You are responsible for preparing and submitting your application to the HR Division and by the deadline date specified in the Timetable. You should complete the relevant application and provide evidence and examples that best support your case for promotion / progression and clearly demonstrate how you meet the Assessment Criteria, referring to the Indicators of Excellence for guidance. This section sets out certain requirements relating to the form and basic content of required information.
Applicants are encouraged to present their case for promotion in a concise manner, avoiding duplication where possible.
Applicants are expected to apply the principles of the San Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA). More information on DORA can be viewed here.
Those who applied for the same position/grade in the previous year's exercise (2023), including those who applied for a two-grade promotion but received a one-grade promotion, will be considered re-applicants. Please refer to the section on references for further details.
When completing the application form, you will be guided through the following sections of the form:
Applicant details
- Personal details, including your name, contact details and current position details.
- Which role/grade you are applying for, choosing from (Teaching) Professor (Grade 12), (Teaching) Professor (Grade 11), Associate (Teaching) Professor (Grade 10), Associate (Teaching) Professor (Grade 9), Senior Teaching Associate (Grade 8), or Teaching Associate (Grade 7).
- You will be asked if your application is interdisciplinary/cross-departmental. If you believe your application is, please ensure your personal statement explains the interdisciplinary/cross-departmental nature of your work and indicates those institutions which your work mostly concerns.
- You will be asked if you would like your College Teaching to be considered as part of your application. If you would, you can later provide the contact details of the Senior Tutor of your College, who will be contacted to provide a statement regarding your College Teaching.
- You will be asked if you hold a clinical/NHS contract, or if you carry out clinical veterinary work. If you answer yes to either of these questions, please ensure you refer to these details in your Personal Statement. Additional statements may also be gathered regarding your clinical/veterinary duties.
- You will be asked if you believe that contextual factors and/or COVID impact factors should be taken into consideration when evaluating your application. More details on this can be found in the Personal Statement section.
- If you are applying for a (Teaching) Professorship (Grade 12) or a (Teaching) Professorship (Grade 11), you will be asked to provide the proposed title for your (Teaching) Professorship, should your application for promotion be successful. Your title should be relevant to your field, and you should discuss and agree the proposed title with your Head of Institution before submitting your application.
You will be asked to attach a copy of your CV to the application form. This should include the following:
- Professional history, including all current and previous professional appointments held. Please include start dates and (where applicable) end dates.
- Education and Qualifications, including details of degrees, diplomas and other qualifications, and where and when obtained.
- Appointments and Affiliations, including memberships of professional bodies, learned societies, advisory bodies, peer review activities (grants, journals, books etc), editorships etc, with start, and where relevant, end dates.
- Prizes, Awards and Honours, including elections to prestigious professional/scientific bodies, providing the full name of the awarding/electing body and the date (year) of award/election.
Evidence of teaching (to the extent relevant in each case) should include:
- A record of all under and postgraduate courses taught over such a period as to demonstrate evidence of fulfilment of the teaching criteria (normally not less than three years).
- Details of course developments and pedagogical innovation.
- The annual number of hours of teaching undertaken in your Institution (stint).
- Details of any grants, as applicable.
- Details of Invited or Contributed Talks/Seminars, or other research presentations.
- Details of administrative work that the Institution has agreed to be equivalent to part of the annual teaching stint.
- Details of any regular and substantial contribution to the teaching programmes of other Institutions.
- An up-to-date list of any postgraduate students formally supervised, including results, over the period of employment.
- Summary of examining duties.
Samples of course descriptions, hand-outs, bibliographies, summary evidence of student feedback may be included, up to a maximum of ten sides of A4.
College Teaching
You may include details of College(s) teaching and work undertaken as a College Director of Studies, in which case the name and College of the Senior Tutor should be given, so they can be contacted to provide a statement regarding your College Teaching.
Clinical Work and Postgraduate Medical Teaching and Training
If you hold an Honorary NHS consultant contract, you should provide details of your contribution to postgraduate medical education and training. Information provided in relation to teaching will be considered under the teaching criteria and information provided in relation to clinical duties will be considered under Service to the University and Academic Community.
Clinical Veterinary Work and Postgraduate Veterinary Teaching and Training
If you are engaged in veterinary clinical work, you should provide details of your contribution to postgraduate veterinary teaching and training. Information provided in relation to teaching will be considered under the teaching criteria and information provided in relation to other clinical duties will be considered under Service to the University and Academic Community.
Please note, only teaching conducted at the University of Cambridge/its Colleges can be considered as part of your application.
Details of published scholarly outputs should be provided as follows:
- An up-to-date list of publications, set out in accordance with the conventions of the relevant academic discipline.
- The publication list should only include work that has been published, is in the public domain, and is available for consideration.
- Work in progress or completed but not yet published, including proofs and pre-prints, must not be included;
- Citation data, in disciplines where this is appropriate, may be included; consideration of an application will not be prejudiced if citation data are not included.
- Copies of publications must not be included.
- The publication list should be in a clear chronological order, stating for each publication (including any books) the year of publication, and page numbers and number of pages (where applicable*). Peer reviewed publication s should be listed separately. Where relevant, you should clearly mark publications since your last promotion.
