evaluate your promotion/tenure application. Document requirements and promotion process workflow steps also differ by career track.

• Confirm your career track by logging into the Feinberg Faculty Portal and navigating to Profile > Current Appointment. Clinician-Educators and Team Scientists should also make note of their domain(s) - and Health System Clinicians should confirm their area of concentration - because faculty on these tracks are evaluated for promotion based on accomplishments in the recorded domain(s)/area of concentration.
• If you feel that your assigned career track or domains are not aligned with your career activity, contact your department leadership (e.g., department chair, division chief, or department/division administrator) to discuss whether a transition to another track (or domains) is appropriate. View the appointments page for a summary of all career tracks and faculty appointment types at Feinberg.