A couple of thoughts and observations in response to Cal Pryluck's question about review of creative projects in the academic promotion and tenure process. I'm talking from the perspective of a faculty member at Penn State University, where it is not uncommon for faculty members in the College of Arts and Architecture (Art, Music, Architecture) or the School of Communications (which includes film, video, etc.) to present as part of their resume creative projects. At this university, each department is charged with defining fairly specifically the sorts of activities and the levels of attainment appropriate for each academic rank (assistant prof., assoc. prof., prof., or the equivalent for librarians, researchers, extension, etc) in each of four categories: (1) teaching; (2) research and creative accomplishment; (3) scholarship and professional activities; (4) service. Category (3) includes such things as convention papers, professional activities, and so on. It is in category (4) that Cal's question applies. Here we include such things as publication of books, articles (refereed distinguished from non-refereed), fiction, poetry, films . . . or whatever is regarded as the appropriate activity. Creative activities are obviously appropriate to some faculty more than to others, and they are usually quite explicitly named as appropriate in the department's written document on criteria for tenure and promotion. There are difficulties, but I'm not sure the word "bias" is appropriate. I've served terms on the tenure and promotion committees of my department, college, and university -- each one a broader level than the one before. It is clear from these experiences that the system is better designed to allow for evaluation of published scholarship (scholarly books from university presses, refereed journal articles) than it for the evaluation of a performance or a painting or a film. In the case of such creative activities in lieu of research publications, in my experience, it is important (1) that there be a clear departmental document, approved by the faculty and by the dean, as to what counts as creative activity; (2) that in the particular tenure/promotion case, the department head and appropriate faculty committee make sure that the activity is clearly and specifically described, and that care be taken to secure, if possible, published reviews of the activity; (3) that in the normal process of getting external letters, care be taken to assure that the external reviewers comment quite specifically on the level of accomplishment and the consequent reputation of the work, including not only its excellence but its potential to influence the field. These things will always be problematic in a large university, where p&t is best designed to evaluate on the model of science and scholarship, but a lot of problems can be avoided by clear procedure. And I'd want to add that it isn't only artists who have problems, sometimes, in specifying their contributions. In some areas of physics and chemistry these days, a scholarly article may have 20 authors; it is sometimes very hard to make clear the contribution of an assistant professor to a 20-author team assembled from several universities, often from more than one continent. Tom Benson Penn State