- Please note, the points above are intended as guidance only. Applicants are encouraged to follow disciplinary norms when preparing their publications list, which may differ from the above.
Online learning and teaching resources
Links should be provided, clearly demonstrating how the resource is publicly accessible, e.g. via relevant web portals and/or licences. Where available, download data or access statistics should be provided or other evidence of take up or adoption.
Definition of “published”:
Work is regarded as published if it is traceable in ordinary catalogues and if copies are obtainable at the time of application, or at some previous time, by members of the public through normal trade channels; proofs of papers and pre-prints not yet published are not submissible.
The list can include work published electronically where it is regarded as published in the same formal sense as a journal or book. This includes free electronic journals that are refereed and accessible to the public. Placing a paper on a University web page does not count as publication but electronic publication of invited and/or contributed talks published as part of the proceedings of a Higher Education Institution or related body is acceptable provided hard copies are available in published form.
Non-standard contributions:
For disciplines where the communication of research results is not, or is only partly, in the form of conventional scholarly publication, other forms of contribution should be listed.
Co-authored and multi-authored publications:
Applicants should provide details of their role and contribution in co-authored and multi-authored publications, as referred to in the section on the Personal Statement.
*It is recognised that page numbers and numbers of pages may not be available for on-line publications.
You should provide a list of contributions other than in teaching and scholarship undertaken in your Institution/School/University and any service to the academic community outside the University that you wish to have considered. This might include service on the central University bodies, working parties, reviews, engagement in widening participation activity, the design and delivery of outreach programmes, contribution to the subject undertaken outside the University, editorial work, contribution to academic societies and meetings, details of research management, of research groups, and the creation and management of multi-institutional national/international research facilities. It may also include public engagement work.
If you hold an Honorary NHS consultant contract you should include details of your participation in regional and national committees (e.g. Royal Colleges, General Medical Council) and bodies concerned with undergraduate and postgraduate medical education, as well as details of your clinical duties.
If you are engaged in clinical veterinary work, you should include details of your participation in regional and national committees and bodies concerned with postgraduate veterinary education, as well as details of your other clinical duties beyond teaching and pedagogy.
You must include a personal statement* in support of your application, which explains your case for promotion demonstrates how you meet the Assessment Criteria of the office or post/grade to which you are applying. Where applicable, you should highlight information about your achievements since your last promotion.
With regard to the evidence provided of scholarship, you should make clear your role and contribution in co-authored and multi-authored publications or multi-partner projects. You might also wish to highlight key advances set out in your scholarship, how your scholarship informs your teaching, and the benefit this has on your students.
If you consider your teaching and scholarship to be interdisciplinary/cross-departmental, you should explain clearly the interdisciplinary/cross-departmental aspects of your work and indicate which of the University Institutions your work mostly concerns.
Student feedback is an important factor in assessing the effectiveness of teaching, course development and innovation. Therefore, your self-assessment should take into account student feedback (including informal emails) on the courses you have taught or are teaching. The Head of Institution may comment on this self-assessment in the Institutional Statement. It is acknowledged that some institutions do not have formal processes for gathering student feedback. In these cases, reference to informal student feedback can be included, although such feedback should not be directly solicited from students.
With regard to teaching duties, you should include a self-assessment of the impact of your work on students.
*Please note, the personal statement has a limit of 1,000 words.
Contextual Factors and COVID Impact Statements
You are encouraged to record any Contextual Factors that have affected your performance over the last five years. Contextual factors may include, but are not limited to: part-time working, ill health, disability, caring responsibilities and periods of prolonged leave such as maternity, parental leave or bereavement. These details should be provided in the separate Contextual Factors section of the form, which has a limit of 500 words.
The University recognises that many teaching and scholarship staff will have faced difficulties in carrying out their usual duties during the COVID-19 pandemic. We therefore welcome a COVID Impact Statement from you detailing the impact on your current or future work. This may include impacts as a result of building closures, caring responsibilities for children and/or other dependents, mental health issues such as heightened stress and anxiety over this period, or other disability related impacts. These details should also be provided in the separate COVID Impact Statement section of the form, which has a limit of 1,000 words.
If you choose to provide Contextual Factors which include health-related matters, the Faculty Committee assessing your application may refer you to Occupational Health, in order to obtain specialist medical advice about the impact of these matters on your duties. It is important to note that providing Contextual Factors and/or a COVID Impact Statement will not have a detrimental effect on any application for promotion, nor will an Occupational Health referral.
The completed application should be submitted to the ACP mailbox: acp@admin.cam.ac.uk by the deadline date stated in the Timetable.
The relevant application documents can be downloaded from the Forms section of the guidance.
You will be notified of the outcome of your application after the GB meeting that considers ACP T&S recommendations.
If your application is unsuccessful and you wish to receive feedback you should request this from your Head of Institution by the deadline set out in the timetable.
You may ask for the feedback statement set out in the SC minutes to be carried forward for information to your next application under the ACP T&S scheme. This option is intended to help you demonstrate how you have responded to feedback and further strengthened your application.