PTK Promotion Bootcamp Pt 1: Demystifying the Promotion Process

Dawn Culpepper (she/her) is the Director of the ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence. Dawn's research broadly examines equity, diversity, and inclusion in the academic workplace, with an emphasis on identifying strategies and disrupting practices that limit full participation for women and scholars from racially minoritized groups. She has examined faculty hiring, workload, tenure and promotion, postdoctoral training programs, work-life integration, graduate education, and faculty-related COVID-19 policies. Her work has been published in top education and diversity-related journals, and she has led or served on numerous projects funded by the National Science Foundation, including as the social science research team lead for the NSF INCLUDES RISE-UPP Alliance. 

Ursula Gorham is the Associate Director for Faculty Initiatives in the Office of Faculty Affairs, overseeing policy and procedural matters governing PTK and other non-tenure-track faculty. Prior to joining the Office of Faculty Affairs, she was a Senior Lecturer in the College of Information Studies, serving as the director of the Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program from 2018-2023. She is a proud alumna of UMD, having earned a PhD and MLIS from the iSchool, a law degree from the School of Law, University of Maryland, Baltimore, and a Master of Public Management from the School of Public Policy.

Lori A. Sefton is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Applied Agriculture and within her unit has 1) gone through the promotion process, 2) served as both a committee member and Chair for the unit’s Promotion Committee, and 3) rewrote the unit’s PTK Promotion Guidelines and Faculty Mentorship Plan. She also attended all the available workshops on the UMD PTK promotion process, evaluating and adjusting her unit’s process information as she learned. Her service has been motivated by the difficulty she had submitting her own promotion packet and the unnecessary work involved in her initial year of service on the unit’s Promotion Committee. As a result, Lori was self-motivated to demystify the process for her colleagues and her unit’s Promotion Committee. Lori teaches Agricultural Leadership and Teamwork as well as Oral Communication, an approved general education course.

Meredith Epstein is a Principal Lecturer, Academic Advisor, and Assistant Director at the Institute of Applied Agriculture. She has been part of her unit’s original PTK promotion policy development, served as member and chair of the unit and college level PTK promotion committees, gone through the promotion processes to Senior and Principal Lecturer, and served as a mentor to junior faculty going through the Senior level promotion process. Meredith teaches seven different courses related to sustainable agriculture, food systems, and agricultural business management; advises about 40 students per semester; manages nine major curricula; and manages the UMD Community Learning Garden.