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Design faculty, promotion and tenure (P&T) committees, chairs, and deans at American institutions of higher learning have often struggled to articulate, much less agree upon, what should “count” toward promotion and tenure in design. Designers who publish in peer-reviewed journals are often chastised for not being “makers,” yet designers with active professional practices are frequently faulted for not having enough peer reviewed work, or for failing to make a scholarly contribution to the field. Faculty without grant-funded projects are often told they must secure them, yet designers who work collaboratively with faculty from other programs on grant-funded projects are often told that the nature and significance of their own contribution is unclear.

For design faculty, then, the P&T process can feel like a game of Whack-A-Mole: the target is seldom clearly visible, and it always seems to be moving. For those evaluating designers’ dossiers, the P&T process is also an exercise in frustration: the expectations for promotion are seldom made clear to evaluators, either, and many understandably struggle to grasp the significance of the minimalist entries on designers’ elegantly formatted CVs.

Surely these challenges are surmountable. But since the devil is always in the details, this session showcases short (ten- to twelve-minute) presentations that describe practices and policies—no matter how modest—that the speakers or their institutions have successfully adopted to address challenges that design faculty—and their well meaning colleagues—routinely face during the P&T process.